The slightly longer answer is a little more technical.  We did an update to the software that keeps the blog and it didn’t finish the update correctly.  Plus, in an effort to save money we decided to move the blog to a new server.  Now, we are taking advantage of the “do-over” to change up the look and feel of the blog.  This is something we wanted to do a long time ago, but we’re seizing the day now.

So, stay tuned for the island paradise picture top right to change.  And also, expect my blog posts to get shorter.  I just noticed after importing that I get a bit… long-winded at times.

And shortly I’ll have a more amazing announcement for y’all.  The word has been trickling out, but I’ll explain how it all went down shortly.

I say family because I really feel that is the best analogy for what it’s like.  Some relatives you never knew you had, you love them just the same and look forward to learning about how God is working in their lives.  Other relatives may live far away and you long for every chance to reconnect with them.  Others live nearby and perhaps just the busyness of life keeps you from spending more time together.  It was family reunion time in Cincinatti, and it was a blessing!

In retrospect it appears that there was two major themes to this conference.  One was reaching out to Ethnic America.  We took in four workshops yesterday.  It is admirable this focus, because immigration in the USA and Canada is occurring at such a ferocious pace that the Church needs to step into this opportunity to reach out to the World at our doorstep.  When most immigration occurred from “Christian” nations, the churches filled as immigrants arrived.  But now, most immigration to North America is from nations who have no interest in church, but do wish, like we all do, to feel welcomed, to learn what it means to be citizens.  There is nobody who argues that the best opportunity for people to make life-changing decisions is at times when they are dealing with major crises – moving across the face of the earth is a crisis.  I can’t wait to see the fruit of these seminars being borne, and certainly it helped us look harder at the opportunities that are there in Medicine Hat.

The other big emphasis was wrestling with some big issues about the direction of the Fellowship and what family really means in this context.  That wrestling will go on, and we are excited to be a part of the voices that are calling the family to a common sense of purpose and a recognition of the reality of family.  It is easy to think of church as a non-profit business, and membership in the Fellowship as a marketing alliance, to be benefited from until it is inconvenient then discarded for another alliance.  I think that God is pretty clear in his Word that Christians are family, and the Church is one family.  This applies to the relationship between churches as well.  I think we need to guard against wordly business perpectives that merely ask “what’s in it for me?”  I am reminded of a great American who said about 50 years ago, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  I think that for those many people who are questioning the cost of investment in events like  National Conference, regional focus retreats, or even ministerium, need to turn that around, and ask themselves, “What am I contributing?”  The fellowship is the greater when each voice chooses to participate in the conversation, chooses to contribute their gifts to the whole.  The reward for this act is, as Jeff Bogue so eloquently demonstrated, is to become part of the sledgehammer, breaking the gates of hell!

For myself, I can’t imagine being involved in a fellowship where I wasn’t contributing to something larger.  I think back on everything about my walk with Christ and it’s always been about that.  When He became Lord of my life, He was ushering me into His Kingdom, and giving me a place in a grand plan that began before time: some have pictured it in Joel’s Army terms.  Some have pictured it as guerilla warfare in the Kingdom of This World.  It could even be pictured in terms like the smuggling of people out of slavery and into freedom (with a nod to the Underground Railroad Museum here in Cincinatti).  But I became a part of that.  As I have grown in Christ, there has never been a question that I need to give everything I have to offer to this enterprise.  To give to the larger means I am seeing something done that I could never do on my own.  I am not satisfied with acting on my own strength, because I know it is meager.  I lend my strength to my local church, and the church as a whole sees souls won to Christ – many more than I could ever win on my own.  My church lends its strength to other larger enterprises, and we see even more souls won to Christ and Jesus’ name lifted up in our nation.  When my fellowship acts as one, we will do things that can’t even be imagined.  But stepping back, not giving my all, thinking I can act in my own interests and further the Kingdom more?  I just don’t see how that makes sense.

What I am thinking about is carrying this conference, and this renewed recognition of family back to our local area.  We need more family in the Fellowship – we also need more family in the Northwest District.  We need all hands on deck to give the gifts they have to the larger whole and see God use us in ways beyond understanding.  I want to work harder than ever at connecting those I know in, and sharing my excitement and love for this family.  It is a wonder and a privelege that God brought us into this Fellowship.  I can’t wait to see what comes next.

