I had coffee with a really nice guy yesterday. The more I think about how much time he gave me, a little ole’ misguided Joe who has the audacity to think God might want to use him to plant a church, the more I am amazed. Cam Roxburgh is the lead pastor of the multi-site Southside Church, involved with Outreach Canada and director of the Forge Network Canada. Yet we had a chance to sit down and chat. In my misdirected scattered thoughts I managed to glean some important things from him.
What were they? Mostly in the way of forcing me to ask some hard questions about assumptions. How important are Sundays to new church? How important are big catchment events? How relevant are they to the people we are trying to reach? Is full-time ministry a given, have I looked hard at my reasons why I think that necessary? Those are some of the questions he laid on the table before me and caused me to think about.
Of course, going home, I was prepared to grab hold of such questions and wrestle with them. In my debrief with Cheryl of course, I was still in this “engagement” mindset which rubbed Cheryl the wrong way. She isn’t a debater in that sense, so it took me a bit to get past that and switch gears as it were.
I am excited that he shook the tree for me with regards to getting more information about the settings we will be investigating. I am going to be calling Lorne at Outreach Canada today to see if I can get a better spiritual “lay of the land” for where we are going. Cam also said he would send me some contacts for the communities we are going to, to listen to people on the ground there.
Tags: assumptions, Cam Roxburgh, locations, Outreach Canada, research, scouting trip
