To go back a couple of steps, let’s talk about Thursday night, March 26.

At this stage, we had just finished a visit to Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, and having talked to my sister and my mother in Edmonton by phone, discovered that our planned overnight at Dawn’s place was not going to happen.  It wasn’t a big deal – only 90 minutes south we knew we had a bed at Cheryl’s parent’s place in Red Deer.  We jumped on the highway south through Devon and that led us straight to… Leduc, and a White Spot for supper.  Kind of funny, when you realize that White Spot is a unique restaurant chain that is a household name in BC, but almost unknown in the rest of Canada.  The fact that we drove right to one of the very few that are not in BC… well it was comfortable.  I made one concession – I didn’t have their “Legendary Burger”.   When in Alberta, you have an Alberta steak.

We meant to stop for dinner, to digest in private the cities we had seen and ask God where our hearts were.  We only brought in two packets – Spruce Grove and Medicine Hat.  Looking back, these were the two we preferred from the start, but having reviewed all the options, we were more certain than ever it was between these two cities.

After sitting down, we both found our hands gravitating to the Medicine Hat material.  We tried to be fair and set up pros and cons for the two cities, but it was clear to us that barring an act of God, Medicine Hat was where we were being led.  There are many reasons, from the superficial to the miraculous.  I’ll start there.

When I began to set up this blog, I started surfing around other blogs to see if I could find others on similar journeys.  One of the first ones I found was Jason and Leigh Wilks’ blog, planters in Medicine Hat.  At that time, Cheryl hadjust begun to get interested in Medicine Hat, so on discovering that they were planting there, I immediately began to distance myself from the idea, as I did not see that it would be wise to jump into a town already being evangelized by gifted people with a heart for the Gospel.  However, it never left our radar and when it came time to plan this trip, we still wanted to stop there, so I thought who better to give an honest assessment of the Hat than two planters on the ground?  I contacted them and they graciously agreed to put two strangers up and give of their time – little did I realize how much of a sacrifice they would make for us!

When we reached Medicine Hat, we discovered (they didn’t really tell us) that they were in fact in the middle of a move!  They had their whole lives in boxes and were ready to move into a new house the following week.   Nevertheless, they ordered Chinese for us, from a lovely restaurant and we shared a meal together with Randi Short, their worship leader who moved all the way from Newfoundland to help them with their church launch, back in January.  In between getting to know them and their two sons, we felt completely at ease and connected with them very much on a heart level.

They told us of a city that is successful but changing.  Once one of the biggest cities for retirement, the demographics have been shifting as those retirees began to end their earthly journeys.  It had seen growth as the oil patch, desperate for workers, began to arrange to commute men and women from Medicine Hat by airplane all the way to Fort MacMurray.

Yet, there was still more.  The farming base and longstanding natural gas harvesting (one of the biggest gas fields in the world and the first in Canada was discovered under our feet) had been diversified as just outside of Medicine Hat, the largest centre for greenhouses had grown east of the Fraser Valley, where we are right now!  So cheap vegetables are another feature of the area.  In addition, there is a Goodyear plant in town, obviously the foundational brickworks are still in operation, and even in the surrounding towns there is work whose hub is Medicine Hat.  You can walk into any corner store in Canada and find “Spitz“, salted sunflower seeds – they are produced in Bow Island, just 20 minutes away.  Just north of town is Canadian Forces Base Suffield, one of the largest bases in Canada.  Medicine Hat serves as an important hub, with an extended influence.

The people there are passionate people.  They love their WHL team, the Medicine Hat Tigers (Vancouverites may be aware that this was Trevor Linden’s junior club!) – there is a waiting list of 8 years for seasons’ tickets.  They have a brand new arts centre, the “Esplanade” downtown.  They have a newly constructed recreational facility, complete with a lighthouse and waterslides, wavepool, and the requisite hockey rink all in one building!

Yet, the city is struggling spiritually.  They have one of the lowest ratio of evangelical churches to population in Alberta.  Many mainline denominations are withering away, and seem to have lost heart.  The new developments leave no room for new churches in them, leaving huge swathes of homes unreached.  Three Catholic parishes are merging into one from lack of leadership.  We have heard accounts of large churches with promise embroiled in church splits.  It will be a challenge to locate a place for Sunday meetings – Jason told us that the school board, if we seek space there, requires you to pay the janitorial staff for half a day just to unlock the doors for you.

Emotionally, their people there hurting.   Lifestyles of men leaving town for days at a time does nothing positive for their families.  Family violence is rife, as well as crack addiction as the random drug testing from the oil patch would pick up cannabis which remains in the bloodstream for 30 days, while crack comes and goes in a couple of days allowing them to “clean up” before heading back to work.   Driving through neighbourhood after neighbourhood, we could see the hearts of these people in their driveways, with huge material toys concealing the pain behind closed doors.

