/“I will discuss 12 things to be aware of that contribute to polarization with neighbors who do not believe. We may not be able to stop the polarization, but we can work to not contribute to it. How can we share Christ and be inviting to those around us?”

/“This paper proposes an examination of Te Pā Kaha, a Māori-informed apologetics and evangelism framework designed to strengthen Gospel proclamation and Aotearoa New Zealand. Te Pā Kaha applies worldview analysis through a distinctly local lens, recognizing that every person stands within a Pā of inherited beliefs, cultural commitments, and spiritual assumptions. By tracing these foundations the framework brings about a genuine clash between the Gospel and alternative systems. Enabling clearer more faithful evangelistic engagements addressing the heart of the issue. Te Pā Kaha contributes to the “Evangelization of Aotearoa New Zealand” and the world by offering a model that is both contextually grounded and globally relevant. It draws on contemporary scholarship and practitioners in worldview, analysis decolonization discourse, naughty theology, and presuppositional apologetics to articulate how the gospel can be communicated with clarity integrity and cultural intelligence. In a time when many New Zealanders—especially Māori—are reclaiming indigenous identity frameworks, traditional evangelistic methods often fail to address the real questions and objections beneath the surface. Te Pā Kaha equips the church to engage these deeper foundations, ensuring the Gospel is neither misunderstood nor domesticated but heard in its full transformative power.

/“The question of the genuine and sustained impact of reported conversions is one that should trouble researchers. New Zealand has a modest history of significant church growth but there have been some striking cases connected with places that were relatively untouched and where they were localized movements towards faith. The model of “decisions for Christ” operated well in a Christianised society that was never as effective in New Zealand as in places with a stronger Christian heritage. It is even more challenging in a society that has distanced itself from its Christian heritage. A factor that distorts reports of local revivals is the degree of transfer growth and such movements. In the current context, believers easily transfer from one Christian community to another because denominational identity now counts for little. The paper seeks to assess claims of “a quiet revival” in the New Zealand context. The paper also considers ways in which new migrants may play a significant role in reviving faith in New Zealand.

/“Over the past 60 years, the percentage of the population claiming to be Christian has dropped from 90.4% (in 1961) to 34% (in 2023). Over the same period, those claiming to have no religion have grown from 1.4% to 53%. My Masters’ thesis examined the journeys of eight church leaders (two couples and four singles) who started or joined mission-focussed communities. The purpose of this research was to discover what the leaders’ journeys say about the church and mission in NZ. What motivated them? What shape did these churches take what practices did they hold valuable? And what can we learn from them to help us share the gospel of Jesus Christ in NZ Aotearoa in 2026 and beyond? My methodology is qualitative research with thematic analysis.

/“Traditional evangelistic tools such as “The Romans Road” and “The Four Spiritual Laws” framed the gospel as a set of propositions aimed at individual conversion. Recent scholarship challenges this approach, advocating rediscovery of the kingdom-centred message that proclaims Jesus’ reign. This paper argues that the conversionist model should give way to the narrative of King Jesus gospel, the euangelion. The paper begins with euangelion as a New Testament term, focused on the new contemporary reality brought about by Jesus. The euangelion is the centerpiece of Jesus’ mission, the purpose for the Great Commission, and the central motivation of the Apostle Paul. Contrasting the Romans Road with the King Jesus gospel reveals several implicit differences in matters including discipleship, church membership, and the nature of salvation. The paper also considers how the message shapes the method. Evangelism is the good news of a new king and the summons to align with that reality through metanoia. “Accepting Jesus into my heart” becomes, instead, “Jesus is Lord of all, and he calls me by his mercy.” Such allegiance renders the gospel a profoundly theopolitical announcement.

/“The 2023 Church Life Survey showed that 40% of church attendees in New Zealand were born overseas. Religion and belonging to a church are often central to an immigrant’s personal and communal identity, and the process of immigration can be considered “theologizing” experience. Many first-generation immigrants therefore choose to join churches that align with their home language and culture. However second generation immigrants often assimilate into New Zealand and then face challenges relating to participating in the life of the churches of their parents. The result is what scholars call “the silent exodus” where second-generation immigrants are leaving transplanted churches en masse. This is a missed evangelistic opportunity because these bi-cultural second-generation immigrants have a unique missional position within the churches of Aotearoa. This paper is based on qualitative thematic analysis research on primary data gathered through semi structured interviews for my MBA dissertation titled challenges and leading and managing religious volunteers across cultures: a study of Africans churches operating in Auckland.”