• Cheryl has started a very awesome Vlog.  What is a vlog you ask?  Well, it’s kind of like this, but more visual.  She has set it up on Youtube and it is right up her alley as she has always been into video – she’s actually graduated from Columbia Academy, a Audio and Video production school in Vancouver.  She’s having lots of fun and I highly recommend you check her out and subscribe to her channel.
• We are heading for Ohio!  I know many of you read this blog from the FBGC.org website.  If you are coming to National Conference, please look us up and let us know you are reading it!  We would love to meet everyone who is reading with us and praying for us here in Medicine Hat!  We will be in Ohio for 2 weeks, and are planning to stuff the trip full with as many visits as we can.  We will be in Wooster, OH on the 25th, and we might be in Ashland, OH for the 26th but are working out the details there.
• We have split up the boys for our trip.  The oldest three are with my parents near Edmonton (actually they are staying with them at their cabin in the woods near Mons Lake) so they are having a blast with canoeing, quadding, camping, fires, all the cool stuff.
• The younger three will be with Cheryl’s folks in Red Deer.  While we were moving we sent the older ones there so we could pack and stage the house.  So now it’s Dannan and the Twins’ turn.  They will be picking them up from the airport as we leave tomorrow.
• I am still plugging away at my real estate courses.  The last one, Commercial, it the most intensive one I’ve don’e I think.  I am almost done, but I probably will have to wait until after we return from our two week trip to Ohio.  It took longer than I had hoped to get them done.
• We are entering fundraising mode.  There were a lot of expenses related to this move, and we are praying for $40, 000 to be raised to cover such things as the real estate courses I have taken, moving costs, investment in the equipment that we need to begin our work here, and simple funds to allow us to focus on our mission here.  Please pray about how you can help us in this area.  There are donation links on GB Canada’s website where you can donate in Canadian or American funds.
• We’re now beginning work on our church website!  Cheryl is plugging away on graphics and it is very early, but we may have something to show y’all at conference.  We shall see.  Stay tuned!  We will definitely post links here once it is up!

See you in Ohio!

All told, it looks like we have almost 500 completed surveys.  Most were done in neighbourhoods across the south side of the city, but with the deluge that hit Medicine Hat Wednesday, Thursday and today, yesterday we elected to take a different approach and sent the teams out to coffee shops and malls to casually engage people in conversation and get a few more done that way.    Then, today, before the wrap up a few of them hit the streets in their neighbourhoods again to get a few more done.  Such diligence!  It will take a little time to analyze the data, but we are looking forward to compiling in a list all of those people who wished to get more information about the church plant, as well as returning the results to those who requested them.

The two service projects we were able to complete touched those we served in a tangible way.  From what we saw it meant a lot to them to see a big group descend and bless their socks off with hard work and sweat.  My sunburn still itches from Monday afternoon!

So much more happened during this Great Canadian Adventure.  Armando Padovan, our Brazilian evangelist from Toronto, met a couple last Sunday who were from Brazil.  He continued to chat with them through the week and Thursday night Armando and I attended a party that we were invited to.  We met 4 Brazilian couples, three of whom are Christians and really excited to see God work in Medicine Hat, both amongst Brazilians and amongst those who do not know Jesus personally yet.  One man at the party actually engaged us with spiritual questions, which resulted in a 45 minute conversation where Armando, myself, and a man named Peter shared the love of Christ with him.  I believe he will come to Christ if we can continue to demonstrate love and remain in a position to answer his questions.

Philip and Nathan Bryant were able to arrange several meetings with other church leaders in the community, and were able to confirm many things which I had discovered in the first few weeks in town.    And reports came back in to us all week long from our survey teams of people who are very eager to hear more about our vision and see something new arise here.

Again, we haven’t analyzed all the information yet, but two things are very clear: many in the city do not believe there are many choices for young families and youth in terms of church.  Also, even amongst the unchurched there is a strong desire for churches to begin to address problem youth in the city.  They believe that youth in Medicine Hat do not have many options and need real mentoring, teaching, engagement and outreach by churches.  This will be key to address going forward.

