In this podcast, we interview two pastors in New Zealand who are preaching and praying and shepherding their flocks through the long nights of the New Zealand lockdowns, which are some of the harshest in the world.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're so delighted to focus our program today along with two of our brothers in New Zealand, two pastors that we're really grateful for in that country. New Zealand has experienced some of the harshest lockdown and social controls of anywhere in the world. And these two brothers have walked their families and their churches through all this. And so we're just really delighted to have you guys here.

Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, and we've got Chris Baines from Community Bible Church in Westford, New Zealand. So Chris, thanks.

And yeah, you also do a lot with us. It's really a blessing to work with you. Thank you. And then also Andre Bay from Shore Baptist Church in Auckland. He's a pastor there, and these guys are brothers in arms, and they've been praying for each other and trying to figure out how to navigate the storm.

So maybe we could just start out, Jason, and ask these guys about the history of the church in New Zealand, and maybe to try to frame the context. So maybe you could bring us up to speed of what has happened historically in terms of the Church of Jesus Christ and what's happening now? Sure. One of the things I often say to my American friends first is just to make the distinction that New Zealand is not Australia. We're a whole separate country, believe it or not.

So we're here out here in the South Pacific. And Christianity was introduced here in the early 19th century in 1814. It's when the first Christian missionaries arrived here. The leader of that mission trip was a gentleman named Samuel Marsden. And when the missionaries arrived, they found the Maori people living here.

And it was Samuel Marsden who already helped to build trust with the chiefs. And this led to the official acceptance of the British crown presence in New Zealand. And it was on Christmas Day, 1814, so 207 years ago, this Christmas Day just gone, that Samuel Marsden preached his first sermon in New Zealand from Luke 2 10, saying, Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. And that event was very much recognized as the beginning of Christianity. Since that time, there's been the influence of Christianity throughout the land.

There's an incredible story of a 12-year-old girl, Torori, who had the Gospel of Luke, this was in 1836, shortly after the missionaries were here, the Gospel of Luke attached around her neck written in a native language and one night another tribe attacked the village and she was killed and the Gospel of Luke was taken away. Rather than take revenge, the father of this little girl said that they didn't want to do that, it was in God's hands. And later on the other tribe, after a little time, had the Gospel of Luke read to them, they couldn't read it when they first got it, and that led to the conversion of the little girl's killer. He then went back to the father, repented, sought forgiveness, and they built a church to mark that occasion. So that was how the Gospel of Luke was used in that way.

So since that time, I guess, New Zealand has developed to have a similar mix of denominations to perhaps the UK or the USA. And then in the 80s, there was very much a big influence of the charismatic movement in the mainstream church. And this was definitive in leading to a lot more of an experiential based Christianity, more subjective revelation and perhaps less of a solid doctrinal foundation. But Andre can share some of the dynamics of the church as they are today. Yeah, it was wonderful beginnings and wonderful stories of how the gospel spread specifically through the Maori people all throughout New Zealand.

But lately, unfortunately, if I have to sum up what New Zealand looks like, I think the best word to use is it is a secular country. In our last few times the government had a census, I got the statistics here in 2001, during the census 1,028,049 people said they are non-religious. In 2018, 2,264,000 people said they are non-religious. So it doubled since 2001. So more and more New Zealand is becoming a secular country.

When you do evangelism, very often you come across people who just say, I don't care. I know God might be there, but I just don't care. So that kind of filters through so much of society. The church is being looked down upon in the media. Very often you hear things and they blame the church for things that happened in the past.

Meanwhile, when you look at really the history of the church in New Zealand, especially the early days as well. The churches have done amazing work in helping with racial reconciliation among people. There's a story of a missionary who actually stood on a beach between two warring tribes, preventing them from killing one another. So that we've got a rich Christian history. But where we are now, unfortunately, quite liberal within the church.

When you drive down the streets of Auckland, you will find many, many churches and many of them will have rainbow flags in front of their churches. So it's a real nasty mixed bag right now. But as we do know, The Lord builds His church. We do have faithful churches, faithful pastors, lovely Christians who also reach out into the community. So there's nothing new, really.

