Thank you for journeying with us through the process of planting a church on faith.  God has proven incredibly faithful to us through our journey, and we really marvel at how He has shown himself not just able, not just willing, but actively doing much much more than we could ask or imagine.  I hope your faith has been built up by journeying with us.

Oliver continues to blog sporadically on theological and personal tidbits at www.oliverinthehat.com so if you are into debate and discussion, that’s the place to go.  Peace!

I wanted to let you all know that our core team is growing!  Since the arrival of the Blairs, things have been happening.  If I can look ahead by a few weeks, to the arrival of the Greenhows and Megan Kendall in May, we have currently 11 believers who want to see this church move forward!  We also have 5 more adults currently in connection with the Blairs who may wind up joining us.  Further there are a couple of other families who we have been in contact with who we are currently growing relationships with.

Join us in praising God for this work that is forming!  Please pray for us as we will be switching formats to move to a Sunday night meeting at the Southview Church of God.  They have graciously opened their doors to us to give us a chance to begin to hold non-public services.  We hope to launch into this next phase of the church plant on May 15th.

We were discussing tonight what that looks like, what challenges it for us right now.  Certain things that I am dealing with sprang quickly to mind.  I got discouraged because I didn’t follow directions, and I checked in on business at home.  I found out there are some issues waiting for me when I get back, and it just took the wind out of my sails.

I began to think about what it means to walk with God.  I thought about how when you fail, it is you who fails.  Failures weigh me down because I fail a lot.  Failures to keep myself from sin, failures at work, failures in my home life.  They are everywhere.  And I can only blame myself.

Yet, when something goes right, as Christians we give God the glory.  It is not us who succeed, lest pride overtake us.  It is God, to His glory.  So we give all the credit away, in humility, but take all the blame upon ourselves.

This is a recipe for disaster.

But the message of this retreat is the truth of who we are in Jesus.  Because of His love for us, because of His sacrifice for us, because of His cleansing of us of our sins, we are wholly clean, and loved without end.  We are loved by God, and there is nothing we can do about it.

It is this miracle, this unconditional relationship that changes everything and makes the first two concepts irrelevant.  I can blame myself for all my failures, but to God, none of that matters.  I can fail at everything – absolutely everything in life, but I can rest in the love of God for me that doesn’t care about those things that I am letting devastate me.  I am perfect in the Father’s eyes because Jesus has made me white as snow.

This is a rich truth.  I am grateful to God for getting me here at this time.

Ephesians 3:20 always reminds me that our God is able to do more than we could ask or imagine.  Yet, I need this constantly reinforced.  I need to be reminded, “Dream bigger!”  The events of the last month have been a testimony to this truth.

I would like you to meet Bart and Elizabeth Blair.  They have been integral parts of the team at Grace Community Church in Mississauga for 9 years.  Bart came on as the worship leader at the first Grace Brethren Church in Canada 6 months after they launched.  In many ways he has grown with them, but before he even came to them he came with a background in music and the arts.  He has a degree in music from the University of Texas and spent several years in children’s theatre before he found his way to Canada.  His incredible giftings and passion for leading well have been blessed as he has grown a stellar worship team at Grace.

Together with his wife Elizabeth, they have three children: Sarah-Lynn, Silas and Ephraim.  Elizabeth works in the mortgage field, (which complements my real estate business well) and has a passion for touching people’s lives with the love of Jesus.  She has been a part of many different outreach ministries at Grace.

The story of how God moved them to begin their journey to Medicine Hat is fascinating, but I can’t tell it nearly as well as they can.  Check out Bart’s Blog for their account of God’s calling them.

From our side, we had a hint dropped to us that they were thinking about Medicine Hat at the beginning of August, but obviously they needed a lot of answers – from God and from others with wisdom and discernment to be sure this was God’s will.  They also needed to see for themselves what Medicine Hat is like.  From a distance, it seems like a tiny town in the remotest part of the prairies (especially relative to Toronto, one of the largest cities in the world!)  They planned to visit us for 4 days towards the end of August.  We had an amazing time of hearing their heart, where they felt God was taking them, and in turn sharing what caused us to be moved of God to Medicine Hat and why we are in love with this city.

Finally, a week after they left, we got word: they were coming!  Wow!  They are coming on faith – they both have good careers, their children have good friends, but now they are stepping out as a family for God.  They come with no promise of income, no guarantees, but they come because God has called and they have said, “Here I am!”  They still need to sell their home and transition out here.  We expect them to arrive around Christmas time (what a Christmas gift!)  Suddenly we have two people passionate for the Lord, desiring to see a new church birthed here in Medicine Hat, connected with our fellowship, gifted and experienced in ways that we couldn’t imagine!

We’ve been waiting with bated breath to tell you about this but to be fair to everyone in their lives, we needed to let them make the announcement in their way.  But now we can celebrate with you all!  Thank you for your prayer and keep praying!  If God can do this, what is next to come?

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.