In visiting all these communities, we did repeatedly see some patterns.  Since the communities are all growing like gangbusters, we have definitely seen the truth of how new city planning leaves little room for churches.  When people say that the church is being marginalized, it truly is.  This was especially striking in Lethbridge but was evident everywhere – churches are being built on the fringes of cities, in the middle of farm areas.  Because city planners now make no room for them in the designs of new neighbourhoods.  New neighbourhoods are devoid of spiritual hubs, deliberately so.  It used to be that open lots would be left along the main thoroughfares because that was the lowest land value – no more.

The question then becomes, do you make an effort to focus on communities in older areas of town?  Two strikes against that – first, there are older churches there usually.  They may not be effective anymore (and that is a legitimate concern) but there is always hope for renewal.  Second, the people there have probably been in the community longer, have more connections and established social networks, which means making inroads is more difficult – more like a rural setting.

But, the new neighbourhoods – the ones in many cases still under construction – what about them?  They have nothing – no churches, perhaps except for Mormon churches – I think when an organization can just approach the city at the planning stage and say, “We have 3 million dollars and want a church in your new subdivision.”  Money makes it happen – but congregational church models like ours have to rely on building community first before building a building, which means by the time there are people there, the lots are all gone or increased in price because the neighbourhood has filled out.

The plus side about focusing on these new subdivisions is that there are few churches positioned to reach them, and the people there are generally newer to the community, have fewer social connections and are looking to build new relationships.  That makes them uniquely available to outreach efforts.

What occurred to us as we drove through a few of these was a mix of what Nathan Bryant told me when I visited him before Community of Hope launched, and what Philip has taught us about establishing a church culture.  Let me explain.

Nathan when I was visiting, was living out an experiment he said he found in a book called “The Connecting Church” by Randy Frazee (on my wishlist, by the way).  His premise is that if you have one planting family move into an unchurched neibourhood, their efforts will not yeild much fruit because there is an element of outsider in play.  They are the “religious folks” and are “different” so they are discounted and ignored.  Yet, if more than one family moves in at the same time, to the same local area, then they can form a network and begin to reach their neighbours as a team.  Now, there are more than one family working together to reach their neighbours, and they aren’t “odd” there are others too, and they can’t be set aside.   Also more touches relationally lead to more opportunities.  So there is that.

What Philip taught us about Community of Hope is that the core team is important because it forms the “culture”of the church.  In other churches, they try to move towards the type of structure we have, but it is met with resistance.  For example, small groups are rarely more than an afterthought, only participated in by a small percentage of the congregation.  Sharing meals together is a rarity in most churches in my experience, but in Community of Hope it happens every week.  When our core team forms a culture, then people coming in accept that culture as normal and integrate.

How do these two ideas synthesize?  Well, what if our core team are some of the first people into a new development?  What if our houses are some of the first ones on the street?  What if we adopt the idea of being the unofficial “welcoming committee” in our neighbourhood?  Every new arrival is self-evident – the house is built.  We don’t have to guess about when someone new is moving in.  We can serve them, helping get settled.  We can invite them to barbeques, invite their kids over while the parents get things in order, begin to create a culture of community and relationship right there on our street!  People might find it odd, but if that is what they get from several families as they arrive, then it must be accepted as the “norm” in this neighbourhood.  As others come, they do the same to them – and so on.  It is like transforming your community, except there wasn’t anything there to begin with so it is in fact easier.  And as these relationships grow and bloom, doors open to sharing the Gospel.

One objection to this strategy could be, “but new homes are expensive!”  Ah, but that is if you are thinking about doing this in Surrey!  It is different out here!  My cousins moved to Calgary about 8 or 9 years ago.  They told me that they were havin a house built for them.  I thought, “Man!  My cousin’s job must pay really well!”  They told me that in fact it was cheaper to buy land and build than it was to buy on the resale market!  Of course that was a while ago, but we took a boo at a couple of show homes, and that still seems to be the case.  A typical mid-scale development in Spruce Grove was priced around $350k, including lot, taxes in.  That’s a 1800 square foot house, not including another 700 square feet in the basement (which they will build out to suit for a bit more or you can do it yourself).  Other communities are even cheaper.  Given the markets and the slowness of the oilpatch right now, I almost expect to see more comedowns in price, making it even more affordable.

Having said all this, I am just putting this out there as an idea.  We don’t know who’s coming with us yet, or what their financial picture will look like.  There are lots more to discuss, but it’s a different idea, and one that sounds like it could be effective.

