| Dafydd Hughes,
Pastor Dafydd is a Welshman who came to New Zealand to work in Grace Baptist Church, Christchurch, in September 1996, where he served for almost 10 years before moving to Palmerston North in 2006. Dafydd was saved by the grace of God at the age of eleven, following some weeks struggling with the reality of his sin and the justice of God’s condemnation. Soon afterwards he made a public profession of his repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, being baptised |
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Throughout his years in tertiary education Dafydd was active in Christian service: among other things, teaching Sunday School and Youth Groups, assisting on Youth Camps, and representing the Welsh Colleges’ Christian Unions on a national executive of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF).
Following college and a short time in secular work, he spent five years working in two different Christian organisations: one a Bible publisher and distributor, and the other a Christian aid agency primarily serving countries in Eastern Europe. During this time he gained valuable experience of church life and had increasing opportunities for preaching and teaching, both in his local churches and throughout the UK as part of his work. Then came a period of full-time theological training at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales (now the Union School of Theology). At the conclusion of this course Dafydd was ordained to the Christian Ministry by Dr. Eryl Davies, then the college principal, and the elders of his home church, Pollard Park Evangelical Church (now called Christ Church), in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
When our Pastor was seventeen, the encouragement of various Christians who discerned appropriate gifts fuelled his own desire to serve Christ, and marked the start of a growing sense of God’s call to pastoral ministry. It was to be almost ten years filled with active service, painful lessons, serious private study and, finally, formal theological training, before that first sense of call at last became reality with his move to New Zealand.
After emigrating to New Zealand, in addition to his responsibilities within the local church, Dafydd has developed the web site which is now the official domain of the Fellowship of Reformed Baptist Churches in New Zealand, and he was involved in establishing the annual Youth Camps for the Reformed Baptist Churches. He has produced and presented a radio programme for children entitled Know & Grow, which is broadcast on True Light FM, a local Christian radio station.
Dafydd is married to Maria, who comes from Pune, India, where she worked for a number of years for Grace To India, a branch of John MacArthur's Grace To You ministry. Maria compiles Fellowship News, the quarterly newsletter of the Fellowship of Reformed Baptist Churches in New Zealand.
Dafydd & Maria have a son named Ajinkya and a
daughter named Anjali.