More once we get a grip on everything.  If you came on the Great Canadian Adventure, thank you once more from the bottom of our hearts for all your efforts.  You have blessed us more than you know.  We are so excited to build on this base of good will and wisdom that you have built for us.

The day started out with my mistake: I turned off the ringer on my phone and wound up being tardy with the coffee… wish I could have had that decision back! But that was followed with a morning where I was able to share my testimony and our vision with the team of 35 hardy adventurers who have come to help us out. Can you believe that they came from places as far away as South Carolina, California, Maryland, Ohio, Iowa, Ontario, and Vancouver? Wow. I then explained the survey work they would be doing in the evening. It was interesting having a debate about the merits and disadvantages of allowing the surveyed see the demographic info we were collecting or not.

After a hearty lunch, the team headed over to Cornerstone Christian School. It is a small Christian school on the edge of town, and they have a pretty big grounds. We were able to bless their socks off by taking on a number of projects that seemed to be on the priority list but never at the top, you know how that is. We assigned 8 ladies to reorganize their storage shed and clean it and they made it absolutely immaculate. We had a team of 4 handymen rebuild snow covers for the air conditioners, and 2 more people painted them. We had 3 men on rototilling around the perimeter of the acreage property, and 6 more in shifts mowing the grass and weedeating. We had another 4 people working on digging out a dead cedar shrub, and then planting a new one in its place. And finally, we had 4 men fix up the basketball court – one hoop was ripped off and the other was loose. The teachers kept coming out all afternoon to marvel at all the work we were doing. The principal was thrilled at our progress. We were glad to bring glory to God by acting out John 13:35.

After an afternoon in the hot sun, a lot of the team were pretty beat. A few of the ladies needed to step back and take a rest after supper, but nobody blamed them. We then broke up into teams of 2 and gave out maps for surveying. We got a bit of a late start, at 7pm, but we put in a good 2 hours and the results were staggering. In most metro areas, 1 house in 10 is considered a good response to a survey like this. Some of our teams had as many has 50% responses, and all had well over 20%. But the real gold for us wasn’t in the information being collected – it was in identifying potential core team members who can join us and dream with us about launching a new church in this city. If I am even close, I would say that we identified at least 20 people in 2 hours who were interested in more information about the new church plant! God will build His church, amen?

Then today, with my parents in tow, we took a trip to the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.  Now THAT opened our eyes.

If you know me, you know that I love the mountains and the forests.  What brought me to the coast in the first place was a desire to live amongst them, after spending 13 years of my childhood and teen years near Edmonton.  Returning to the prairies seemed counterintuitive, but our calling to Medicine Hat was not about the topography.  It was about God.

Remember that proverb?  ”Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart”?  Well, He gave me back that love, in spades today.  He just said, “I can give you what you long for even where you don’t expect it.”

We were blown away by our trip south, to Elkwater Lake in the Cypress Hills. It was gorgeous. Then we went up on top of the hills to a lookout and were blown away again. Then we drove the length of the hills through beautiful high mountain meadows and forests (the elevation up there was higher than the Banff townsite!) I even got to do a little 4-wheeling when the road got a little soupy! Woke poor Dayn up from a nap unfortunately. I have a series of pictures from the trip that Cheryl took on my facebook if you want to see more.

We journeyed all the way to Fort Walsh on the Saskatchewan side. Once we crossed over, we made an amazing discovery – peaceful, little used campgrounds, with free firewood for $19 a night! We WILL be taking them up on that offer! Finally we reached Fort Walsh. We received an excellent tour of the fort, two old trading posts, and the site of the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873. The boys had a blast getting “recruited” into the Northwest Mounted Police and even got their own pillbox hats.

Heading north, we stopped into a little town called Maple Creek, with beautiful old brink buildings and a great restaurant where we had dinner: the “Rockin Horse Cookhouse and Bar”. If you’re ever out that way, that’s the place to stop for dinner. After hitting the Trans-Canada Highway, we bombed home but we simply couldn’t get over the beautiful rolling hills and valleys through the whole area, all the way back to the Hat. What a trip.

