Two new things are about to debut on the blog.

First, a help for you,  the reader.  We are going to be including at the bottom of each post related posts, helpfully linked by a wonderful wordpress script.  So, if you are interested in learning more about what we have written about the subject at hand, check out those links.

Secondly, We’re going to get a little more… multimedia.

Right now, as we speak, Cheryl and I are working on plans to start video blogging.  Yes, that’s right.  At currently unspecificed intervals, we will start putting original video content on here, talking about our church planting experiences, and our growth becoming church planters.  Cheryl’s got a background for this kind of thing, so I expect it should be at the least well-produced, if not enlightening and entertaining!

So stay tuned!

I have been afraid of these things for a while now.  I am scared that I will take one and it will say, “You shouldn’t be a church planter.”  Having reoriented my life towards this goal, a fear of failure has certainly kicked in, in a way that I am actually surprised to find.

So, when I encountered yet another church planting organization that asks prospective planters to undergo a starting “online assessment“, I decided to take the plunge and at least see what it says, knowing an online multiple choice tool can’t possibly know everything but at least will give an idea about where I need work and where I have strength.

102 questions, and it tells me 50%.

Is that good or bad?

“Based on your score, Emerging Leadership Initiative strongly encourages you to complete a full Church Planter Profile!”

Of course, a full profile costs $79.

Hmm.

Looking deeper at the report, my own sense of not having all the experience that I might desire does jive.  What I think this report is telling me is that while I might not have the perfect experience set to church plant (yet), I may still be suited for it but just haven’t had an opportunity to get all that experience.

One of those “you need experience, do it, and you only get experience by doing it” things.

So, my trepidation was fairly baseless.  The test did not tell me anything I didn’t know before, but it has given me the courage to go on to the next step.

I’ve been making some good headway on my paper over the weekend. It feels good… like I am actually going to get it done.

The section I am working on right now deals with contextualization. There have been some very good things I have been reading about it. One of which I even got off one of the links I have on the sidebar - Jonathan Dodson - the Church Planting Novice, wrote something interesting that spurred me to think.

Some have actually said that contextualization of the Gospel is a bad thing.    It’s funny that anyone could say that because the lack of contextualization is exactly the reason why churches are declining so badly in North America and Europe.   For perhaps hundreds of years, we have assumed that church culture was the Gospel and attempted to export it, calling it “church growth”.   It has ceased to work, as people have less and less connection with their roots and history, they simply don’t care.   I read one dissertation on the weekend looking at attempts of Southern Baptists to plant churches in the Pacific Northwest, and lack of contextualization was written all over it - they admitted that the only success they had was amongst those who were already a part of “Southern Baptist” culture but moved there.

For a long time it seems new church planting groups had been talking about stripping “the Gospel” down to its essentials - of removing all culture from it, so that culture no longer got in the way. Now, however, thinking has come to the point where it seems like most have given up on stripping the culture from the Gospel, and now are focused on placing the Gospel in the culture they are trying to reach. It’s a messy business, and no mistake, but yet there are still naysayers who think this “contextualization” is a bad idea.

What really struck home with me about what Jonathan wrote, was his comments about Jesus and the Bible.  Jesus himself is God - entering into our context. Then there is the Bible.  It never occurred to me before, but it is so self-evident - contextualization was always God’s plan from the beginning!  He took men who lived in their cultures, spoke languages and used idioms particular to their culture, to communicate His plan and his works and reveal himself to us all.

The Bible is in context.  Perhaps the reason God did this was because not only would it force us, the readers, to sort through and deal with the difference between culture and the Gospel (decode), but in learning to do that, we then gain the tools to place the Gospel into another culture correctly so that the people we teach read and understand how it applies to their context (encode).

In that light, I read with interest and appreciation the efforts of George Halitzka’s effort to contextualize the coming of Christ by imagining it occurring to a Jewish couple in America in the 80’s (through the prism of Joseph’s death-bed conversations, while Jesus is 15.).  Read both parts - they are fascinating, emotional reading.

And before some of you get all feisty, I know we don’t know when Joseph died, and I know that some of the analogies aren’t perfect, and I know Mary wasn’t as opposed in the Bible as Mary in the story is… look past it and enjoy the fresh insight it offers, and how much more real it feels.  I’m not saying it replaces Scripture, but it gives you a new view on what may be a story you’ve maybe let get too familiar unappreciated.

I think I am glad that December is finally over. It seemed like there was so much that needed to be done before the end of the year. Just as things started to end something would come up, like our sudden trip to Edmonton to see Shane’s grandfather. The Monday before I had finished teaching my nursing students at the local hospital. I was looking forward to not being in a hospital the next Monday. Where did I find myself the next Monday? At a hospital in Edmonton. We were happy to get a visit in with family before Christmas though as we weren’t originally going to go out to visit anyone this year due to finances. When a family member is sick, you put off paying down your debt a little bit longer.

BC has been getting a record snow fall this year. We have broken records set in 1964. Shane and I have been shoveling snow. I shoveled twice and Shane has done it more than that. The snow just wouldn’t stop falling. It is now raining and it is nice to hear the water rushing down the gutters finally. We hardly saw any snow plows on the road which meant getting anywhere was difficult. I can’t remember ever seeing this much snow in such a short period of time…. probably because I wasn’t around in 1964.

