Having said all this, there are in general phases that all church plants go through.  In the readings that I have done on others and in the two church plants I have participated in, these phases all exist.  I identified them in my first post in this series, our timeline.  The first phase I have identified is Community Integration.

In my mind this phase is one that is most likely to be skipped, but it is also the one that must not be skipped.  To define this phase I would say that it is the process of exploring your context, connecting to existing local resources and networking with other pastors and church planters in the area.  If you are planting in a city in which you already reside and have resided in for some time, it may be possible to shorten this period because you already know the answers to who you need to talk to but it does not make the process any less important.

Exploring your context means that you need to discover and understand the community in which you are planting.  This involves taking advantage of demographic studies.  But it also means much more.  Demographics are an ok place to start.  Are there predominantly blue collar families or white collar families?  Are two income families the norm or one income families?  Do people in general commute to work or do they work locally?  Or do they work out of town?  What education levels are most common?  If you can obtain a spiritual profile of the area that would also be exceedingly useful, as it will help to determine special challenges that you may face – like large communities of Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or in more urban centers, pockets of Muslims, Buddhists, or even Atheists might require special preparation to reach into.

Here in Medicine Hat, we discovered that

most in our target community were or behaved in a “blue collar” way.  There are large numbers of men who work out of town here in the oil and gas industries, as well as a large number of farmers who live in town but operate farms or ranches in the surrounding countryside.  This has a number of impacts on the way we have approached people.  Many families resemble single parent families for large stretches of time as the men work out of town for days and weeks at a time.  To compensate for their absence many families spend a lot of money on entertainment, pastimes, and travelling.  The times that they are together are often filled not with home time but travel time because the men struggle to manage a life devoid of family responsibilities in camps at work, then overwhelmed with family in their off-time.  Vacations to the warm south are frequent in the winter, and summers are filled with camping trips, fishing trips, and travel to visit family.  Significant involvement in sports programs are common.  Overscheduling is a frequent pattern in people’s lives, despite the relative absence of a commuter culture. 

Religious patterns in the city are unique.  There are a lot of denominations represented here, perhaps a wider diversity than I have seen in cities of similar size.  Having said that, there are major players that contribute to an interesting mosaic.  Like most regions of Canada, there is a sizeable population of Roman Catholics.  Two huge churches anchor the city.  The LDS also have two large churches in the city, anchoring the north and south sides.  During World War II internment camps were set up in the area for German immigrants, which followed a general pattern of German farming settlement in the area.  A a result there are around 7 Lutheran churches in the city.  Amongst evangelical churches here, there is the local megachurch, Hillcrest, which has over 1000 people on a Sunday.  Several other players have significantly sized congregations including a Baptist, a couple of Pentecostal churches, and the daughter church of Hillcrest, The Link.  Sadly, on the Evangelical side there is a history of church splits that have created a lot of woundedness and there is a large group of “nonpracticing Christians” who are loosely to not connected to any church body.

Initially we were most interested in pursuing those who are spiritually seeking God but not connected to existing churches, and to also reach out to those who are new to the city and looking for connection.  This has remained the case, although we perhaps overestimated the numbers of people who were “new” to the city.  Demographically, the city has grown by 1000 people per year for the last 25 years on average.  This is a sizeable rate of growth.  However, as we have explored relationships we have discovered that this growth rate has been largely made up of young people who left the city after high school and returned after marrying to raise their families.  This means that even the people who are “new” in fact already have many family and friend connections that fill up relational voids and in many cases have connections to existing churches whether they actually attend or not.  These initial perceptions helped us to decide what directions to take our efforts to raise awareness for what we are doing and who we desire to be as a church community.

Part of the process of community integration also involved connecting to local resources.  We found hosting a short term mission team of around 30 people early in the process was a great assistance to this as it got us engaged with existing resources, gave us something to offer, and allowed us to do some community surveys door-to-door to answer questions that we had in our minds that were not answered by existing census data.  We also took  the step of joining a local ministerium and demonstrating our passion not to “be a better church” but to be part of the team to reach those that are unreached in the city.  Supporting local inter-faith initiatives like the cross-denomination Good Friday service has been something of importance to us.  We have given back by serving other churches where we can and supporting christian schools that already exist.  This has helped us overcome some suspicion that was present in the early days and months of our arrival in the city.