No city is without its challenges, but we are excited to be going.  We believe that we can begin to change the community, one heart at a time.  With God at our side, we can make a difference, and see people begin to turn away from the fruitless things of this world, and rely on Jesus and find new meaning in Him.  As I posted earlier, we are excited about the idea of attempting to build a new culture from scratch in a neighbourhood that is under construction – welcoming people and making the love of Christ known from a street’s very foundation and inviting people who move in, into that.  If the love and kindness we show to others becomes the “normal” then people will find it easier to adapt to it, rather than us having to go into a neighbourhood and transform a calcified and resistant fortress mentality so common to suburban life.

We invite you to join us.  Support us in prayer – subscribe to our monthly newsletter, on the right.  We also will need financial partners going forward, so please consider if God is calling you to contribute that way.  We also desire to go as  a team, so we are prayerful already that God would stir up people from anywhere – everywhere to journey with us to Medicine Hat to see God’s Kingdom grown in a fresh way.  We plan to move in May-June 2010.  Thanks again for all your love and support so far!

• Sunday we had a lady in the church let us know that they have relatives in Southern Alberta who have a Bed and Breakfast.  They have hosted church speakers and evangelists before, and she suggested we contact them for a place to stay as we investigate.
• Saturday night I stayed up far too late with an old friend, talking about life and our church planting dreams.  It is good to have people behind you.
• Speaking of good to have people behind you, I had an old forestry school friend join our prayer network this morning!  It feels like my heart for this calling grows two sizes every time someone unexpected joins our prayer network newsletter list. (By the way, if you haven’t signed up for it yet, it’s on the sidebar to the right.)
• One of my own private plans for the scouting trip was to seek God with a 5 day fast before we leave.  I mentioned that to a couple of close friends and they have courageously volunteered to join me in fasting and praying for God to reveal his plans to us on this trip.
• God’s got a number of challenges for me this week, and I am looking forward to meeting them all head on.  From leading an Awana Director’s meeting to meeting with some friends to deal with some issues, this week has some real experience in store for us both!

You might also ask, “Why not X or Y community?”  The reality is there are many more communities in Alberta where churches are needed.  Edmonton and Calgary metro areas are the most important, in everyone’s mind.  Paul didn’t go to the country to preach, he went to the cities.

There are several things to consider – one being our own expertise.  It takes a special kind of person to minister cross-culturally with a special gift set, and really neither Cheryl nor I are comfortable in urban culture.  We believe that God wants us to use our gifts in ways that just come out of us – who we are.  And we believe that part of our calling is to teach people that the place where they are at is the place where God calls them to fulfill the Great Commission.  We dream of equipping and discipling people to reach out to the place they are at – their neighbours, their co-workers, and make the gospel a part of the fabric of their lives so that they become the salt and light that God desires all of us to be.

So we have to ask ourselves, who are we?  Are we country folk?  Do we see ourselves as farmers, rural people?  In some ways I wish I was.   I know I am not though.  Do we see ourselves at home amongst the towers of steel and pavement?  Definitely not!  But there are lost people no matter where we look here in Canada – lost hockey moms, lost mechanics, lost truck drivers, lost schoolteachers.  We go to where they are, because they live all around us.  Because they need Jesus, and because we can’t ignore what God put in our hearts long ago.

I still remember long ago, just after I began to follow Christ at 16, I looked at the “missions bulletin board” at my little baptist church.  I admired those people who set aside their comfortable lives in North America to serve people and teach the Gospel.  But God was prompting me even then – “What about the lost right here at home?  They’re everywhere!”  Even when God was not first in my life, I found myself held back – wanting to “get to know my own backyard” before the rest of the world.  As a result, I have driven at one time or another, nearly every highway in BC and Alberta, and many many backroads as well.

I find this is also my passion when it comes to the Gospel – we, right here in Canada, need to hear the Gospel.  So many of us here have been deceived into thinking we know all there is to know about Jesus and about what it means to be Christian.  But we are blinded – perhaps by pride in our beautiful, peaceful lives and culture.  We all need to hear the radical story of God come down, painting a picture in his own blood of what it means to truly love, and saving the world along the way.

