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End of Year Reflection - From Management & The Board

We have had another exciting year of growth and impact in the lives of young people throughout our nation. While we have farewelled three of our staff members this year, commending them to other ministries, we have five staff who have joined our team or are in the process of raising support to join us early next year. We’re incredibly thankful for the Lord’s provision through our staff team, our volunteers, our prayer and financial supporters, as well as the numerous churches and trusts who ...

Why Training Matters - Leadership Conference Reflection

Our heart behind everything we do at Word of Life NZ is to ultimately see “every young person in our nation impacted by the Gospel through a friend” and our annual Leadership Conference is a way we can equip local church youth ministries with the tools to encourage this vision amongst their youth communities.This year in March, we hosted our annual Leadership Conference in Cambridge, with additional watch parties in the North Shore, Nelson, and Christchurch. In total, we reached over 100 you...

Staff Spotlight - Meet Megan

When I was 18, I made the decision to spend 2 years studying the Bible with Word of Life in the States. I had no intention of going into ministry full time, but didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and knew that developing a Biblical foundation would be a good start!It was during those two years that the Lord began working in my heart to see people the way He did - lost and in need of a Saviour. I decided that I would take the bold leap of doing a cross cultural internship with Word of...

A Four Year experience - Sarah's Story

In 2020 our internship program shifted into an intentional four year programme, designed to developing leaders that are passionate about God and the Gospel. The Internship Programme utilises the ministry platforms and relationships that Word of Life has to provide an effective development environment for each intern.Sarah is our 2nd intern to finish the fourth year, we interviewed her to hear about her experience, how she has seen God work, and where she is headed next.Students who enter the fou...

How Youth Reachout Changed My Life

Back in 2015, I was fresh to faith and eager to learn more about God, so when the opportunity to go on the Youth Reachout trip came up, I jumped in. That first trip changed me, deeply and quietly, as the small experiences added up to a transformative whole. I loved it so much that I begged Word of Life to let me go the next year, and continued to be encouraged and challenged in my faith. Discussing topics like "The Cross," "Authority," "Relationships," and "God’s Will" planted seeds in my life...

Youth Find Jesus Through a Friend

Nothing beats hearing the words "My friend came to know Jesus" by a youth, and this year we witnessed the most incredible story of two youth giving their life to Jesus because of one committed friend and one praying youth group.Our vision is to see “every young person in our nation impacted by the Gospel through a friend”. This story is a perfect glimpse of our vision and what we hope to see happening in every youth community across the nation.This story all starts with a youth named Jack wi...

400 Teenagers hear the Good News

It was amazing to see God at work in youth groups across the South Island as we ran five Youth Night's in Christchurch, Dunedin and Gore throughout the month of August. We saw youth leaders encouraged, many friends invited, 16 youth ministries served and ultimately, 400 teenagers who heard the Gospel.Our vision at Word of Life is "to see every young person in our nation impacted by the gospel through a friend". And the heart behind our events is to create an opportunity for youth to invite their...

South Island Update

Over the last few months there have been some exciting updates for our South Island team with an addition to the team, a new office space and exciting ministry opportunities. Here is a brief overview of what has been happening down in the south. ...

Kids Camps - Seeing the vision turn into reality

During the recent School Holidays our Internship team had the opportunity to serve by helping run two children’s Holiday Programs, in partnership with churches in Te Puke and Manawaru. These programs are more than just events; they are opportunties to nurture relationships and witness growth—both in the local churches we partner with and within our team....

End of year Recap - Informer 2023

And that's a wrap! 2023 is coming to a close and we wanted to take some time to reflect on what God has done through Word Of Life NZ this year. Massive thank you to everyone who supported us through time, finances and prayer. Check out our Informer below to hear stories on how God has impacted the youth of Aotearoa this year through Word of Life NZ in partnership with the local church....

Cross Cultural Mission - Youth Reachout Recap

After a 3-year hiatus there was a palpable sense of excitement about getting back to a country that Word of Life has a long history with, and to pick up the task again of establishing strong foundations for the Christian life in young people. We were excited to take a team of 37 to Fiji during July on Youth Reachout 2023. Youth Reachout is a mission trip for youth aged 16 and above. The trip focuses on two aspects: practical ministry and personal spiritual growth.  The three week...

