Elim Church Dunedin - 67 Harrow

Good fellowship, good teaching, open attitude to hearing people out in a reasonable manner, inward and outward focussed.

Excellent atmosphere , full spectrum age profile, very welcoming people, great worship and great teaching...highly recommend it!

As a student I've really appreciated the support, community and outward focus at Elim. I've grown so much in my walk with God and look forward to more years in Dunedin at this church.

Parking is always difficult. Greeters genuinely friendly. Worship was great (bit too loud for me though). Sermons are continously inspiring

Such an amazing church community. Would unreservedly recommend it to Christians and non-Christians alike. I felt right at home and grew in faith and love for God. Go see for yourself. It's an awesome place :-)!

An amazing, God - centred church, a place that welcomes EVERYONE with open arms and radiates the Father's LOVE. If you have been walking with Jesus for a long time or are just full of curiosity and wonder about this man called Jesus, this is a place for you. If you are broken, hurting, confused, tired, hopeful or excited come and encounter the God that is LOVE. <3

The last time anyone dare to write anything less than 5 stars about the Dunedin Elim church, the review was scrutinised and dismissed in a negative light during the church service. Instead of being defensive&pretend everything is roses, the core leadership needs to sit down and think about why the church has lost at least 1/3 of their congregation in 2015, with both the student pastor&the children's minister stepping down all in 2015. Dunedin Elim no longer offers 3 services on Sundays. What the Senior Pastor needs to understand is that due to verbal disagreements among the staff (behind each other's back, but in front of members of the same church), this trickles down to the congregation level at life groups and other social settings. A genuine concern some of us heard last year is that while it is preached that people should reconcile&be welcoming, the question is how often the congregation has seen the leadership team reconcile with one another and invite new people to their own homes. There needs to be improved levels of open&honest communication among the leadership team and between the leadership and the congregation. The church has no AGM, no membership classes minus one off lunch, no alpha course classes. The vibe is unfortunately, hierarchical, polite and cliche. After a while, you start to see that there are quite a few people who have been attending this church for years, yet nobody sits next to them during services unless with the same people/family. Is this meant to be accepted as normal? New suggestions are not welcome. There is a sense of distance between the young congregation and the senior Minister and we do not agree it is purely the new student minister's job to build relationships with the students. Before being defensive&dismissing this another less than perfect 5 stars review, the core leadership needs to think about how to listen and address the real growing concerns whispered within the congregation. Dunedin Elim needs to address the current challenges and grow. The church overall needs lots of support and prayers.

The people at Elim are nice enough and it has a strong community vibe once you have forced your way into the crowd. Understandably, due to the nature of a student church there are issues around connectivity because the student base is constantly changing, however once you are connected it is a good environment to be in. The four most important factors of the church are what I will briefly cover next, worship, teaching, evangelism and leadership. The church is a worship based church and the musicians and singers are very good, this makes it easy to get consumed in the worship, however I find the songs on occasion to lack depth and meaning which makes it hard to fully engage in the worship, the balance between solid, God praising worship and good vibes is tipped disproportionately in favour of the vibes. It is definitely a Pentecostal set up so if that is your thing, then you could enjoy it. The next factor is the teaching, I personally find the teaching misses the target on regular occasions and ends up being a prosperity based, feel good session. This is accentuated at the night services. I find the teaching to be rather disproportionate, I have attended a large number of Elim services and I cannot recall one message in which the word 'SIN' was mentioned, is it taboo? Which leads me to my third point, how can a church fulfill its duty to make disciples of all men if it does not preach the gospel message, the reason I can question Elim's ability to preach the gospel message is because without an acknowledgement of sin, no one can truly grasp their needs to be saved and there 'faith' if you can call it that is purely based on what God can offer them 'the prosperity gospel'. Another problem around evangelism is the obsession the church has with healing, when a person comes into the church and doesn't get healed of their common cold (as we are constantly told we will be from the front) how is that going to effect their view of God and Christianity. Finally I will talk about the leadership of the church, the main warning sign that hit me about the leadership was the number of inexperienced people that were assuming prominent roles in the church, don't get me wrong I am in no position to doubt their motives or love of God, but what I have noticed is the lack of biblical knowledge, lack of maturity, and lack of leadership qualities (this is not a stereotype of all the leaders), the way I judged this was in relation to myself, I know that I personally lack the maturity and knowledge to lead the church or even a life-group however I see people leading life groups and planning for the church with far less ability than myself. Don't get me wrong, Elim is not all bad and their hearts are in the right places. The reason for the critical review is so that people have the ability to read what Elim is really like rather then just the 5/5 reviews that the die-hard faithfuls will give it. Many of my friends regularly attend Elim and find no fault in it, pray and look around and go where you feel that God is calling you. After all we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Enjoy your Church shopping, God Bless.