Vision
In July 1996, Mt Wellington Community Church was started with new vision and a new way of doing Church. The vision of the Church was, and still is —
We are a caring, dynamic, multi-cultural family, sharing God's love with our community
Vision Statement
We wanted the Church to be the ‘go-to’ place in the community. If anyone in Mt Wellington had a physical, emotional or spiritual need we wanted the Church to be the first place they called. It is our desire to provide a place to be the hub of the community.
To a large extent this vision is well on the way to being realised with the establishment of our community centre, Te Ao Ngākau, which provides meals, programmes, budgeting advice and a listening ear to those in our community.
The Church building and our other buildings are used by a diverse range of community groups, for weddings and funerals, public meetings, birthday parties, sewing groups, political parties, MP constituent’s clinics, corporate recruiting, the Breast Screening Unit, ADHB clinics, and much much more. There is a huge demand and we could rent it out more if we had more rooms.
The name of our community centre is Te Ao Ngākau which means “Heart and Soul” as this is what we want to be. With our café, medical centre, playground, meeting rooms and community gardens we want this to be a place of connection. A place of belonging for all those in our community.
The Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board have commissioned a number of community needs assessments over the years and one thing that comes back very loudly is that there is no ‘centre’ or ‘heart’ in this area, and a real dearth of meeting places.
The intensification of housing in the area includes the addition of over 350 new Kāinga Ora homes into the community within 1 km of the centre, with little or no additional community amenity spaces to serve those residents.
This new community centre will help by providing a desperately needed social hub in the centre of the community.
It will provide the physical scaffolding to support, enable and strengthen social and spiritual bonds for members of our community”
Mount Wellington Community Church