Christians in New Zealand

Since I'm here in my third week now, and have already settled in ok (praise GOD), I will just comment on my first impressions on the Christian work here in Auckland.
Well, since I arrived I have been to 3 churches, one each Sunday. The first one I went was a baptist church, about 50 minutes walk from my place. I went there with a Christian friend I had just met. The church had about 250 people, so they had services at 8:30 and 10:30. I went for the 8:30 one. There was a lot of singing, and as usual with many modern churches, hymns were completely replaced by contemporary Christian music. After much singing and noise by the church's band, the sermon came. The pastor was using Microsoft Powerpoint  to add to his preaching. However, I do not think the slides were helping at all, since there were some weird background images to the text, and I got deeply distracted by that (emphasis on weird, WEIRD,WEIRD). I do not recall exactly what he was preaching on, since I had forgot my pen at home and he did not say much either. After the service. some people talked to us and were friendly, and after that we left.

In the following Sunday, I decided to visit a presbyterian church that was just across the street, from where I live. They had much more order than the baptist church, but there was no preaching, only a short reflection of 10 minutes. Also, after the service, nobody talked to us and we were largely ignored. We left the church confused.

Today, I decided to go to a reformed baptist church in Takapuna (about 10 kms from my place). I must say, I liked it. There was some singing at the beginning, and though they had a group of instrumentalists, they were never in front of the crowd (as many Christian bands who lead the singing). So they did not distract us at all from the hymns and they had beautiful lyrics so we were able to praise GOD without distraction. After the singing, we had the Lord's table and then the sermon.
The sermon was from Matthew 1, the genealogy of Christ. The preacher made some interesting points (that I'll leave for some other post). After the sermon, there was a Sunday school, where we discussed the sermon with the brethren. This was quite interesting and I enjoyed it. After the Sunday school, I talked to some people and they were very hospitable. Some even invited me for lunch (though I could not, since I already had previous arrangements). So I must say, I'm glad I found this church. This church also has a ministry in the campus of Massey University, where I'm studying, and I'm looking forward to going to those meetings.

So, those are my first impressions. There are many churches around, but I cannot assure you that they all have sound teaching. In fact, New Zealand is also becoming an atheist country, with atheism rising to alarming levels in the past few decades. Let us all be praying that GOD may bless the Christians over here (and everywhere) to remain faithful and to share the gospel in our largely materialistic society, that ignores the blessings the Creator bestow upon them.

ps: This post was a response to Sean's question. If anybody wants to know things about NZ, feel free to ask and I'll try to post information about it.

May GOD bless all!