Transforming Lives: Uniting with Local Churches through Gospel-Centered Youth Nights

At Word of Life NZ one of our big focuses is to partner with the local church to create Gospel advancing Ministries. We have a dedicated Local Church Ministry (LCM) team who connect with and support youth pastors/leaders all over Aotearoa. One of the ways we seek to serve the local church is by running youth night events, these are Gospel focused nights giving youth the opportunity to invite their friends to hear the Good news of Jesus. Youth nights have been a major part of the South ...

Over 400 youth reached with the Gospel - Origin Update

Over the last two months we had the privilege of running two ORIGIN's, which are our largest events, where we bring together as many youth groups as we can and share the Gospel. This year was our fourth ORIGIN in Hamilton and it was super encouraging to see 19 youth groups and over 350 youth and leaders attend.This years theme was "For Real", which we used to speak to big questions like "Who is God?" and "What is sin?". Origin events are made up of three main parts, the Games, the Summit and the...

Internship Update

Meet our intern team! We are excited to have 10 amazing interns join us in ministry and study this year. Our intern team has been all over the country and out of it so here's a little glimpse of what they have been up to the last few months. ...

The Impact of Youth Nights

Over the last two months we have had the privilege to partner with six local churches to run several different Youth Night events. We love working alongside the local church and getting the opportunity to serve them in this way, providing a night where the leaders can focus on building relationships with the youth while we run a Gospel centered event. This month we were excited to partner with Rutland Street Church, Bryndwr Bible Chapel, Ashburton New life, Gracecity Central &...

The Conversation that made an impact

On the 8th of May, the intern team embarked on a journey to Hastings, working with OAC New Zealand for a six-day outreach program. Their time in Hastings was filled with a mix of practical work helping with flood clean up and street ministry putting into practice the evangelism teachings they had learned from Jeremy Dempsey earlier in the year. One particular encounter left a lasting impression on Daniel Pye, reaffirming the impact of their efforts.One of the outreaches OAC was doing involved&nb...

Leaders Heart For The Gospel

On the 23rd of March, we were able to serve Riccarton Community Church's intermediate group with an event they were running. We brought our inflatables along and ran games for the 40 kids that were there. The group had been growing recently and on that night there were about 15 kids that came for the first time. Lance was there that night and shared about one of the more encouraging moments.“It was after we had packed up everything, the trailer was full of our gear and inflatables and we had a...

Leadership Conference 2023

This last month we had the privilege of running our annual leadership conference in four different locations around the country. It was an awesome opportunity to connect with various youth ministries and focus together on the importance of being leaders who lead by example. Our heart behind running this event is to see leaders be encouraged and spurred on to run effective Gospel advancing ministries. It is always so encouraging and exciting to hear the conversations being had around how to make ...

Staff Retreat 2023

We kicked off the year with our annual staff retreat held at Capernwray. The aim of staff retreat is for the whole team to be together refocusing and being fed into before the year begins. It's always such an encouragement for everyone to be together digging into the word and getting excited about what God has instore this year. We were privileged to have Tom McIvor and Paul Tabrum be our guest speakers this year. The focus was on how we are loving God with our whole heart, soul and mind an...

The Power of Intercessory Prayer

It is the heartbeat of Word of Life to see young people sharing the Gospel with their friends and it is our desire to see this happening. One of the tools we encourage youth ministries to use is called 'the cause circle'. The cause circles aim is to be putting intentional time aside to pray for those in our life who are not yet followers of Christ. The cause circle is made up of 3 sections, prayer, care and share. As a team we have implemented this into our lives and each wee...

Arotahi - Hope to the community

We were privileged to be involved in an exciting new outreach called Arotahi, this was an event put on by a collection of churches and parachurch ministries in Fairfield, Hamilton (Hukanui, Te Whanau Putahi, Hamilton New Life, Central Baptist, OAC and Word of Life) with the aim of bringing hope to the community. It was so encouraging to see a group of believers coming from different ministries and churches to work together and be a light in the community. This was a week long...

New Camp Initiatives 2022

Our annual youth camp is a place where youth groups come together to participate in crazy games, fellowship and biblical teaching. This year we created two brand new initiatives to help utilise the opportunities we have at camp, introducing "Camp Crew" and "Leadership Engagement". It was encouraging to see how these new ventures added to the overall value of camp and how God used these to work in mighty ways....