It's like the early church. So Chris, maybe you could help us understand what's happening from a governmental standpoint. What are Christians free to do, prohibited from doing? Sure. Well, I mean, a lot of this relates to, obviously, how government have been dealing with COVID.

We had that arrive on our shores the same as you guys, March 2020, we went into a lockdown then took a cautious approach as did pretty much all the churches. And then for a long time, we really experienced I guess a lot of normality, where people, my friends in the States and in England, it was still COVID this, COVID that, and we had a long period of time because we're an island, because we could shut our borders where it was fairly normal. But then of course we were hit again with Delta. And so mid-August we went into lockdown again. And in the region of Auckland where the cases began, that's where Andre and myself are, we were in lockdown for 107 days.

We've only just come out of that in the early December. The way our government set that up was with print levels, one, two, three, four, four being the severest form of lockdown. And this essentially was everybody inside, only for essential services. This had a huge impact on churches, basically being told online only, no meetings whatsoever, no gatherings of more than 10 people outside your outside your home etc. All this time the vaccines have been pushed very heavily with our government setting a 90 target and then earlier this month the whole country transitioned into a what they call a traffic light protection framework.

And that coincided with the introduction of nationwide vaccine passports. So at the beginning of this month, we went into traffic light red, which basically meant that those who had a vaccine passport had many of the freedoms that they had been missing out on for 100 or so days. They go to restaurants, cinemas, get haircuts. Those without a vaccine passport are not allowed to do those things. So that's where we're at now.

I mean, Andre can talk a little bit more about perhaps how that works, the traffic lights and the passports. Yes, if you can explain the traffic light system, I will give you $100 because it's quite confusing. It's rules and regulations, it changes almost weekly with new announcements being made. But I think just to get back to what Chris is saying, because I know many of your listeners come from America, I just want to explain a little bit about our system, how it works, because that influences a lot of the decision making and how that then ends up, how we can respond to it. So the head of the state of New Zealand is Queen Elizabeth II.

So she's the head of our state, but then we have a parliament, and our parliament has sovereign power over the issues of making laws. So New Zealand has no single written constitution or any form of law that is higher than the laws that are passed in parliament. So what we have here is the government makes laws and even then when those laws are being challenged in court, the government can go back to parliament, change the law, then it becomes law and judges won't be able actually to question the laws that are being made. So it's a very interesting system, which makes it really, really difficult for us to navigate through it, even legally. Know that many of the American churches, you can go and you can challenge decisions in the court and if necessary, go to the high court.

We can do that, but our government has the right just to change the law to suit whatever they want to do. So it's kind of a, you know, we sometimes find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. So how many members of parliament are there that are making the decisions? I think it's 120 if I'm correct. I'm not 100% sure.

I think it's 120. The government is a majority government and that's been one of the challenges. So they can basically pass any law without the opposition. And that's been one of the most sobering things because all of these mandates and restrictions come under what they call the COVID Public Response Health Act. And that was a law that was passed in a couple of days in 2020 with no debate and gave incredible powers and then just a month or so ago they made an amendment to this law which was passed in three days again and this is unbelievable because you can look on the government website and You can see the first reading on a date, the second reading on the same date, the third reading on the same date, the select committee where it's debated is skipped, and then two days later it says Royal Ascent.

And this is a law that gives the right, it talks of two classes of citizens, they can take property, they can cause you to have any medical procedure, basically do whatever they want and the opposing party tried to debate this but they don't need that, they can just literally pass a law just like that and get away with it. And all of these restrictions come under that. So yeah, currently in the traffic lights, we're in red in Auckland. So what does that mean for churches? I guess where it impacts us mostly is if you decide, which we believe, you know, should be the case of all churches, that you're not going to segregate your church based on a vaccine passport.

Essentially, you're punished with restricted numbers down to 25 in red. However, if a pastor is vaccinated and if he chooses to segregate, he's rewarded with higher numbers and in some cases, unlimited numbers. So that's the system we're in at this point in time. You know, it's very interesting. It's been startling even here in the United States.