/“Conversational research conducted in 2016–17 with long-term pastors across 60 NZ locations confirmed a 65–75% decline in church youth ministry attendance over the prior two decades. Subsequent initiatives sought to address the most significant identified gaps first – but then reached for a milestone outcome: the uniting of NZ’s denominational youth representatives and leaders of 10 National Youth outreach organizations what became the Youth Leaders Round Table, now united around a common vision that every young person growing up in New Zealand will again hear of Jesus. In 2025, the Shining Lights Trust carried out research on behalf of the Youth Leaders Round Table, identifying and measuring 4 primary gaps in NZ youth ministry outreach in the areas of: 1. Outreach equipping, 2. The unity of youth leaders, 3. The unity of Christian youth in schools, 4. United gospel events. This presentation will share a summary of that data, evidencing each gap alongside the proposed action steps that this national leadership group has considering to collectively shift the trajectory of youth outreach in NZ.

/“This paper addresses the problem of defining conversion with an academic discourse, drawing on a historical case study of Māori conversion to Christianity in early nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand. While scholarly treatments have often oscillated between reductionist social explanations and overly individualistic models, this study argues for a more integrated, descriptive approach. Building on my doctoral research, I propose a definition of conversion as a process of religious reorientation involving interrelated changes in belief, identity, and practice. Using archival evidence from early Māori converts, the paper demonstrates that conversion was neither a simple rupture with the past Norman cultural assimilation, but a dynamic, contextual process shaped by indigenous agency. Particular attention is given to how Māori appropriated Christian ideas in ways that were continuous with existing cultural frameworks while also generating new forms of communal life. By clarifying the concept of conversion paper contributes to evangelistic research by offering a more nuanced framework for understanding how religious change occurs in cross cultural contexts. Such a framework has contemporary relevance to evangelism and altera New Zealand, where questions of belief, identity, and practice remain central to communicating the Christian message.

/“Christians often find themselves in conversations where disagreement is a given. How do conversations work relationally? What things do we do that damage conversations? What can contribute to them so they are conversations means not merely A deterioration into harsh debate? This study will consider how to engage more fruitfully with others who start from a different place than you this paper highlights how things like leadership style, organizational structure, and communication create challenges for second generation immigrants. It also outlines a few practical steps that churches can take to mitigate the “silent exodus” of the second-generation immigrants.”

/“This study makes an appeal for the great commandment and the churches need to reflect it with care even as the gospel combines both challenge (because of sin) and invitation into new life. It will stress the importance not just of truth but of relating well to others. It will consider ways to share the gospel that address the needs people outside the church sense about life.”

“In this paper, I reflect on what Matthew claims the Gospel is and highlight parallels to Matthew’s understanding that selected texts from Paul and Acts. I contend that for these early Christ-believers, the gospel is the story of Jesus retold as the climax of the Jewish Scriptures, centered on Jesus’s identity, his passion, and resurrection. I suggest that because this early Christ-believers’ gospel centers on Jesus and is a story, it contrasts with what sometimes gets passed off as Gospel today, as set of propositions with a focus on the individual. While a set of propositions may create some curiosity about Jesus, the goal of evangelism is something much deeper. It aims to supplant our cultural worldview stories with the story of Jesus. I shall argue that a return to the gospel as a worldview glory and to evangelism as calling people to make it their ultimate story must be central to all future evangelistic efforts. A return is key to preventing past and present mistakes, where the gospel has become a tool and cultural wars and is used for foreign ideological agendas, continuing to cause harm and hindering Christian mission.

/“Psychologists recognise that people seek to acquire skills, traits, and behaviors that reflect their ideal selves. Christians can understand these ideal selves as created in the image of God and exemplified by Jesus Christ, and such understandings can motivate faithful discipleship towards Christlikeness. Initial grounded theory research onto new converts to Christianity demonstrated that the desire towards ideal selves that mirror attributes of God can also activate the early stages of faith formation. This paper explores this connection between people’s ideal selves and understandings of God. Building on the initial study, qualitative and quantitative questionnaires with recently baptized adults, and a general Protestant Christian population explored the connection between participants’ perceptions of God and their ideal selves, demonstrating the connection between how God is seen and understood and personal aspirations towards living well in the world. The paper considers how the gospel’s good news might draw on these connections between human desires for ideal selves that seek the good of the world and the attributes of God and Jesus. It considers implications for evangelism, worship, and preaching.

