William Chong

Website: http://www.pakbapt.org.nz; Ph: (09) 576 8403; 2 Fremantle Place, Pakuranga, Auckland; Senior Pastor: Andrew Brown; Sermon topic: “Servants with a High Calling” (2 Cor 5:11-7:16); 8.6.08; 9.00am.

Rating: none given
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: live locally in the Pakuranga central area, want to be involved in an ambitious church-growing venture, seek a church that is multicultural and inclusive.

You won’t like this church if you: are looking for a more traditional Baptist service, don’t like the worship band dominating the service, prefer better production values at your church service, don’t like splitting the church into 2 worship times.

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Note to ponder: denominational names aren’t a particularly surefire indicator of what the Christian teaching, demographic, music, outreach or ministry is really like – we’ve seen significant variation between the churches we’ve come across so far in our ongoing homechurch hunt.

I’ve known about Pakuranga Baptist Church for a good few years now, having attended youth services at next-door-neighbour Pakuranga Chinese Baptist Church in my young and carefree days, sometimes wondering what PBC would be like. So I finally took the opportunity to visit with a blank-slate mind. It was eerily quiet in the parking spaces outside as we walked in wondering if it had started…

Worship: … and we found ourselves half an hour late into the service, battling our way through kids running out the doors to take part in their kids church events. This surprised us until we learned that PBC has recently changed their services from a single 9.30 service to a 9.00am and a 10.45am split. Despite our late arrival, the 6-piece worship band was still able to take up a big segment of the time, working studiously through 2 contemporary praise songs for another 20 minutes. A sizeable part of the 80-odd congregation seemed content just listening to the words and the music. One thing I didn’t like was the worship band’s liberal use of instrumental sections, which works for some people as contemplative but not to me. I’m very aware of the temptation for church bands to take more limelight than is necessary, and this one with attempted guitar solos and repeated refrains stretched a bit borderline (though maybe the band on the day wasn’t representative of normal worship). Two of the backup singers on the day could have used some remedial training as well to better mesh with the band – nevertheless, I’m sure it was worship acceptable to God, which is always the main thing.

Speaker: The pastor Andrew Brown shared a message from 2 Cor 5:11-7:16, explaining Paul’s response to attacks from his congregation. After getting over his interesting accent, his message was pretty well-grounded and a good attempt at explaining the context behind Paul’s lovingly-worded scold session to the Corinthian church. One good thing I got out of the sermon was a better understanding of Paul’s preaching demeanour, with members of the early church accusing him of being 1) not Jewish enough, 2) not as close to Jesus as the 12 apostles, 3) not charismatic (in terms of gifts) enough of a speaker. In fact, Brown explained, Paul was a very plain preacher, whose response was to say that “Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation” (7:10). Also noted that the pastor referenced philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche at one point – don’t remember why, but I do recall that if anyone was a pastor’s kid gone sour, Nietzsche would be it (his father was a Lutheran priest).

I’m not sure why, but Brown then weaved in the blue-ribbon story. Basically it’s a self-esteem building exercise where you give blue ribbon acknowledgements to people, and everyone gets more positive (you can read about it here). Personally I hold a bit of skepticism as to its long-term benefits beyond the initial feelgood factor, though the online testimonies seem to indicate otherwise. The presentation shared was taken straight from this testimonial, which as heartfelt as it was, didn’t really strike me as anything more than “love your neighbour as yourself” – something which I guess is worth encouraging. It struck me as odd that Brown focused on this story rather than letting the Scripture do the talking, but the congregation seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.

Church history: PBC boldly announces that 2008 is “the year of service”, essentially an outreach with the hopes of growth in numbers. Mandarin pastor James Bin shared that this is also the motive behind the 2-service strategy. The church has been a regular fixture for many years now, operating as a member church of the Baptist Churches of NZ.

Other faculties: Alpha groups, SUBLIME youth with age-group splits catering from 10 to 30 year-olds, small groups and a strong church focus on overseas missions mentioned during our visit. Pastor Andrew Brown seems pretty keen on rotating through areas of focus throughout 2008, and it would be interesting to find out what other “focus” is planned for the future.

Visitor treatment: We slipped in, and we slipped out with nary a conversation with anyone in the pews. We chatted amicably with Pastor Bin as mentioned previously as a courtesy, but it was surprisingly easy to remain anonymous, it seemed.

Conclusion: A good local church catering adequately to its demographic spread, yet only moderately exciting/innovative/challenging for the most part.

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(Disclosures: 1 friend/relative is an associate pastor.)
Next week: Cityside Baptist Church.�

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)