Once again, I haven’t posted in a while. I now have a very good excuse. Fatigue and morning sickness have kept me from doing much of anything. I have been granted Sundays as been pretty sickness and fatigue free but the rest of the week is a battle. I just start to feel better and it comes back. I caught the cold virus that has been circulating through our church and was passed on to me through my children and now that it is over, morning sickness has returned. So, I must look on the bright side. Housework is out! YAY! (Sorry dear.) There is nothing on my plate for Awana at the moment. Our latest shipment arrived yesterday before our meeting which I promptly sorted through and handed out what needed to be given to the leaders that evening. So, what should I do with my time on the couch? I must use it productively. I can only play Freecell and Solitaire for so long before I feel like there is something more I could be doing.

Today I decided to start looking at the cities we are going to be visiting in March. Last year, I contacted Medicine Hat and told them how I liked their online brochure and would like a hard copy of it. They sent me a huge packet containing more than just the brochure that I requested. It was an overwhelming packet containing their leisure guide, maps, tourism info, their census, utilities info…. the list goes on.

First on my list today was Lethbridge. They have a site called Choose Lethbridge. So much of the information on the site was spread out and I am one of those people that likes information in a compiled form, such as a brochure where it is all neatly organized. They were good enough to put their email address on their site so I dropped them (The Department of Economic Development) a little note asking if they had the information in a pdf or hard copy. Within an hour I had a reply saying that they were rewriting the information but yes they had it in a pdf which they provided the link for and could give me a hard copy if I would like. So, I wrote back and stated I would love to get a hard copy and there are other families who may consider moving with us and I would appreciate if they could let us know when the revised edition is out. I received a reply that they will send out the material today and will send several copies rather than just one. Very nice!

Now I am on to checking out the other cities on our list to see what information I can dig up and what resources I might be able to have sent my way. It would be nice to be armed with as much information as possible prior to our scouting trip in March.

I think I like this one better than the one I heard back when I was a kid.

As it is distinctly possible that this blog could see search engine results for people googling terms like “Church Planting”, “Church Plant”, “Canada” and even “Western Canada”, I thought I would put up a link to my finished graduating essay, where I explore issues related to church planting and growth in resort communities, as a distinct class of church planting setting/culture.

Being in close proximity to Whistler, and hearing that in that village of 8000 permanent residents there were only 3 struggling churches (and one of them was a weird hybrid of Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans in the ame building), I wanted to study why that was.  What made resort communities so resistant to church planting and growth?

The abstract for the paper is this:

Church planting in the resort communities of Western Canada, with particular respect to the village of Whistler British Columbia and Canmore, Alberta face peculiar challenges. These communities share many characteristics of both typical urban and typical rural communities in their regions, but also share certain characteristics which are common between them. These create a unique planting context that is shared with other communities founded or experiencing growth through the expansion of the local tourism industry. Viewing the reported challenges and successes of local pastors provides some insight into what prospective church planters must prepare to face if they choose to pursue their vocation in such communities.

You can read the whole paper on my other blog, Confessions of a Shiftless Mind. I found the process of writing it to be really useful to my development as a one-day church planter, teaching me much about the realities of church planting, and giving me an opportunity to read a lot of books on church planting.

The paper ran about 40 pages, including title pages, contents, bibliography.  I switched the footnotes to endnotes for ease of use online.

A bunch of quick things, none of which are postworthy in their own right, but relate to our journey.

• Sunday we had a lady in the church let us know that they have relatives in Southern Alberta who have a Bed and Breakfast.  They have hosted church speakers and evangelists before, and she suggested we contact them for a place to stay as we investigate.
• Saturday night I stayed up far too late with an old friend, talking about life and our church planting dreams.  It is good to have people behind you.
• Speaking of good to have people behind you, I had an old forestry school friend join our prayer network this morning!  It feels like my heart for this calling grows two sizes every time someone unexpected joins our prayer network newsletter list. (By the way, if you haven’t signed up for it yet, it’s on the sidebar to the right.)
• One of my own private plans for the scouting trip was to seek God with a 5 day fast before we leave.  I mentioned that to a couple of close friends and they have courageously volunteered to join me in fasting and praying for God to reveal his plans to us on this trip.
• God’s got a number of challenges for me this week, and I am looking forward to meeting them all head on.  From leading an Awana Director’s meeting to meeting with some friends to deal with some issues, this week has some real experience in store for us both!