This year was Dannan’s first Christmas. He enjoyed checking out the Christmas tree in the weeks leading up to the big day and loved to play with the non-breakable ornaments. He needed a few reminders to leave the lights alone but for the most part he was very good around the Christmas tree. As for gifts, he had no clue what to do about the wrapping paper. We tried to interest him in the ripping sound to get a picture or two of him opening his own presents but it didn’t happen. He wanted to see the presents that his brothers had already opened. Once his presents were opened though he quite enjoyed his brothers showing him how they all worked. I think Dannan enjoyed his first Christmas even though he didn’t have a clue what was going on. I wonder how he’ll be for his first birthday in January?

In other news, I finished reading the Bible finally. I finished just before Christmas. I started reading it in January a week or two before Dannan was born. I got busy doing my coursework and took the Summer off from reading. I finally got back into it this Fall and completed it. I don’t know for sure how many weeks it took me to read it but what counts is that I started in January and finished before the next January. I’m pleased with that.

After I finished reading the Bible I needed something else to read so I asked Shane what he would recommend and he suggested “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” which was interesting. It makes me want to read more apologetics books. Usually any books that Shane recommends are written in such a way that I want to pull out a dictionary but this book wasn’t written that way and I actually understood and enjoyed it. The book took only a couple of days for me to chew through and now I’m onto another book.

The one I’m reading now is “Discipling Our Nation”. I’m about halfway through and while I don’t find it as interesting as the apologetics book I do find the statistics regarding churches in Canada quite fascinating. I’ll write more about this book later as I came across something last night that I found intriguing and want to discuss later on.

It is interesting to contrast the book, “101 Ways To Reach Your Community” by Steve Sjogren with Jonathan Dodson’s appropriate cautions.   A lot of Steve’s suggested, especially introductory servant evangelism events are basically reinforcing consumerism.  As I read through that book, I found myself thinking the exact same thing subconciously - ruling out any suggested event that seemed to be providing a reinforcement to the consumerist impulse, or seeming to be a valueless handout to people who didn’t need it.  How does it show God’s love to give someone something they don’t need or that is cheap and they were planning to get it anyway?

I recall one event we did, giving out bottled water on a fairly hot day, went over ok (though on the cooler days not so well).  One objection I actually heard several times was that people are beginning to be turned off bottled water - mainly since the popular perception is that Vancouver’s water is some of the finest in the world - superior to water filtered from the Ohio River, or whatever nameless source that Coca-Cola uses for its “Dasani”, or Pepsi and its “Aquafina” brand.  One thought that occurred to me (that we still haven’t followed up on) is ameteur soccer in Vancouver runs all the way through the winter.  Kids and their parents will be standing in grassy fields in February, with the temperature just above freezing.  I think handing out coffee or hot chocolate would be very well received in the parks, have value and demonstrate a servant heart for a community.

I think outreaches like this need to have weight - value to the recipients.

That wraps up our look at possible locations.  There are a couple of other slim possibilities, like Airdrie and St. Albert, but they won’t get as much attention, barring God changing our minds in no uncertain terms.

You might also ask, “Why not X or Y community?”  The reality is there are many more communities in Alberta where churches are needed.  Edmonton and Calgary metro areas are the most important, in everyone’s mind.  Paul didn’t go to the country to preach, he went to the cities.

There are several things to consider - one being our own expertise.  It takes a special kind of person to minister cross-culturally with a special gift set, and really neither Cheryl nor I are comfortable in urban culture.  We believe that God wants us to use our gifts in ways that just come out of us - who we are.  And we believe that part of our calling is to teach people that the place where they are at is the place where God calls them to fulfill the Great Commission.  We dream of equipping and discipling people to reach out to the place they are at - their neighbours, their co-workers, and make the gospel a part of the fabric of their lives so that they become the salt and light that God desires all of us to be.

So we have to ask ourselves, who are we?  Are we country folk?  Do we see ourselves as farmers, rural people?  In some ways I wish I was.   I know I am not though.  Do we see ourselves at home amongst the towers of steel and pavement?  Definitely not!  But there are lost people no matter where we look here in Canada - lost hockey moms, lost mechanics, lost truck drivers, lost schoolteachers.  We go to where they are, because they live all around us.  Because they need Jesus, and because we can’t ignore what God put in our hearts long ago.

I still remember long ago, just after I began to follow Christ at 16, I looked at the “missions bulletin board” at my little baptist church.  I admired those people who set aside their comfortable lives in North America to serve people and teach the Gospel.  But God was prompting me even then - “What about the lost right here at home?  They’re everywhere!”  Even when God was not first in my life, I found myself held back - wanting to “get to know my own backyard” before the rest of the world.  As a result, I have driven at one time or another, nearly every highway in BC and Alberta, and many many backroads as well.

