6000 women attend conference for christian women in Auckland -CathNewsNZ

6,000 women attend conference for Christian women in Auckland

Monday, October 2nd, 2017

The Sista’s Conference for Christian women took place at the beginning of September at the Trusts Arena in Auckland.

Hosted by Life NZ, about 3,800 were expected to attend the opening night. The Saturday night crowd exceeded 6,000.

Organisers estimate 50 percent of Sista attendees were from out of Auckland and participants were likely to come from every Christian denomination.

Writing in the Weekend Herald magazine, Kim Knight pointed out that, according to the latest census, the mainstream religions are declining. One exception however was the Catholic church which recorded a small increase.

Pentecostal churches were up 10.5 percent, and a grouping Statistics NZ refers to as Evangelical, Born Again and Fundamental is up 39.6 percent.

“Tonight’s crowd is here because of that statistic,” Knight said. “The new face of female Christianity has downloaded the app, listened to the podcast and tuned into the online television channel.

“This is church as spectacle, it is religion revolutionised. And if you don’t know the words to the live band’s songs, there are six giant screens to help you.”

Statistics NZ has generated a spreadsheet breaking down every religious affiliation by gender and age.

Comparing 2001 and 2013 Census figures for women who affiliate as Pentecostal or in the Evangelical grouping, numbers have risen by 1000 in the 15-24 age bracket, dropped away slightly for women in their 30s, and picked up again substantially for women aged 45 and older (where an increase of 7167 respondents was noted).

Life, founded 25 years ago by Paul and Maree de Jong, was originally called the Christian Life Centre, Auckland. It was rebranded in 2007.

Maree de Jong is 57. She was born in Newcastle, Australia, to devout Catholic parents. By the time she was 12, her beloved father and grandfather had died, and her mother had barely survived a drug overdose.

At 16, Maree was suicidal and dealing drugs. Her brother took her to a Bible camp and she “radically fell in love with Jesus”. She met New Zealand-born Paul de Jong through the choir. They were married seven months later and have three sons.

Look at Sista’s Facebook page to read comments on the Conference

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