/“This paper is a short summary with recommendations from my Master’s dissertation research titled “What motivates North Shore churches to do regular evangelism?” I surveyed members and leaders of 6 North Shore churches around three key questions: How does your church position evangelism? What training and modelling does your church provide in evangelism? How would your church know if evangelism was taking place? The summary of the survey responses clearly shows that church members affirmed that all the churches positioned evangelism well and were motivated for evangelism. The problem is not the motivation, but the space made in the church schedule through the training and modelling for evangelism to actually happen. The survey showed that 96% could name a course related to evangelism, but only 39% had ever attended one, and those who did were typically poorly attended. Only a few responses mentioned any time a church leader modelled evangelism with them as a member.”

/“How do we clearly share the biblical gospel to people in Aotearoa New Zealand when our English Bibles use gospel words with a different meaning to how they are used in wider culture. We “redeem” Airpoints and remember ANZAC soldiers who “sacrificed” themselves for us, But while there are some similarities here to the biblical gospel, there are significant differences. This often leads to New Zealanders outside the church misunderstanding Scripture’s atonement language. Much of the reason is cultural: we lack the biblical meanings because those meanings drew upon now-obsolete cultural customs such as redeeming prisoners of war or animal sacrifices. This paper presents three complementary tools for evangelists to bridge this gap, drawing upon research and translation theory, anthropology, biblical studies, and missiology. Each method will be practically applied to communicating the gospel in Aotearoa New Zealand. The method of translation holds evangelists must up-to-date some translations of certain biblical atonement terms, and explained the original cultural context. In relocation, evangelists illustrate the gospel by using a contemporary metaphor that is of “critical dynamical equivalence” to the Bible’s atonement language. Finally, location means that evangelists listen to the stories of hope and deliverance in a culture and “subversively fulfill” these as they point to Christ.”

/“This paper argues that much contemporary evangelism in Aotearoa NZ is shaped by a simplistic, somewhat reductionistic understanding of conversion as a single decision, rather than a relational and spiritual journey. As a result, churches and ministries often prioritize immediate responses (often in a highly charged emotional environment) by the long term discipleship, leading to shallow engagement and to limited lasting impact. Using the angle scale developed by James F. Engle in 1975 as a conceptual framework, this paper combines biblical reflection, cultural analysis of New Zealand’s increasingly secular context, and insights from local church practice. It explores how people typically move toward faith and gradual and often nonlinear ways, particularly within a culture that is skeptical of institutions yet open to authentic relationships and spiritual exploration. The argument unfolds by first identifying the limitations of decision-focused evangelism, then re-presenting the Engle’s Scale (a process-oriented model of faith formation), and finally proposing 2–3 practical ideas in how churches and ministries might engage in more effective evangelism in NZ. My hope will be that this paper will offer a more effective pathway for evangelization in Aotearoa, equipping churches to prioritize relational connection, patient witness, and intentional discipleship that leads to deeper and more enduring faith.

/“This paper highlights different ways in which young adults in the 20th century experienced Christian conversion and/or came to a point where they clearly identified as Christian believers. It surveys and discusses the conversion accounts of some 50 New Zealand males, all of whom came to faith in their youth, and who later became evangelical Christian leaders. My research is primarily based on oral history interviews, but also letters, diaries, and memoirs, and reflects a fresh dive into pertinent aspects of the data I previously gathered for my wider research into New Zealand evangelicalism. I explore various questions including how Christian was the converts’ context prior to the conversion, how many had been strongly influenced by Christian fears or a Christian group, how many were evangelized through one-on-one evangelism, and how many came to faith and evangelistic meetings? What can we know about what they were thinking when they became Christians? What church contexts helped facilitate conversation (and follow-up discipleship)? And to what extent may the answers to these questions be relevant to evangelism today?”

/“This study will consider the examples from the early church as well as what the obstacles are to evangelism. It will consider four key questions that are not explicitly the part of a gospel presentation that must be aligned for the gospel to make sense. We will see that often evangelism is about creating new categories for people that they currently do not have. The importance of relationship for this need is also developed.”