The Wanganui Reformed Church is a church plant initiative of the Reformed Church of Palmerston North, New Zealand. The congregation has been meeting together since 1992, initially for Bible studies, and later began services twice a Sunday.
Evangelistic
Our intentions and goals are evangelistic. We want to see men, women and children come to Christ and find eternal life through Him. Our desire is to use the gifts God has given us as a congregation to reach out to others for this glorious purpose.
Worship
We place a very high emphasis on worship and therefore seek to worship the Triune God in spirit and truth. We believe that God wants to be worshipped only in the way He has prescribed in His Word, and so we strive for the simplicity of worship we see in the New Testament. Our worship consists of singing Psalms and Hymns, confession of sin, prayer, the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the Word of God, the administration of the Sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, and giving our tithes and offerings.
Nurture of Church Members
We also value the Church as a place of nurture and equipping for all of life. Reformed Churches, traditionally, have emphasised that the Christian life is something that involves all our spheres of activity in the world. We believe that all of life is to be guided and directed by Holy Scripture.
Preaching
Expository preaching is a regular part of our worship as we meet twice on the Lord’s day. We believe the Bible teaches us that the preaching of the Word of God is the primary means of grace, or the way God speaks to us. For that reason we take the Bible seriously as the infallible Word of God and endeavour to understand its message which we find is always relevant.
Fellowship
We value the fellowship of fellow Christians and have regular Bible study and prayer where we can mutually encourage one another. Women’s fellowship also meets regularly for mutual encouragement and Bible study.
Catechism and Young People
Catechism is a age-old “question and answer” way of explaining the Christian faith. Our young people, usually from the age of 11, begin catechism classes, usually taken by the minister. In this instruction over the years our children gain a good grasp of the teaching of the Bible and learn to apply it to their own lives.
Covenant
The word ‘covenant’ is one of the important concepts we see in the Scriptures. We see ourselves in covenant with God and understand that our children also are embraced in His covenant love. For this reason they are baptised as infants just as the children of Israel were circumcised as infants. Yes, they also must express a personal faith in Christ and be born again, but the Bible gives us plain reasons to believe that God’s love rests upon them in a special way. So we endeavour to train them in God’s ways and we pray that by God’s grace they will come to a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This, of course, is our desire for all men everywhere.
Confessions
We are a confessional church. By that we mean that we have accepted the great creedal statements of the church believing that they accurately reflect the teaching of Scripture, and that they are useful systematic summaries of the truth of God’s Word. As such they function as secondary standards.
Membership
We consider membership of a local church an important part of the teaching of Scripture. In membership we commit ourselves to our Lord Jesus Christ and to His people, and seek to do what we can, each with His own gifts, to serve the Lord – both evangelistically and practically – as we extend love to our neighbours.
For more information about our denomination please follow this link: http://www.rcnz.org.nz./