I connected with a church planter out in Chicago, who is a bit of a marketing whiz.  He has built a website called “Eat Jesus.com” where church planters and church leaders contribute articles based on the theme of how to be “self-feeding” Christians.  I have been asked to contribute articles there, and I am excited to be involved.  Check it out – subscribe, and learn.

It’s a great idea – too many Christians these days only eat “pablum” – spoon-fed Scripture by their pastor every Sunday, with a midweek snack, maybe, if they are involved in some kind of small group or larger group like Young Adults or Youth or Singles or Young Marrieds or Old Timers or MOPS or Men’s Ministry or Women’s Ministry… you get the picture.

Tell me: how healthy are you if you are only fed a bowl of pablum twice a week?  You’d be pretty anemic and starving to death.  Tell me: how often do you need to be eating physical food to nourish your physical body?  Twice?  Three times a day?  More?  Now tell me – if God made our physical bodies to need food regularly – like multiple times a day, how healthy will we be spiritually, if we only feed  spiritually twice a week? Now you get the idea of how important it is that we as Christians become self-feeding.  Our pastors cannot feed us as often as we need to be spiritually healthy.  If we are wondering why our spiritual life seems barren or fruitless, we need look no further than our feeding habits.  A starving, emaciated faith does not produce much fruit.

Jesus said in John 6:53-58, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.   Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.   Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.  Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.   This is the bread that came down from heaven.  Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” He is speaking about spiritual nourishment.  It doesn’t get plainer than that.  Eatjesus.com and live.

(Crossposted to Confessions of a Shiftless Mind.)

Yesterday we sent out our first prayer network newsletter.  A very exciting moment for us.  I wanted to make sure we got it out the door to give our team a chance to get to know a little more about our vision for the future and begin to enlist their prayers before our scouting trip in March.  We will get a chance to write one more newsletter in early March, and talk a little more about plans before we go.

Prayer support is critical to any church planting enterprise.  We are very serious about having as large a group of Christians asking God on our behalf for his work to be done through us.  We will be needing all kinds of help, but if prayer warriors are behind us, we can be sure that God will provide the rest.  It is emboldening when you know that a legion of saints is behind you.

If you wish to join our prayer network, please fill out your email address in the little jobby on the right.  We also have a more interactive prayer tracker in Kindle – check out the little link on the right that says “Prayer 2.0″.

I was only semi-conscious at the Community Group Leadership meeting Monday night.

In one way it was a good thing.  For some reason I find it easier to worship God when I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.  Maybe it’s because my mind doesn’t distract itself and I can focus on God better.

I was awake enough to be challenged by Pastor Philip and his words from 2^nd Timothy.  We have work to do.  The work of evangelists.  I need to give myself a shake and take seriously my role as shepherd of my group, making sure I am encouraging my group to growth spiritually.

I am excited about activating us to accomplish the work of God.  But first, we have another challenge in front of us.  We are merging our group with another one.  We will have four new members probably joining us this Friday.  I need to get people moving on that, and make sure everything is ready for the meeting to go smoothly.

Social networking pays off.

Over the past year or so I have been gradually getting out on to the internets, and attempting to network with other church planters and such through blogs and twitter.  I have also become more and more involved in facebook.  There are some that might look on these things as time wasters but they have been instrumental in planning this scouting trip.

Through facebook I contacted my cousins in Calgary, who graciously agreed to put us up for a couple of days.  Through facebook I reconnected with an old old friend, Tom, from High School – who just got back from a mission trip to Chile and is part of a church worship team in Lethbridge.  They also agreed to let us crash at their house.  Through blogs I met the Wilks‘ in Medicine Hat, and through twitter I made arrangements to spend the night at their place.  Through my long-time blogging relationship with Greg we have another place to stay in the Lethbridge area.  The only accomodation I didn’t use social networking for was my sister’s place in Edmonton.  I just called her.

I hope that even more opportunities will come of this, as I would like to meet some other local church planters and people like that in come of the other communities we are looking at.