We finished visiting all the communities we wanted to Wednesday afternoon. The weather out here has been cold – below normal for the month of March. Hence, we didn’t spend as much time “on the ground” as we originally planned. However, thanks to many hands both likely and unlikely, I believe we saw what we needed to see.

We tried to reschedule our stay at my sister’s place in Edmonton a day early since things were progressing so quickly, but then I learned why she had not been responding – she has had the flu for a week. When I finally learned what was going on, she was staying at my Mom’s place because she couldn’t even watch her 2 year old daughter she was so sick. She is in good hands over there though. My Mom is a pretty good nurse when it comes to colds and flu.

So, the backup plan was instead of staying overnight in the Edmonton area, we hightailed it back to Red Deer – which was only an hour and a half south anyway. That’s another neat thing about Alberta – everything is pretty close.

On the way south after seeing Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, we stopped for dinner at White Spot! Heh. They’ve even expanded out here. We prayed and looked at the material we had for the top two, and God brought us to a consensus. The deciding factors were definitely not on our list before we left so this trip was absolutely worth it.

So that was the good news. The bad news…

Cheryl was grateful that we would have another extra day to rest up as she was getting uncomfortable in the long rides. Being at her parents’ place that helped too. So we visited her grandmother yesterday afternoon and had a great dinner of Roast Buffalo(!) and went to bed, planning to leave today.

You might ask, “What is Shane doing up at 4am posting a blog entry?”  The answer would be Cheryl and her youngest brother Sasha waking up at 4am (Mountain) and throwing up into buckets.  Now they are both occupying different couches with buckets beside their heads and not feeling at all well.

So now the challenge, in addition to about 30 total centimeters of snow that has fallen on us since we got out here (don’t know if more fell last night or not – I haven’t checked), we have the challenge of waiting for this sickness to pass.  Which puts us…

Right back on schedule.  If we leave tomorrow morning, that is what we planned all along.

In our heart we may have planned this trip, but the Lord has definitely determined our steps! (Proverbs 16:9)

Finished with a look at High River and Okotoks yesterday. Shockingly, we saw more appeal in the suburbs of Calgary than with Lethbridge which surprised even me!

Something I didn’t mention before about the Hat. Didn’t see any Thai food there, but on the way out of town there was a little village called Bow Island. What’s right there on the main drag? A restaurant called “Bow Thai”! Sweet!

Anyway, back on subject. The waiter, Ryan at the Boston Pizza in High River turned out to be one of the most informative… informants we have encountered so far. He kept coming back with more info for us. Once he came back to tell us about the hospital… and for some reason brought up the fact that it includes a psych ward. Two possibilities there – 1) he thought we needed medication; 2) God told him to tell us because Cheryl’s a psychiatric nurse. I am choosing to believe the latter.

Here’s a video update:

We quite like High River, but not sure about the need there.  The real trick about this trip is separating our own emotions from the will of God.  They could be the same, but they might not be.

We had a great drive from Red Deer to Medicine Hat. We had to wait for a snow storm to pass and took it easy on the roads until we were out of the winter weather and then everything was clear once we got through it.

Staying with the Wilks family was fantastic as they showed us around town and provided us with a place to sleep. It was great to see the city and get to know the neighborhood communities. The drive to Lethbridge was smooth.

I’m finding it difficult sitting in the van for the long drives. I was happy to nap in the back of the van while Shane made this last video update. I am very glad we decided to travel now instead of May/June. I couldn’t imagine how exhausted I’d feel if we waited until them to travel.

Anyways, here’s Shane’s latest update. He wasn’t able to get it up earlier so while he’s off getting a tour of the city from his friend, I’m putting it online for him. It is getting late in the evening so Shane will show me the highlights of his tour tomorrow. We already drove through the South side of Lethbridge but it is great to have someone with local knowledge who can point out the important features and maybe give you an idea where the needs are, like Jason did for us in Medicine Hat.

I will have a forthcoming video made this afternoon, but I am having difficulty uploading it. Expect something later tonight.

We got out of Kamloops in record time (due to a restless infant and a dog with a full bladder), and were ahead of schedule by the time we finished breakfast in Revelstoke.  But then a new challenge arose…

Check it out!

If you’re reading this, we are on the road.  We plan to post video blogs of our trip as we travel, they will probably go up in the evenings, after we have a chance to upload them.

Here is a great page to see the BC road conditions for our drive there and back.  Live webcams.  (Geez I hope I don’t get bad traffic from saying that!)

Here is a schedule of our trip:

Friday, March 20
Driving and staying in a hotel on the Trans-Canada, probably around Revelstoke.