Another important step in this phase included identifying and connecting with others who were trying to do what we are doing.  We were fortunate to be able to build a relationship with a church planting couple before we arrived, who launched in January of 2010.  Hearing their reports about what God was doing and also being able to talk with them as they faced some struggles and eventually had to fold helped us to learn so much more about what challenges we would face.  We also connected with a recent church planter, now pastor, of a 4 year old church plant.  Understanding what helped them to thrive and grow also taught us a lot.  A third type of leader we learned from and connected to was a couple of pastors of older churches who were in need of renewal.  Two churches which had lovely buildings but congregations that had dwindled into the 20′s and were in many ways trying to “replant” and we learned from them as well.  It was helpful to see different strategies play out and gave us much to learn.

Do not neglect this early time.  If we had any regrets about what we did to launch Grasslands Church, it would have been to spend more time in this phase, building relationships and investing in people’s lives.  One thing I haven’t talked about is how we chose where we would locate ourselves in the community and the deliberate steps we took to build relationships in our neighbourhood.  I’ll do that in a subsequent post as this has gotten really long.

Phase 1 – Community Integration.

Objectives – to integrate family into the city, identify and contextualize vision for new church, grow support network.

May 22, 2010 – Our family rolls into Medicine Hat, as sleet falls from the sky.  So much for the sunniest place in Canada.

June 2010 – Working on wrapping up training to start in Real Estate, transferring insurance, driver’s licenses, etc.

June 13-18 – Great Canadian Adventure.  Community Surveys and service projects with local organizations.

July 2010 – Travel to Ohio to participate in Fellowship’s National Conference.  Invaluable face time with leaders and supporters.  Added new prayer supporters.  Begin attending at the Link Church, a 4 year old church with similar values.

August 2010 – Finish Training, deal with major repair bill for van, launch Real Estate Career.  Also, meet my associate church planter, discover his calling.

September 2010 – Kids start school (first day ever – they had been homeschooled previously).  Start driving School bus for extra cash flow.  Join local ministerium to network with local pastors.

October 2010 – volunteer with Exchange Student Alpha program at the Link.

December 2010 – First listing ever!  Christmas trip to parents’ house.

Phase 2 – Pre-Launch

Objectives – form a launch team continue to gather support, cast vision, invite people into relationship.

January 2011 – transition out of school bussing and into real estate assistant role.  Associate church planter and family arrive in Medicine Hat.

January 8-11 – Participate in Northwest District Ministerium and Church Planter Assessment (added new prayer supporters)

January 31-Feb 2, 2011 – Southwest Pastor’s Retreat (added prayer supporters and a church to participate in Summer’s mission teams)

February, 2011 – Launch our first evangelistic Bible Study.  Invitations extended through various nontraditional means including craigslist and facebook.  Attenders come through craigslist ad.

February 28, 2011 – 1st Information Session.  Over 20 attend.  Form first core group, made up of us, the Blairs, and several new friends from the Info Session.

March 7-11 – Church Planter’s Boot Camp in Minneapolis with Bart.  Invaluable exercise.

March 25-30 – Northwest District Conference.  Added prayer supporters, visited potential financial supporters.

March 31 – 2nd Information Session.

May 2011 – 3 more core team members arrive from Surrey, BC

May 15 – Sunday Night Open meetings begin at Southview Church of God (Anderson)

May 16-18 – Northwest District Focus Retreat

May 31 – end employment as a realtor.  Begin temporary position at Census Canada.

July 12 – Cheryl begins work at the Hospital as a Nursing Educator.

July 16 – Couple from Evangelistic Bible Study accept Christ, renew their vows.

July 31-August 5 – Great Canadian Adventure (USA Mission Week)

August 14-18 – Trans-Canada Summit (First GBCanada National Conference, Canadian Mission Week)

August 28 – Begin another evangelistic bible study with 4 people.  First Sunday morning in the Galaxy Cinemas, Medicine Hat.

August 29 – Launch 2nd Community Group.

Phase 3 – Post-Launch

Objectives: to foster community, encourage commitment, and more towards true community creation (membership).

September 11, 2011 – CHURCH LAUNCH! 174 people in attendance.

