Unsung Heroes – Whanganui, New Zealand

In Western society it’s difficult to do life together, but it does happen, it can be sustained and it can be life-changing. I pray these stories encourage you to keep meeting, keep searching and start gathering. This story is told by Geoff Willmott.

My name is Geoff Willmott, I’m married to Carrie (Caroline). We have three adult children and six grandchildren. I grew up in Hamilton, New Zealand then at age twenty one travelled to London where I lived and worked for two and a half years. While in London I met Carrie, we married and returned to New Zealand.

I grew up in a Christian household and asked Jesus into my life when I was eight years old. During my teenage years I rebelled and lived life in the world thinking it would provide me with the satisfaction I was looking for. How wrong I was! When in London, the New Living Translation was on sale at the St Paul’s Cathedral bookshop around the corner from my workplace. When I read it, compared to the KJV, the Bible came alive. I recommitted my life to Jesus and eventually trained through Baptist Theological College in Auckland alongside Anglican, Methodist, Catholic and Church of Christ students. I worked on mainframe computers for eighteen years, trained and pastored for fifteen years and had several small businesses. In my latter years I drove a school bus. 

A couple of reasons why I was a rebellious teenager was I saw the institutional church looked nothing like the book of Acts and the demarcation lines of denominationalism were set in concrete. (Interestingly, the Chinese underground church has a manifesto based on the book of Acts: PRINCIPLES For the Gathering of believers under the Headship of Jesus Christ rather than the Gospels.) These realizations started a journey of looking for authentic church. Reading books helped, like James Rutz’s book ‘Open Church’. This book explained the history of how the church went off track.

Over the last forty years there were small group gurus who came to NZ that influenced me. Ralph Neighbour and Larry Kreider (Cell churches), Wolfgang Simson, Tony and Felicity Dale (House churches), Steve Addison (No Place Left discipleship and church planting).

We had some good small groups over the years and our church in Auckland saw fifty people come to the Lord over a two-year period using the cell group model. There was a transition from just a small group to a small group which desired to see people saved and groups multiplied. A friend introduced me to Paul Watson (son of David Watson) and a few of us did some Skype meetings introducing us to Discovery Bible Studies. We have since been involved in No Place Left by Steve Addison and others. T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution by Ying and Grace Kai was a great resource and it worked well in Auckland. Over one weekend, with minimal visitation, we found 82 houses of peace out of 450 visits open up for a DBS. I learned that we need teams raiding our communities to find houses of peace and then begin the discipleship process. 

Currently, I’ve been involved in small groups of several kinds. Destiny Church meets Sundays and Wednesdays at a cafe, Wednesday night we feed the hungry in the city square and Friday night we have a group Bible study on Revelation. We are involved in We Are One Prayer Network – New Zealand and Beyond on Facebook which is growing rapidly as we pray for our towns and cities. Saturday mornings there are Indian house church fellowships with evangelizing afterwards at a river market. I believe God is sending Indian believers to NZ to wake us up! Sunday morning, I support my wife at her church (Indian pastors). Sunday night, I am part of a new church planted as a result of people excluded from places of worship during Covid. We are also involved politically, interviewing people like the mayor and other politicians and we see people being saved.

Children are involved in Destiny Church and children participate in the general part of the meeting at the Indian house church before going off to do something by themselves. My friend, a few hours north whom I network with, facilitates several house churches and trains people in disciple making. His three boys, eight to twelve, run their own house churches and evangelise their schoolmates and their parents.   

I don’t hold things in permanence because things could suddenly change in this world. One thing we learned from Covid was that we were never going back to the ‘old normal’, God is preparing us for what is to come. So hang on for the ride and enjoy it. Hold to what the Holy Spirit is telling you and trust that Jesus is your covering. Stick with like-minded people for encouragement because at times it gets lonely and you’ll find you won’t fit into the ‘old’. We are a new creation destined for great exploits with our God. HALLELUJAH!!!

Geoff Willmott can be contacted at geoffrey.willmott@gmail.com or 027-775-4131 or +6427-775-4131.

I would love to hear from those who have been doing organic church for an extended time. Contact me (Jonathan Rovetto) at 414.217.2189 or at jirovetto@yahoo.com. Don’t miss the next Unsung Heroes, subscribe below.