Our church is friendly and welcoming, with a current membership of ~50 people, located in suburbs of Waltham. We encourage spiritual growth with various home groups meeting during the week.
We partner with those serving God both at home and around the globe. We work alongside the Baptist mission organization Tranzsend, supporting families working in Asia to provide hope and healing to those in need.
Opawa Baptist Church is located in Waltham, Christchurch.
We strive to love those in our local community, our neighbours, the streets we live in, our workmates and anyone else we meet.
We are an open membership church which means that while we teach and practice adult believer baptism, membership is open to Christians who were baptised as infants and have publicly declared their faith as adults. We are a member of the Baptist Churches of New Zealand. https://baptist.nz/
Rod has been at Opawa since 2016, firstly as interim pastor, and then was formally called to be Pastor at the beginning of 2018.
This is his third pastorate and he loves his role here. Rod is married to Liz, and has four adult children and a step-daughter.
Rod hails from the central North Island and has quirky interests, including being a cricket tragic, rugbyhead (go those Canes!) and World War 2 history buff.
He loves preaching, and sitting and listening with people, and is very involved in the wider Baptist world as Chair of both the Baptist National Council and Baptist Resources Limted. https://www.brl.org.nz/
