History

Below you can read a summary of the long journey we’ve been on as God has shaped us to be his church today. 
The following sets the scene for understanding our current emphases as we strain forward toward the vision God has given us.

On September 6, 1863 Hanover Street Baptist Church (as we were originally called) was founded -constituted as a church with 22 members. As one of the earliest NZ Baptist churches - Dunedin was first settled by Europeans in 1849 - it was a church with a mission: in a strongly Presbyterian city it sought to be a church which lowered the barriers to enable people to become part of it. Unlike most Baptist churches of the time it had open membership which required only a full commitment to Jesus Christ – reaching outwards was its heartbeat. In the years that followed it started many other Baptist churches in the city, helped set up the Baptist Union of churches in New Zealand and launched the Baptist missionary society, sending out the first 2 missionaries from New Zealand.

Into the next century Hanover St Baptist was a strong growing church, but numbers declined in the early 1900’s. However, following the Depression the church regained its strength..

New leader and a renewed vision

By 1984 Hanover St Baptist was at its lowest ebb. Numbers had drastically declined to around 100 attenders, the church faced internal conflict, and a new vision and commitment to reaching out to bring people to Jesus was needed. The call went out for a new pastor.

In 1985 Trevor Geddes, brand new to full-time ministry out of NZ Baptist Theological College, accepted the call and moved to Dunedin with his wife Helen and growing family. Trevor’s journey to this point is an interesting one. In 1975, within a week of moving to the Australian National University in Canberra with a post-graduate scholarship to do a PhD, Trevor began to wonder whether God was speaking to him about his decision to be there. His bible kept falling open at the same place – spanning Isaiah 54:2 to Isaiah 55:13, and God began to use this passage of scripture to speak to him about returning to NZ. However, this would have been a very costly choice. Trevor had used all his money coming over and his scholarship had not started. In addition it was a backward step academically and returning to NZ would be rather humiliating. So he prayed that if the Lord was speaking to him, then someone would get up in church on Sunday and read from the end of Isaiah 55. If they did he would return to NZ, otherwise would carry on with the PhD. So he went to Canberra Baptist that Sunday and someone did indeed get up and read those verses in the service and, in addition, they headed up their church notices with them! So he returned to NZ where he completed a PhD in physics at Wellington, but now with the realization that God had his hand on the direction his life would take, and therefore Physics would not be the main focus.

Nine years later, working as a DSIR physicist and at church leading a sizeable young adults ministry, Trevor and his wife Helen again sensed God’s leading to change direction. Equally as extraordinary as previously, this time the directing was to leave his physics career behind and apply for Baptist College even though neither Trevor nor Helen had a desire to work professionally in ministry. Yet at the Baptist College application interview he was asked by the college board to read from a passage of the Bible they had marked for him. The passage was the end of Isaiah 55- the same verses that had been read in that Canberra church. At that moment, he realized this was the path God had been calling him towards those years earlier. Entering the ministry was now a step of obedience.

1989 to 1999

While he only later learned that those verses in Isaiah were the basis of a sermon by William Carey in 1792 that launched the modern missionary movement, they were once again used dramatically by God to give Trevor and now Hanover St Baptist a vision that would shape its future direction. With a basic call to discipleship the church began to grow again, to attract students and reach the lost. In 1989 Isaiah 54:2-3 was adopted as the church’s mission statement. Those words of Isaiah became God’s call on the life of his community here and his promise to us. In many ways it was a return to the original call of God on this church.

“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”

We became committed to spreading out to the right and to the left. By 1990 with church numbers up to 450 and now hampered by space, 3 other congregations (with their own “pastors”, including one for Chinese) were started and Dunedin City Baptist Church (as it was renamed) ran a “multi-congregational” structure.

The results were initial growth and with space still proving a limiting factor for the main Hanover St congregation the bold move was made in 1996 to sell the historic building that had been home base for more than 130 years. However, the multi-congregational model did not prove a great long term success and the church started to decline till in 1999 the central congregation averaged less than 400 all up on Sundays. Worse still, the number of converts (never more than around 35 a year) had declined and the congregations we had started (excepting the Cantonese/Mandarin one) were not seeing converts.

The spark was lost, the church had plateaued, and the vision to “spread out to the right and to the left wasn’t happening! Trevor had reached “crisis time,” He could no longer tolerate leading a church that saw so few finding Christ, while at the same time Christianity was in sharp decline in New Zealand. It was time to look at the whole basis of how we operated. Only deep and radical change could turn us into a church that fulfilled Jesus’ call to us and so significantly reached New Zealanders who did not yet know Christ.

