OUR CHURCH STORY
__________
How it Began
C3 Church Christchurch was formed in 2013, when South City Christian Centre and C3 Tuam Street joined together to form a new church with the purpose of using their combined resources to more effectively reach their city for Christ. Since then, we grown to have 3 churches across the city: Eastside C3, South City C3, and St Martins C3.
About South City Christian Centre
South City Christian Centre had its beginnings in the 1940’s, when a dedicated group committed themselves to establishing a central city church in Christchurch. Between 1950-1953 this group sacrificed a great deal of time and money to build the church currently located on the corner of Colombo Street and Moorhouse Ave. The church was known then as The Evangelistic Church and in the following decades grew to include the development of a private school in St Martins in 1977.
In the early 1990’s, The Evangelistic Church went through a needed transformation where a much fuller appreciation of God’s grace shifted its core values from being inward-looking and legalistic to outward looking and generous. In 1995, the church changed its name to South City Christian Centre. During this time, the school in St Martins also changed its culture and focus, which included a name change to Hillview Christian School.
About C3 Tuam Street
C3 was planted in 2009 with a passionate group of Jesus followers seeking to bring the message of the Gospel to the city of Christchurch. By 2013, C3 was a vibrant central city church with many finding Jesus for the first time. C3 Tuam Street in Christchurch as part of the global network of C3 churches.
In 2013, C3 Christchurch and South City Christian Centre joined together forming South City C3 which originally met as one church at our central city site on Colombo Street. In 2014, the opportunity opened up for us to extend into the suburbs giving us more proximity to the neighbourhoods we felt specifically called to reach. That location is now called Urban Oasis C3. Then in 2016, we were able to launch another suburban location at our school site in St Martins. This location is called St Martins C3. The expansion of our church to three different locations necessitated another name change in 2015 to C3 Church Christchurch.
We believe that through a multi-location church, we will be able to more effectively reach people across our city and beyond and we are excited at the possibilities ahead.
OUR SCHOOL STORY
__________
Hillview Christian School
Hillview Christian School was established in 1977 and for the first 15 years, the school was known as St Martins Private School and was open only to children from families that were part of the founding church. In 1994 the school, for the first time, accepted pupils from outside of the founding church and became an integrated school, like other Christian schools in New Zealand. Since integration there has been a substantial increase in the school roll, from 84 in 1995 to just under our current roll cap of 550.
Hillview is a Year 0-10 school. The school has a decile rating of 6 which means that we have a mixed socio-economic parent community. The school community is principally from the east and south of Christchurch city and a wide cross-section of churches are represented by our school families.