September 2011 – numbers taper off from 174 to 115 to 76, by October average remains steady at 70 until the end of the year.

October 15 – Family Fun Day Connection Event. ~30 attend.

October 23 – 1st Lunch With Oliver (Initial Membership Lunch – leading to Bible Study and Membership Class)

October 30 – 1st Baptism Service – 5 Baptized!  3rd and 4th Evangelistic Bible Studies launched (in conjunction with Membership classes)

December 4 – 1st Baby Dedication.

December 24 – Christmas Eve Service at local restaurant.  Dec 25 Sunday morning service cancelled.

January 15, 2012 – Annual General Meeting/Vision 2012/3 more baptisms!

January 29 – launch of a new Evangelistic Bible Study, Discipleship class, and 2 new community groups!

That takes us pretty much up to the present.  We are excited to have 3 or 4 more in evangelistic Bible Studies and are about to celebrate our first crop of 17 members!  God has been so good to us.

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.

My question to you is this: what ideas can you think of that would be appropriate for such a period?  I am thinking something that either saves time or takes the pressure off parents rushing for school supplies, or something that might be fun for the kids who are dealing with the shock of classes and homework again, or maybe something school-related that blesses a school.  Ideas please!

In my first post, I talked about how it seems that we might have been getting it backwards.  In an effort to preserve perhaps the “holiness” of our churches, we have attempted to distance ourselves from people until they share our faith.  We don’t really want them with us until we know they are “saved” and then magically, they become perfect like us (snort, and if you actually believe that, I have a deal on some oceanfront property in Saskatchewan for you).  So it was fine to lead people to the Lord, but you didn’t really want to be around them until they were in the club.  It seems that this is being turned on its head now, with the new idea being welcoming people into your community, and as they get to see your faith lived out between you and the rest of the church (see John 13:35).  As they see, and begin to desire this love for themselves, they seek after the cause of this love (see 1 Peter 3:15).  This leads them to Christ, but in the context of community.

Some have even gone so far as to say it need not be normative that a person can point to a “moment in time” that they became saved.  In fact, many report this reality anyway – that they can’t recall a specific date where they came to believe, but they know they believe now – that they recognize their sin, they have repented of it before God and accepted Jesus’ death on the cross as having made them clean in the Father’s eyes – and brought them into the Family of God.

I think this view has a corollary – that we recognize that the process of discipleship – the process of becoming a fully committed follower of Jesus – is ongoing.  Everyone is somewhere on this continuum.  Some have surrendered more of their lives to Jesus’ lordship than others.  Some have not surrendered at all.  It is impossible for us as mere humans to know with certainty the state of anyone’s soul so we must keep our doors open as wide as possible that all may hear and take steps along their own personal continuum towards Jesus.

It occurs to me as a student of Church History that this reintroduces the problem that many people wrestled with in the past.  More than one Christian group was formed in an effort to be pure and holy (1 Peter 1:15-16) – the spotless bride of Christ (Eph. 5:27) that we are called to be.  What it appears I am advocating is a return to what was first advocated by Augustine – the idea of the church encompassing both the saved and the unsaved.  The difference is that I am not suggesting that the unsaved can in any way participate in the ordinances – they are for those with faith in Christ.  The challenge is, without omniscience, I can’t know for sure who is who so I am forced to rely on confession and admonition – advising people that these things (Baptism, the Lord’s Supper) are for believers so if you are not all there with respect to Jesus, His his sacrifice for you and His Lordship over you – then you need not participate.

Reaction?

Jon Acuff asks us what we think of Hallowe’en, and proposes one of three responses.  I have a fourth.

Hallowe’en looms like a black stain on the fall for many Christians.  It is a dark night, full of the connotations of paganism, spiritism, black magic and occultic practices.  In response, many churches have attempted to absent themselves from the holiday by creating “Harvest Festivals” or other activities where kids can approximate the Hallowe’en experience with “good” costumes, free candy, and fun games instead of the door-to-door “trick or treating” and scary decorations.

When our oldest was getting to the age where he might go trick-or-treating, we had to wrestle with this question a bit.  We wrestled even more when the church we belonged to had one of these “harvest fests”.  Now, as a family we have landed in a different place.  We have decided to participate in Hallowe’en.