The tough decision was made to remove most congregations, and become one congregation. Two of our congregations separated from us and became independent in the process. Trevor once again assumed leadership in the central congregation rather than being a sort of CEO of the whole DCBC organization. The leadership committed themselves to develop a leadership team based on effectiveness in ministry not personal preferences about where they wished to serve (there were many misalignments) and made a commitment to speaking 100% truth to each other as leaders. The church made a foundational commitment to do whatever was necessary to see people coming to Christ as never before. A new era in the life of the church had begun.

Purpose Driven

1999 was not only significant for the changes in church structure but it was also the year we gained a fresh understanding of how to move in the direction God had called us.

Trevor was due for study leave and a prominent Christian leader advised that he and Helen spend it visiting Saddleback Community Church in the US. DCBC had effectively given them a blank sheet of paper and said “redesign us”! So taking their blank sheet of paper they boarded the plane for the Purpose Driven conference at Saddleback.

“The moment the conference began, we knew we were in the midst of a life-changing moment for us and our church,” Trevor said. “What Rick Warren (Senior pastor of Saddleback and conference speaker) said in a way seemed so obvious—he seemed to be saying what I knew so well. But the difference was here was a church that was actually doing the obvious. They had found a way to achieve what we knew we should be doing. Two things stood out for me, beyond the Purpose Driven church structure. One was how much Saddleback stressed God loves us. It came out of everything they did. And the second was how Rick led. As I watched and listened, I think I began to really understand what ‘permission giving’ leadership actually meant. At that point, I began to see a path ahead opening up for our church.”

Following their return key leaders in DCBC wrestled with the conference material in Trevor and Helen’s home over several months. At the end they unanimously concluded that we ought to take on the Purpose Driven philosophy as a church. Within a year, DCBC was Purpose Driven. Trevor notes: “This was God’s timing for our church. We had been thoroughly humbled. We had accepted that only radical change could work and had already dismantled much of our structure.”

The results were huge.

• The leadership changed from being directional to being coaches of teams- empowering people by giving them control of ministry roles that were entrusted to them. This meant trusting the Holy Spirit working in them which translates into a deep trust in these people themselves. It was decided we remove the “pastor” title removed from all leaders in the church to help remove the “clergy/laity” barrier and stress function rather than status in ministry. New ministries began to spring up around the church, run by lay-leaders. The core grew as the number involved multiplied.
• We became more balanced in our focus, concentrating more evenly on the span and breadth of the New Testament’s teaching about what it means to be God’s people. Different leaders took responsibility for different key purposes- worship, fellowship, spiritual growth, ministries and outreach- to ensure that each was given adequate attention.
• We transitioned from being inwardly focused and driven by the personal preferences to being outwardly focused with Jesus’ concerns as the driving force. After surveying the community, the church began seeker-friendly “Discovery” services on Sunday mornings and shifted our “believer service” into an evening slot starting at 5:45. People who had never attempted to share their faith with others began asking their workmates and friends to “Discovery” services. “Discovery” started to have a huge impact within the culture of our church with the priority of reaching lost people being proclaimed at every such service. Many people came to know Christ personally.

Latest Chapter

Towards the end of 2005 we began to notice that we were once again plateauing in our effectiveness at reaching those who don’t know Christ. Nearly seven years of running a morning Seeker service with a 5.45 pm Believer service had some unforeseen consequences. Although well attended, the Believer service did not receive the same priority as the Seeker service and this steadily changed the nature of the church. There was a loss of some of the basic discipleship values that had once marked our life. This inevitably weakened our effectiveness. It was time once again to go back to the drawing board.

So in 2006 we took a “sabbath year” (9 months), stopped “Discovery” services, reduced our program as much as we could and waited for God to show us the path ahead. It became clear that he was asking us to put Discipleship at the very heart of our life. We were not only to reclaim ground we had once held but go much further with this than we had ever done before. In terms of being Purpose Driven it meant taking what had been essentially a program for a church and turning it instead (with a lot of modification) into a “program” for the individual believers in our church.

The renewed emphasis on discipleship has set the stage for this next chapter in the life of DCBC. We are committed to developing a firm foundation (“strengthening the stakes”- Isaiah 54) from which we can continue to launch out- enlarging the place of our tent, stretching the curtains wide and lengthening the cords. We believe personal discipleship is this foundation, and are committed to wrestling with how best to help people takes steps to embracing the breadth of Jesus teaching and emulating his own example. We look forward to this discipleship foundation, this “home base”, being the place from which we can spread out to the right and to the left and, with future generations at DCBC, dispossess nations and settle desolate cities. Our recent purchase of a site on which to build new church facilities is also an exciting and strategic step in this direction.

You can find out more about our vision for developing this foundation of discipleship here. Also, take a look at our philosophy and values- here.