Most of us, I had no grasp on the Emergency Powers Act that gave our governors almost comprehensive power. I just was not aware that any of that existed. Now, I think it exists in a much harsher form where you are, but our governor has emergency powers to do just about whatever he wants to do. That was really shocking to us here. So what does it look like on the ground for everyone and for the people in your churches?

Well, part of the legislation that was passed, the government had vaccine mandates imposed on healthcare workers and those who are teachers so in the educational world. So many of them were forced either to take the vaccine or to lose their jobs. Many did take the vaccine because their livelihoods were at stake. But that had a real significant impact on some parts of New Zealand in particular, where the vaccination rates were much lower. We know of schools that lost 20% of their staff.

We know of, I think we lost about 1,300, if I'm correct, nurses and doctors who refuse to be vaccinated. That's kind of counterproductive if you think we're in the middle of a so-called pandemic and you have 1,300 medical people who lose their jobs. But significant impact in that sense. But I think right now where we're at is like what Chris mentioned, the two groups of people that were created by the government. So you have the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

Now that's okay in society, I think you can still manage that. But in the church, it really, really becomes difficult because now the church is expected to either segregate, which we cannot do because of James chapter two and many other verses that tell us that we're all welcomed in Christ, Romans 14. So we cannot do that. So it puts extra pressure now on the church to think creatively in how we can meet or to meet underground, to meet with the people that the Lord has given us in our membership. So then pastorally, you need to deal with people in your congregation who are either on the one side, extreme left, if I may use the terms left and right, not politically, but left in the sense of everyone has to be vaccinated.

And that's the right thing to do, because we should obey the government. And those people who say, I will not be vaccinated, because I believe in the autonomy of my body, et cetera, et cetera, all the arguments. And they're in one church, and they've been given to us by the Lord to shepherd. So I think for myself personally, that's been the most difficult thing of this whole restrictions that's been placed upon us. It's not so much how I deal personally with not being able to go into a cafe if I'm not vaccinated or whatever.

It is how do I help my congregation to function in the unity that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to keep them from despising one another or judging one another according to Romans 14. Do you have a feel for maybe the percentage of churches that are segregating their congregations according to a vaccine passport? I think there's, it's hard to know the percentage, but we did set up a list of churches who were saying not to segregate, and currently we only have 55 on there. Many people may not have heard of that. I guess we've been surprised how many churches are segregated.

There's different ways you can do this. So there are some who will say they won't segregate, therefore they will have restricted numbers and multiple services, but that also forces you to say if you didn't register, then you can't come to church this Sunday. You have other churches who will provide a vaccinated service and then a mixed service. But again, you know, we would feel that as a form of preference in that sense. There's a lot of churches that are doing the vaccinated services and we've seen many Christmas advertisements already saying come along to our Christmas service, supper providers, sing carols.

Then it says as per government restrictions, only vaccinated people may attend the service. So what that means practically as well is because the mandate extends now to 12 and above, you can have vaccinated parents with unvaccinated children, they can't attend church together. So I don't know what the percentage is. I like to think optimistically, there are many who don't want to segregate, but there are many, there are many who are under the guise of love your neighbor, really just going along with the government regulations because they genuinely feel that's what we're supposed to do as Christians to love our neighbor. Now you brothers have been engaged in a ministry and a message around the phrase free to be church and you have a website you're encouraging people to hold on to biblically ordered church life can you tell us about free to be church I'll let you do that chris you're the website developer you're so good at that So Free To Be Church basically began with a bunch of us pastors like-minded from different denominational flavors but we really wanted to be faithful to the Lord.

We wanted to meet with our churches. We wanted to recognize that Caesar was not the head of the church, but Christ is. And there was a fellowship that developed, and from that we said maybe we should, maybe we should look at being able to encourage other people. The catalyst for that was actually, Andre had heard of a group in the UK who had taken a legal case, which actually they won in Scotland, and it allowed the churches there to have, I guess, more freedoms, not be so affected by certain mandates. We thought maybe we could do the same thing here.

So we engaged some lawyers and we set this up in place, free to be church. And really, the whole purpose is to be a voice, to encourage believers to value the gathering of the imperson church. We've done some webinars talking about you know vaccine passports, not segregating, not being pragmatic in our decisions, all sorts of things like that. And we have engaged these lawyers to pursue a high court case and all the while we're not, we're saying we're not fighting against the government. We're not encouraging people to disobey the government.