I find this is also my passion when it comes to the Gospel - we, right here in Canada, need to hear the Gospel.  So many of us here have been deceived into thinking we know all there is to know about Jesus and about what it means to be Christian.  But we are blinded - perhaps by pride in our beautiful, peaceful lives and culture.  We all need to hear the radical story of God come down, painting a picture in his own blood of what it means to truly love, and saving the world along the way.

It is our hope and prayer that our church would be another extension of the vision of Grace Brethren Canada - to begin a movement of planting churches across Canada.  Even though we might not be called to places like downtown Edmonton or Calgary, or to places of need like Fort MacMurray or Grande Prairie, we hope to build a center that trains and equips people to go and plant in those places.  That Jesus would be preached in every corner of Alberta.  Not that the churches that are there aren’t trying… but that we need all hands on deck to accomplish this massive task that is bigger than any denomination, creed, movement or following.  We need more churches - more ecclesia, more local representations of the Body of Christ, everywhere so that everyone has a chance to accept his Lordship or reject it.

Our last in the series.  These ones are the furthest north.

Spruce Grove and Stony Plain are distinct communities but really close to each other.  5 minutes, if that, by 4 lane freeway between them.  They are both west of Edmonton off the Yellowhead Highway.  Both have seen tremendous growth in the last 20 years - Spruce Grove has doubled from 10 thousand to 20 thousand, and Stony Plain has gone from 4800 to 12 thousand.

Pros:

• Both communities have a high need in terms of church ratio.
• Close enough to Edmonton to be able to help plant churches there.
• On the nicer side of Edmonton - closer to the Mountains (though much further away than any of the other communities we have looked at except Medicine Hat), away from the refineries, close to some nice lakes.
• Close to family - an hour or so to my parents’ place, 2 hours to hers.
• Oiler and Eskimo Country, yeah!

Cons:

• Further north - Cheryl is concerned it might be too cold for her.
• Concerned with the commuter culture drawbacks, as with Cochrane and Okotoks.

Continuing the series on possible locations, we move up west of Calgary now.

Cochrane is another one of these badly swelling small towns, driven by the boom.  It has going for it the proximity to the mountains which makes the views and the geography of the town very homey to me.  In 1981 it was a paltry 3500 people.  In 2006 it has grown to 13 760.  This makes it perhaps the smallest of the cities we are considering (with the exception of Redcliff).

We managed to drive through the edges of it on our way up to my parents’ a couple of weeks ago.  As you noticed, I loved the geography of the town.  But we don’t know a whole lot about it yet.

Pros:

• Proximity to Calgary - easy daughtering to the whole metro area.
• Proximity to Banff/Mountains (my playground)
• Proximity to family (2 hours to Red Deer, 4 hours to Fort Saskatchewan)
• Demand is there (+10k people in 20 years, Outreach Canada places it with a low church ratio)

Cons:

• Maybe too close to Calgary - commuter culture, people with no time.
• Pretty small.

Moving north of Lethbridge, but still well south of Calgary, we encounter the growing suburb community of Okotoks.

This is a bedroom community of Calgary, but only for the last 20 years or so.  Before that it was just another small prairie ranching/farming village.  Since Calgary really started exploding, it has become something close enough that people who don’t want to live in the “big city” began to find it desireable.  In 1981 it was a town of 3800 people.  In 2006 it broke 17 thousand.

According to Outreach Canada, this is a location that needs churches.  The proportion of evangelical churches to population is up around 3000, and the target for Canada is 2000.

Pros:

• Adjacent to Calgary, just outside the metro area.  Means easy access to passing the vision of more churches in Calgary.
• Smaller, less urban centre.
• Southern, so milder weather as compared to cities in central Alberta.
• Closer to transportation routes - Calgary Airport, Banff, Trans-Canada, family if we want.
• More familiar culture - similar to what we have lived in for the last 10 years (though not necessary where we want to live.)

Cons:

• Bedroom Community means:
  • Commuter culture - less time for things like Church
  • Perhaps less shopping options because everyone goes to the city.
• Don’t like the Calgary Flames, or the Stampeders.

Here is our second possible location.  2.5 hours from Calgary so marginally closer to a big city.

Lethbridge

This city was actually brought to my attention by a blogger friend of mine.  He was lamenting the lack of quality churches and told me a major problem is that while there appear to be a lot of churches in this city, a great number of them are shrinking fast and on the verge of collapse.  Admittedly, this is anecdotal, but it is enough for us to take a hard look at it.

Population right now is running 74 thousand, making it the 4th largest city in the province.  Outreach Canada doesn’t list it as high need, but if churches are close to closing that ratio might be worsening.

Pros:

• Larger center, faster growth (+20k in the last 20 years).
• University of Lethbridge is the 3rd largest university in Alberta, possible employment for Cheryl with her Master’s in Nursing.
• Adjacent to Blood Indian Reserve, so lots of potential service opportunities in the aboriginal community.
• Close to the Mountains - only 2 hours to Waterton Lakes National Park.  Less to Pincher Creek and the Crowsnest Pass.  (Mountains and wilderness are my playground.)
• A built-in supporter?

Cons:

• Anecdotal evidence about need.  According to Outreach Canada, the demand isn’t as high as many other places.
• May be tougher turf to plant in - verges on Mormon territory.   (Maybe that’s a pro?)