Saturday, March 21
Driving to Red Deer to drop off the boys at Cheryl’s parents house.

Sunday, March 22
Driving to Medicine Hat in the morning. Exploring Medicine Hat and Redcliff in the evening and staying with church planters — Wilks Family.

Monday, March 23
Morning, continuing prayer-walking and exploration of Medicine Hat area. Evening, driving to Lethbridge and staying with the Farries family.

Tuesday, March 24
Exploring Lethbridge and spending the evening with the Lister family.

Wednesday, March 25
Driving to Okotoks, exploring and prayer-walking. Spending the evening in Calgary with Shane’s cousins.

Thursday, March 26
Driving to Edmonton, and spending the evening with Shane’s sister and family.

Friday, March 27
Explore and prayer-walk through Spruce Grove and Stony Plain. Drive to Red Deer

Saturday, March 28
Drive home.

Keep checking for our video blogs!  Barring technical difficulties, they will begin tonight!

(This was posted first to Facebook, but I thought I would put it here too.)

Driving to work, my mind was rolling over a few things but this one had to be written down.

What is this Christianity thing for anyway?

Jesus taught love, forgiveness, peace, humility. There is nobody in the world that doubts that these are virtues that all of humanity benefits from invariably. There is no doubt that individually, we would all be better off if more people took the teachings of Jesus seriously.

Historically speaking, there is no question that what he taught, at the time he taught it, in the culture he taught it, was radical. It was unheard of. Love without question, putting others before yourself, leading by serving others, laying down your life (not just dying) for others. People just didn’t live this way.

People still don’t live this way. But I digress.

Now, we benefit from his ideas being taught and spread throughout the world. There are 2 billion people who claim to follow Jesus, and missionaries have gone to just about every corner of the world at one point or another. The truths that he taught have now been disseminated so widely and watered down that people now think that you can believe in these truths without believing in the one who taught them.

But can you? I question that. What Jesus taught was inextricably tied to who he was. If you reject who he was you are only accepting a watered-down, conditional version of what he taught. It’s a love IF you are loved in return. It’s a humility that is conditioned on not being treated unfairly. It’s a peace until someone wrongs you. It’s a forgiveness that only comes after you have been mollified.

Jesus claimed to be God. Jesus said that he came to pay the price for everything we have done wrong ever. Jesus did this to model the love that he calls us to. Jesus, being in very nature God, took the form of a servant, and then died the most shameful death possible at that time. He modelled the ultimate humility, the ultimate sacrifice. He modelled the ultimate love, taking upon himself the punishment for the entire world. This was only possible because of his divine nature. We cannot comprehend the full scope of his pain as he was separated from the Father. That pain we will only know when at the end of our life, we have chosen not to love him and accept his sacrifice. At that time, death will lead to eternal separation from the omnipresent God who has always been near to us, though we choose so often to pretend he is not there.

He taught and modelled a no-limits form of virtue that can only be approached through himself. Through turning to him and loving him back, for all that he did and is doing and will do. Through acknowledging we are responsible for what we’ve done wrong and that we sincerely wish to turn away from those things forever. It is in that moment that his peace, and love, and humility and forgiveness become doable, beyond the limitations of our anger and pride. It is then that he gives us a new heart, and begins to cleanse us from the darkness that we know stains more that we’d care to admit.

That’s what’s so hard, I think. Admitting there is someone greater, more important than ourselves. Unseating ourselves from the throne of our lives. It isn’t about proof, it isn’t about evidence. It’s about real humility that is impossible to achieve without acknowledging God. It is a humility that is not forced – it is a humility that is voluntary, which makes it the most beautiful, treasured thing in the world.

Heh.  In Canada, the above title is actually relatively meaningless.  The only felonies and misdemeanours we see are on American television.  Our justice system uses the terms “summary offence” for a misdemeanour, and “indictable offence” for felony.  But I digress.

We finally received the packet of information from the Spruce Grove Chamber of Commerce yesterday.  It was, in its lateness, the most complete package we have yet received.  It even included a copy of its local newspaper.  Inside that newspaper was some surprising information.  They actually summarize all the activity of the local RCMP office in the paper!

Here in Surrey, that would be the whole paper itself.  We only get the highlights – the murders, the home invasions, the busted grow ops, etc.

In Spruce Grove, the most serious crimes are theft of ATVs (we don’t have one), RV’s (we don’e have one), and cars (there were like 2 in the week).  After that, it descends into a list of eggings (snicker) and inappropriate use of paintball guns (oh the humanity!).

Now that’s a culture shift that is welcome.