Our History

Grace Church Rotorua began as a church plant initiative of the Northern Presbytery of Grace Presbyterian Church of New Zealand.

Trinity Church in Takanini was the sending Church. Andrew Macpherson, Peter Boyd, Peter Reynolds and Steve Panapa made a day trip to Rotorua to see where to begin.

On Easter Sunday 2010 we put a sign out on Te Ngae road and held our first service at Lynmore Primary School. We had four visitors from Auckland, Eva and Steve being the only locals.

In Steve’s words, “All I know is to preach Jesus from the whole bible. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t do so well, but The Lord is among us“. He began sending people to be a part of the church, some of these were local and some were new to Rotorua.

In 2017, Steve and his wife Eva moved to Auckland for health reasons. For the next two years Grace Church sought a new pastor who might take up the reigns where Steve had left off.

In 2019, a missionary from Thailand named Paul Henry and his wife Crystal learned about the need in Rotorua.

They visited the church and immediately fell in love with this wonderful congregation. Paul Henry accepted the call to be the next pastor and in January 2020 Paul and Crystal and the family (four children) moved from the US to pastor Grace Church.

We are Reformed Presbyterian, our preaching is expository in style, we baptise infants and have communion twice a month. We are not everyone’s flavour. For some we are not Presbyterian enough, for others we are not Reformed enough, for some not charismatic enough, for some… well the list goes on, but for us who are at Grace, we love what the LORD is doing.

Our prayer in God is that He has much for us to do yet. We would love to be able to send & support overseas missionary endeavours from Rotorua, plant another church from our congregation, and move wherever the Holy Spirit would lead us.

Our main focus is to Exalt, Enjoy and Extend God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

Grace Church Rotorua