Mountainside

Mountainside Lutheran Church is a community of people of a journey. we have gone through significant changes in the last few years, all in hope of more effectively fulfilling our mission, which is;

To be equipped through our gathering so that we grow as disciples in order to go forth and proclaim the gospel.

We are the church and community facility on the corner of Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Harris Road in Mt Wellington. It is the big yellow building!

We are a regional community of people from all over Auckland. We are an ethnic community of people from 20 nations/ethnic groups (which include Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Denmark, England, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Holland, India, Latvia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Republic of South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tahiti, USA, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe). We are an international community of people from different parts of the world. We are a local community of people who live and work in the Ellerslie/Mt Wellington community.

We gather in the presence of Jesus to worship the Lord on Sundays . Our worship has diverse styles of music from 16th century hymns to songs written in this new millennium from all over the world. We are people of all ages and several languages.

Lutheran Church of New Zealand

Mountainside Lutheran Church is a member of the Lutheran Church of New Zealand (LCNZ).

Lutheran Church of Australia

The LCNZ is part of a larger group of Lutheran churches in Australia and New Zealand known as the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA). Each of the member congregations of the LCA has agreed to band together into a church body called a ‘synod' for the purpose of mutual support and to work together on projects that are too large for a single church to do by itself. While each of the individual churches is an autonomous body responsible for its own program, we also agree to work together. We also work together in mission ventures, in providing teaching institutions for the training of pastors and other church workers, in preparing materials for use in local congregations plus many other tasks. Clearly there are many benefits in being involved in the larger body, not the least of which is being part of a wider family, which is joined together by common beliefs. While there are different ways in which individual churches operation and practice their faith, there is an underlying unity in this diversity, which lends strength to the ministry of each local church.

Lutherans Worldwide

Martin Luther lived in the area that is now Germany, and the first adherents of Lutheranism were German. From Germany, Lutheranism spread quickly to Scandinavia and other countries around the Baltic Sea. From Europe it was taken to the USA and around the world.

The first Lutheran settlers came to Australia in 1838 and made their home in Klemzig, now a north-eastern suburb of Adelaide. From there they settled in the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley. Later groups settled in the Western districts of Victoria, the Riverina area of New South Wales, and the Darling Downs in Queensland. In New Zealand the first German Immigrants arrived in 1843 with the arrival of the settlers in Nelson on the South Island. Lutheran churches have been very active in mission work in places like Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Africa.

World-wide, Lutheranism makes up the largest Protestant denomination, with about 70 million adherents. Over 10 million live in the USA. The membership of the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand is about 110,000.

Many Lutheran churches around the world have formed a confederation called Lutheran World Federation (LWF). These churches and other Lutheran churches cooperate in worldwide humanitarian aid through the Lutheran World Service (LWS). The Lutheran Church of Australia has associate membership in LWF and contributes to LWS.