New patterns:

• Trying to establish new mealtime patterns involving family participation in cleanup.  So many things slid by the wayside in the runup to the move.  We need to get back into that routine.
• Establishing new life patterns for the boys.  In Surrey we never really felt safe letting our kids wander around the neighbourhood.  Also, people tended to race by the front of our house so you never really knew.  Here, the driving is slower on our street and there is the big greenspace and pond right across the street from us.  Three kids were playing across the street yesterday so we released the boys.  They had a blast playing and visiting their new friends all day.  New to us and new to them.
• Figuring out where we will shop.  One thing that has been impressed upon us at recent events (like the Church Planting Congress in Calgary last November, and at two pastor’s retreats I have been on this year) is the value of doing life in your local community.  There are lots of nearby grocery store options, but we need to pick one and stick with it, developing relationships with the employees along the way.  We need to be “regulars”.  They need to know our “usual”.  From that comes friendship, relationship and opportunity for the Gospel to begin to shine through.
• Organization – as we unpack, things are going in new places.  We get a do-over in terms of organization.  We are rethinking where things go in the kitchen, and we are looking at our garage as a chance to implement good sturdy shelves and keep things in places.  I’ve been eyeing my toolboxes and wondering how many things would be better to hang than to stuff, so I can find them again.

I am amazed at myself at how intentionally living is spurring me to do things I could not do before.  For example, I am generally horrible at remembering names.  Since we’ve arrived, I remember Jeff, our appliance sales guy at Future Shop, who hasn’t been to church in 10 years and had a bad experience, and has a girlfriend of 2 years.  I remember Kris and Karla, the parents of  two our boys’ friends, 8 and 5.  I remember (a little more vaguely) Robin and his wife (Christie I think?  Haven’t met her yet), who attend church at the Link, and he is building one side of our fence (our neighbour hired him).  Their sons are 5 and 2.  There’s My neighbour to the left, Dave, and our neigbour who hasn’t moved in yet that I have met, to our right, Wayne.  Then his neigbour to the right I just met today: Shane, Karen, and their three: a girl of 8, and two boys 5 and 3.  Across the street, I haven’t met the adults officially, but their son who is 8 is over again right now to get Dylan.

So now the prayers begin on how to show Jesus to my neighbours who don’t know Him and to team up with my neigbours who do.  Please begin praying for these neighbours and that we have a chance to share our hope with them.

In this particular chapter of David’s life, he decides to number Israel. He wants to hold a census. His own advisors know this is wrong, but he goes ahead anyway. This doesn’t sound like a horrible thing to do, but at the time God had been very clear that he would make Israel prosper and be their strength. He had proven to his chosen people over and over again that God could be trusted to make them prosper. David’s census was a demonstration that he didn’t trust God in that moment. He needed to know how strong Israel was himself instead of trusting in God’s strength.

You can find this story in 1 Chronicles 21. What I found most beautiful about this story was the ending – God sends punishment for David’s sin. David is already in mourning over having done wrong, and he has an encounter with the angel from God who is carrying out the punishment. He throws himself at the angel’s feet and asks what can he do to take away the punishment on Israel for his own sin. Then God uses this moment to plant in David the dream of building a glorious temple for God.

David’s heart is full of repentance, and God forgives him. God in His forgiveness grants him a vision of doing a great thing – building a permanent home for Israel to worship God in. This home would be for all time – though it has been thrown down several times, God has promised it will be rebuilt. We look forward to that day.

Forgiveness is likewise promised by God. God will always forgive when we are truly sorry. So many people get wrapped up in God’s justice and get angry at God for not forgiving. Or they get wrapped up in self-pity and refuse to face God again. But God is waiting, waiting to forgive. He takes delight in us turning to him with soft hearts, willing to listen and change when we have done wrong. It is then that he can take us in his arms and comfort us, and sometimes he will even give us gifts like the one he gave to David – a dream of doing something great for God. Let’s soften our hearts today. Let’s not stay wrapped up in our anger or our hurt. Let’s go to God today and experience his love. Let’s pray.

Preached at Community of Hope Church on May 2.

Short summary: The way people think is shifting from postmoderism to pseudomodernism.  This shift is impacting our lives as we adapt to technology uncritically and fail to measure our thinking by the Bible.