Whoa!  There goes our prayer base!  No, please, hear my heart on this.  Hallowe’en is not the first pagan holiday that the Church has had to wrestle with.  I am sure you have seen at some point articles on the origins of Christmas and Easter.  I am sure you have at least heard of scholars who have attempted to figure out the “true” date of Christ’s birth and crucifixion, and while they may debate the exact dates, one thing they unanimously agree upon: Easter and Christmas are NOT them!  They are both pagan holidays that early Christians chose to sanctify, to bridge the gap between pagan culture and Christianity.  To them, it was not important the exact date of Christ’s birth, but it was important to celebrate it.  They took the holiday and its trappings (the Christmas Tree, the Yule Log, and so on) and reshaped the traditions to help tell the story of Christ.  Now, the world knows these dates as Christian holidays and give next to zero thought about their origins.  Christ is glorified throughout the world on these pagan holidays.

In distancing ourselves from Hallowe’en we are distancing ourselves from the very people we are trying to reach.  We are the “no fun” lights out houses on the street when everyone else is having fun.  We are the “stingy” Christians who won’t buy candy for kids.  Sure, we encourage non-Christian friends and neighbours to come to our “harvest fest” but really the appeal is small unless you happen to live in a city where the danger is greater due to crime or local practices.  In most communities, there simply isn’t a reason to absent ourselves.

What shocked me most when I began to think about this holiday, is it is unique.  It used to be Christmas was similar, in that people would go out caroling and sharing cider around fires.  The Christmas season used to be a much more community-oriented event.  Now, as consumerism has taken over much of the season, it is a time of stress and busyness, of catching planes to visit family (or get away from family and go to Disneyland or another warm destination) or driving frantically.  Hallowe’en however, is a day wrapped in the idea that everyone’s door is open, every neighbour smiles and chats, and parents of children stroll up and down their streets, watching their children have fun and striking up conversations with the people around them that they never see any other time of year.  The “my home is my castle” mentality is dismantled for a night.  Christians who desire to build relationships that can carry the message of Christ have a chance to get by the barriers of individualism and begin the process of building into people’s lives.  Why do we not see this as the greatest opportunity for evangelism that we will see for 364 days?

Having just declared an evangelism open season on Hallowe’en, I should add one more thing.   I do NOT see this as an opportunity to save children’s teeth and souls by replacing candy with Bible tracts.  My goodness, then instead of being known as the stick-in-the-muds who don’t celebrate Hallowe’en, we’d now be the people who ruin Hallowe’en for children!  No, what I mean is the greatest openness to the Gospel comes from relationship, and this night is the chance to start a whole slew of them.  Or improve on some.  Think about this: that atheist co-worker with kids you know: how likely would they be to come to an evangelistic Christmas play?  Not very.  How likely would they be to come to a Christian “Hallowe’en alternative”?  Even less.  How likely would they be to coming trick or treating with your family – just to hang out?  Then maybe plan to come back to your place to warm the kids up with some cocoa and relax?  Now that has appeal.

In reading Jon Acuff’s comment thread I happened across this anecdote of a truly brilliant, missional approach to Hallowe’en.  I dare you to try it out next year (or if you can get it together quick, tomorrow!)

What has become of salvation? The evangelical concept of salvation has been communicated so often to culture that it has become the butt of jokes: “have you started a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” “Have you made him your personal Lord and saviour?” Keyword: personal.

Maybe this emphasis on making an individual decision is a by-product of the individualistic self-centred flavour that western society has indulged in for the past 100 years or so. Maybe it isn’t what Jesus had in mind.

I notice that in the writings of a lot of missional thinkers (Halter and Stetzer spring to mind first as they are two I have read most recently), they talk about a reversal of the standard process of evangelism. Instead of the person staying on the outside of the church family until they accept Christ, then they join “the family”, they come, they participate, they integrate, and as a result they come to faith.

It seems to me that this rings true but think about this: they are not coming to a personal faith, they are joining a communal faith. If it sound a little communisty to you, remember monasticism is a Christian tradition that is 1800 years old, and even in protestantism, the Hutterites have been around for 400 years.

Does Scripture back this up? I will look at a few verses next time, but please, if you think of some verses that shed light on the question for or against this view, please share in the comments.

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?