By Dr. Carl Tinnion, NZCMS 

Two hundred years ago this year, the great CMS mis­sion­ary Henry Wil­li­ams arrived in Taur­anga Moana, along with a group from Paihia which included the host chief of the set­tle­ment there. In June 1826, he preached the gospel to local Māori near Mauao (Mount Maunganui) and was warmly received by local iwi.

For those who are less famil­iar with the Wil­li­ams story in Aotearoa, Henry was born in Gosport, England, on 11 Feb­ru­ary 1792. He entered the British Navy at the age of 14 and fought in the Napo­leonic Wars. After return­ing to England, he became a teacher of drawing in Chel­ten­ham, while also train­ing in surgery, medi­cine and boat build­ing. (They were dif­fer­ent times back then! Talk about an over-achiever.)

Even­tu­ally, however, he felt called to become a mis­sion­ary over­seas. God gave him a heart for New Zealand, and in par­tic­u­lar a love for Māori and a desire to preach the gospel to them in their own language.

After a rocky period of being rejec­ted for ordin­a­tion because he was less than pro­fi­cient in Greek and Latin (!), he was even­tu­ally ordained as an Anglican priest and sent as a mis­sion­ary to the ‘cure of souls’ over­seas. He had married Mari­anne Coldham, and together they had 11 children.

They arrived in the Bay of Islands on 3 August 1823. Henry was not the first mis­sion­ary to New Zealand, but he is cer­tainly cred­ited with helping make the mission suc­cess­ful through his resi­li­ence in the face of danger and oppos­i­tion, and his ability to earn the trust of local Māori chiefs. He learnt te reo flu­ently and even helped mediate between Māori iwi who were at war with one another.

Wil­li­ams wasn’t your normal Anglican priest. He desired to see an indi­gen­ous church planted among Māori, in their own lan­guage and with respect for their art, culture and com­munity values.

Māori affectionately nicknamed him Karuwhā, meaning “four-eyes!”, although he was more commonly known as Te Wiremu. He is also remembered as the person who translated the Treaty of Waitangi into te reo Māori and sought to mediate between the Crown and Māori chiefs throughout that process.

The recent com­mem­or­a­tion in Taur­anga marked Henry Wil­li­ams’ first trip to the Bay of Plenty in 1826. His initial purpose was to buy pota­toes for the Paihia mission, but he was also scout­ing out the terrain to see whether a new mission might be estab­lished here.

25 June 2026 marked 200 years since that journey, and a series of events were organ­ised through­out the day to com­mem­or­ate it. The day was sup­por­ted by local iwi, local council, the Karuwhā Trust, Otama­taha Trust, NZCMS and the Anglican Church.

The day began at 7am with a whakatau from mana whenua, Ngāti Tapu and Ngāi Tamar­āwaho, fol­lowed by karakia led by Bishop Andrew Hedge and Sir David Moxon. It was a won­der­ful service of worship, liturgy and prayer, fol­lowed by a lovely break­fast cooked by me and provided on behalf of NZCMS.

At lunch­time, there was an excel­lent lecture by Dr Sam Car­penter at The Elms | Te Papa Taur­anga, the house built by another CMS mis­sion­ary priest, Alfred Brown. The prop­erty became a CMS mission station in 1838, with Brown’s house com­pleted in 1847. Incid­ent­ally, The Elms/​Te Papa Mission House is one of New Zealand’s oldest her­it­age build­ings and is well worth a visit.

A tour of The Elms fol­lowed, includ­ing a visit to the old CMS chapel where local ser­vices were once held. I felt it was only prudent to have a preach (or at least a photo) to mark such an aus­pi­cious occasion!

The evening event attrac­ted more than 650 people, with guest speak­ers Sir Joe Wil­li­ams and Dr Alistair Reese. It also fea­tured the winners of a local speech com­pet­i­tion in both te reo Māori and English, as well as some amazing kapa haka per­form­ances from Beth­le­hem College.

The theme for the evening was Wait­angi – A Treaty of Hope. The vision was to con­tinue a dia­logue about some of the people involved in the Treaty, why it came about, and what it might mean for us all as we look towards the future.

I would like to finish with some per­sonal reflec­tions. For those who don’t know me, I work part-time for NZCMS as a Mission Enabler and part-time leading an Anglican Family Service/​congregation in Te Puke. I am also English, which made my involve­ment in this day a par­tic­u­larly hum­bling and poignant experience.

As an ordained Anglican priest with a mis­sion­ary back­ground through YWAM, I real­ised at one point that I had more in common with Henry Wil­li­ams than I had first thought: an English mis­sion­ary priest in New Zealand, working with (NZ)CMS. The only dif­fer­ence is that I don’t wear glasses – yet!

As I have researched Henry Wil­li­ams’ life, and reflec­ted on the birth of CMS in England in 1799, I find myself living with the tension of feeling proud to be English, while equally being hor­ri­fied by aspects of my her­it­age and the way history has unfol­ded. It is prob­ably a tension many Brits live with wherever they go in the world, and I suspect it is not so dif­fer­ent from what many New Zealand Pākehā experience.

What stands out from my studies, and from the addresses given during the com­mem­or­a­tion, is that Wil­li­ams felt called to New Zealand as a mis­sion­ary – one who was sent car­ry­ing a message of good news. He came primar­ily for Māori, and along the way grew in his love and admir­a­tion for Māori. He became fluent in te reo and genu­inely desired to see indi­gen­ous, self-gov­ern­ing Māori churches estab­lished in the land.

I suspect he wanted the same for all of God’s people: churches that could express them­selves through their own con­tex­tu­al­ised lan­guage, art, worship, food, fun and ways of being. As I read the Bible and the story of mission within it, I believe this is God’s desire too.

Perhaps this is part of the reason I moved to this land in the first place: to be part of a renewal move­ment among those who follow Jesus and are brave enough, like Henry Wil­li­ams, to think outside the box and create new expres­sions of church for the gen­er­a­tions living in Aotearoa today.

I wonder if we find ourselves in a similar moment to Wil­li­ams 200 years ago? Perhaps we too need to scout out new pos­sib­il­it­ies, find the courage to exper­i­ment with cul­tur­ally appro­pri­ate forms of church, and embrace the right lan­guage to com­mu­nic­ate God’s love for the world, the beauty of life in his Kingdom, and an unswerving hope for the future of the church and people of this land.

For me, this sum­mar­ises some­thing of the vision of NZCMS – both over­seas and closer to home.