We're just focusing on obedience to Christ, but where we can use any legal means, just like the apostle Paul did with his citizenship. Just like when he said, if you can secure your freedom as a slave, then do that. We are seeking to legally draw the government's attention to the Bill of Rights, which allows, it's a constitutional document, which allows for the freedom of religion. And I guess the strength of that case is the disproportionality in the way that churches have been treated. And so that's what Free To Be Church is really all about.

The website is freetobechurch.nz. And I think what's been super encouraging is in doing the webinars and seeing the mailing list grow, you see more Christians in New Zealand being encouraged to look to the Word of God and hear a different communication about the narrative that, let's face it, is being blasted all day long. So the mainstream media affects many people, it affects Christians, and we've just tried to bring a counter narrative and hopefully a biblical narrative to increase people's love for the church and to be willing to be Christians, even if there's a cost to that. Andre, any time the church obeys, especially in the face of pressure, You always see blessings and benefits from that. So how would you catalog some of the blessings and benefits that you're experiencing?

Well, one of the blessings is what Chris just described, is the fellowship that we've found across the nominational lines with brothers who firmly hold to the word of God as their only authority. I think for me just personally, I've benefited so much from having conversations with men who really want to go to the scripture before they make decisions on the regulations that the government place upon them. So that's been extremely helpful for me. I actually, you guys have been quite encouraging to me as well. I've listened to some of your previous podcasts and just one phrase that someone, one of your guests recently said, he said, we believe in the separation of church and state, but we do not believe in the separation of the state and Christ.

So the whole the lordship of the Lord Jesus, the kingship of our Savior, that has been a real benefit, I think, throughout this for me and for many, I would imagine, just to again establish these truths that Jesus Christ is Lord, and he earned that through his obedience to the Father by paying with his own life to secure our salvation. So in other words, I think theologically, our ecclesiology has really been purified a lot. The doctrines of the Lordship of Christ, how pastoral we need to deal with people who are on different planets really right now on these issues. I think all those things have worked to really strengthen the church of the Lord Jesus Christ as long as we stay on the foundations of God's Word. It has also, on the negative side, I think, you know, in a congregation, you would have those people who come, they love the Lord, but they're weak in their faith, they're weak in their doctrines, maybe just mentally they are not not the strongest people to deal with troubles in the world and the challenge is really really to get to them and to help them to be able to see, okay, the next step in your obedience might make you just a little bit stronger.

But unfortunately, we do lose some of those as well, because of the tremendous pressure that is on them. Just to keep a keep a loving and a gracious, gracious heart towards them, I think is so important. But it's been really difficult in that sense. But I think in general, I think the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ is most certainly strengthened through this because we are going back to the biblical truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, obey him above everything else in this world. Well, brothers, we're just so thankful for what you're doing.

I'm praying that you'll just be mighty in the scriptures. God will give you the fruit of your hands. You know, you've set yourself to take care of the Church of God, to shepherd your flocks and to be a blessing to them, bring them into the sweetest waters and the best pastures. I know that's what you want to do. I pray that God would just give your instruction, your life such fruit in what you're doing.

You know, Chris, you're a pianist, and Chris writes beautiful music, plays it on the piano, and you have a rendition of Defend New Zealand. It's a solo piano piece. You can Google that. You Google God Defend New Zealand solo piano, Chris Baines, and it'll come up. But I want us to end our broadcast today by playing that piece.

It's so beautiful, And I pray that the spirit of the sounds of that peace would really ring true in the hearts of those that hear you, and that God would use you to really raise up a mighty church in New Zealand in the midst of a really tough moment. Thank you, Scott. Just to say quickly, one of the lines in the National Anthem says, Men of every creed and race gather here before they face. And that's really been our heart in where we're at right now, that as churches, we would gather together, not segregated for the glory of God. Amen.

Well, thank you, brothers. What a blessing it's been to hear from you. And thank you, and thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and enjoy the next few minutes listening to Chris Baines play for us. God bless you. We'll see You You Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast.

We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.