ARISE Church is a multi campus church with seven locations in New Zealand. Originally named City Church Wellington, it was founded in 2002 with seven people in a small dance and drama studio in Wellington. John and Gillian Cameron are the lead pastors of ARISE Church. ARISE Church has since expanded to include campuses in seven physical locations across New Zealand including Wellington, Hutt Valley(ARISE Centre), Hamilton, Whangarei, Kapiti, Christchurch, and Dunedin, with services based at the Wellington and Hutt Valley campuses also being streamed online. At ARISE Conference 2018 Pastor John Cameron announced that in 2019 ARISE would be launching a new campus in Palmerston North their 8th physical campus.ARISE Church has also established 2 conferences across the year. The first is Passionate Women's Conference with usually occurs in April and has close to 2,300 delegates and boasts world renowned speakers like Lisa Bevere, Leanne Mattesius, Perscilla Schrier and many more. The second is ARISE Conference where the whole of ARISE Church gathers together once a year too celebrate and encourage the Church of New Zealand as a whole Body.
According to Paul Morris, Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University, ARISE is part of a "religious revival" in New Zealand's youth culture. Radio New Zealand's youth channel, The Wireless, compared ARISE to Australia's Hillsong Church, and other papers have described ARISE as having, "a big youth following" The Church responded to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake with immediate shipments of shelf-stable food to the devastated city.ARISE Wellington now holds services every weekend in the largest indoor venues in the city, worshiping in the Michael Fowler Centre, TSB Bank Arena, and the St. James Theatre with close to 7,000 people meeting across 4 services in the Wellington Region it is the largest in Wellington.
ARISE Centre
The ARISE Centre is a multi-purpose auditorium and function venue built by ARISE Church with a 1,200 seat purpose built auditorium, 500 square metre foyer and café, 400 square metres of auxiliary rooms and 1,200 square metres of office space on level 1.
In 2015, the Church entered the permitting process for construction for the Petone building, which includes both worship and office space.The ARISE Centre is ARISE Church's first purpose built building. It is ARISE's home in the Wellington region with offices on the first floor, facilities for region wide events and a new Hutt Valley ARISE Church service on a Sunday. Built by Armstrong Downes Commercial the ARISE Centre features a largely concrete structure with 45m long steel I-beams that support the roof over the large span of the auditorium. The façade consists of glazed curtain wall that covers two sides of the building and is illuminated as a beacon with LED lighting at night. The white upper level floats above the lower level which features black aluminium joinery. The black lower level gives the building's large facade a human scale.
The ground floor features exposed concrete columns and beams, and the rib and infill floor structure to level 1 is exposed as the ceiling. The lower level has black theming that links with the black aluminium windows. The upper level, the office level, has much more white due to the use of a suspended office ceiling – employed for practicality reasons. This links well with the white aluminium joinery that runs floor to ceiling on this level.
ARISE Conference
ARISE Conference has become the main conference for the church and has risen to become the biggest church event ever. Beginning as a camp in 2004 and then with the ever-increasing size of ARISE Church it became impossible for them too keep it up. So in 2008 ARISE Conference took place continuing for the next 10 years and has become the largest Christian gathering in New Zealand's History.
In 2011 ARISE Conference took over running the Get Smart Youth Conference from LIFE Church Auckland and it became the Largest Christian Youth conference. In 2016 the decision was made to expand it into 3 conferences in one with a Kids Conference and The Get Smart Youth Conference becoming the two additions. Also in 2017 for the first time ever ARISE Conference was held in 2 venues basically 2 conferences.
2019 marks a significant year for ARISE Conference where it launches into a second city. It was announced at ARISE Conference 2018 that the second city would be Christchurch and it would be the week of Wellington's Conference on with Christchurch beginning on 16th and finishing on the 18th of July 2019.
Pathway and values
In 2017 ARISE Church ventured on a new way of discipleship for current and new members of the church. This entailed a 4-week pathway program where attendees go through a process of understanding more about the faith, about their role in God's plan and advancing God's church. These four weeks are listed below and they begin on the first Sunday of every month.Know God: discovering who God is and what it takes to become a part of the journey of faith in Jesus.
Know life: living life as a Christian, sharing faith, and living with the hope of Jesus.
Discover purpose: discovering one's spiritual gifts and becoming a part of the community of ARISE with one's giftings.
Make a difference: connection into the life of ARISE Church and developing community through servanthood and establishing the values of the A-Team in one's life.
A-Team Foundation
The serving teams at ARISE have a set of values in which members develop into as they grow. They are Love, Grow, Give, Smile, Excel and Unite.
Beliefs
Theological
ARISE professes to adhere to a form of Christian theology that mostly resembles fundamental evangelical Protestantism with elements of pentecostalism. This variety of theology has its roots in Calvinism (Reformed Protestantism). They make the following affirmations as the fundamental tenets of their faith:The Bible is the inspired word of God.
The doctrine of the Trinity.
The doctrine of the fall of man. The temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan in serpent form and consequently disobeying God by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
The true and accurate rendering of the life of Jesus according to the Gospel of the New Testament. These include virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, and death and resurrection.
Salvation from sin and death by affirming that the death of Jesus by crucifixion is sufficient atonement.
The ritual of baptism in the Holy Spirit.
The need for a person to emulate the behaviour exemplified by Jesus.
The concepts of heaven and hell.
The second coming of Jesus.
Controversy
ARISE Church has been accused of various attempts to engage in preaching in public schools , which some argue contravenes legislation which states that teaching in New Zealand schools must be secular during school hours. A former member of the ARISE Church, Josh Barley has raised concerns about some of the methods they use, particularly in targeting youth, as well as their ideology. His observations are detailed in his blog.
References
External links
ARISE Church official website