It is our hope and prayer that our church would be another extension of the vision of Grace Brethren Canada – to begin a movement of planting churches across Canada.  Even though we might not be called to places like downtown Edmonton or Calgary, or to places of need like Fort MacMurray or Grande Prairie, we hope to build a center that trains and equips people to go and plant in those places.  That Jesus would be preached in every corner of Alberta.  Not that the churches that are there aren’t trying… but that we need all hands on deck to accomplish this massive task that is bigger than any denomination, creed, movement or following.  We need more churches – more ecclesia, more local representations of the Body of Christ, everywhere so that everyone has a chance to accept his Lordship or reject it.

But the most important feedback I had was from my wife.  She said, “In my eyes, you became a pastor today.”

Nothing else matters.  If she believes in me and God is with me, I can do anything.

We heard there was a church planting couple hanging out with our church.  At the time we were attending Cedar Grove Baptist Church, a church of 1200-1400 people in North Surrey.  It’s easy to get lost in a big church like that, but I saw them around once or twice in the halls and at general meetings and such.  It seemed like every time I looked at the guy, Phil, he was looking at me and grinning.  I was thinking, “Who’s this guy grinning at me?” I finally decided that God, or something, wanted me to talk to him.

One sunny day in August, I caught up to him at the bike racks (seriously!)  I was just curious at that stage about what their plan was to plant a church.  I had no idea how one goes about planting a church at that stage.  He invited me out to their core team small group.  At that time, it consisted of themselves and two other couples.

I went home and asked Cheryl if she’d like to come.  She was fine with me going, but “I am NOT interested in planting a church!”

The meeting was great – the food was fantastic, and I got to see their “future logo”.  But I didn’t get a lot of questions answered.  Hardly any in fact.  Cheryl was still not interested in meeting with them at that stage.  I was interested enough in what they we doing, but didn’t know if I wanted to be involved.  I decided to just ask God to bring Cheryl around – I knew if she wasn’t interested then we would not be united and it would not be good or God-honoring.

It would not be until October, after Cheryl attended a worship conference, that she came to me and said, “I am thinking we should take Phil and Beth up on their dinner offer.”  We went over, and promptly switched roles, just like Cheryl said in her last post about how we always switch roles.  This time, it was she who was getting more and more excited as Phil and Beth filled us in on how they were called out to Surrey, and showed us a video about their journey.  For me, one of the biggest signs of God’s blessing on our decisions as a family is when we are united in spirit over it.  That was crystal clear.  By the end of the evening, we did tell them we would be happy to help them plant in Newton.

One of the most exciting things about the new church plant was that it was part of a larger vision.  They had originally come to Canada to see a movement of new churches begun across the country.  Their vision was to have a church in every major city in Canada by 2020.  This was a church with a purpose – not just to see people in the neighbourhood come to know Jesus, but to see new churches created and growing in every part of the country.

It would be a month later when we looked at our finances and discussed education.  I had gone to Seminary back in 1999, pursuing a Master’s in Church History.  Now that we were involved in a church plant, I felt like I should be learning more about how they work.  I also wanted to finish that degree, because I hated that I  left it unfinished.  I re-enrolled, but this time into a different program.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t take courses on church planting like I wanted to – but on the other hand, I was able to take a whole series on christian leadership which were amazing.  I learned so much about myself during those classes.  One aspect of the course was that I needed to be mentored.  Mentoring was a need I had been feeling for a number of months, and I had already asked Phil if he would be my mentor with regards to my Christian walk and development.  He had agreed.

In the new year of 2007, we sat down and had a discussion about where our family was going.  My heart had been changed from my original days in 1999 at Seminary.  I recalled at that time, my Grandparents and other relatives, when I told them I was at a Seminary, they said, “Oh, you’re going to be a pastor?”  I practically yelled in response, “No!”  But now, I was looking at where life had led me, and wondering if maybe that really was what God wanted of me all along.  Cheryl had a hard time conceiving of herself as a pastor’s wife, and I understood that, but my proposal was up until now, we had been letting life just happen to us.  I wanted us as a family to set a course, a long-term course, and work towards that.  She agreed with that.  The goal we set was to prepare ourselves to be in leadership in another church plant by 2010.  It was a lofty goal, but we thought if God had a better plan for us he would make it known.  In the meantime, it would give us a chance to orient our lives and move with purpose, measuring our time and our investment based upon our goal.

So now that is where we are.  Community of Hope has given us a vision not just for our own lives, but for a larger picture – a picture that spans across the country.  When we thought about where we would like to plant a church, my lingering affection for the province of Alberta gave it a focus.  It also helped that at Christmas 2007 we went to Edmonton to visit my family, and the drive through the snowcapped mountains to the cold prairies awakened in Cheryl a vision of herself there and overcame her previous fears of the cold and snow.  This was so effective in fact that when we returned from Christmas, Cheryl’s accounts of the trip alongside my continued affirmation of Alberta as a great place to live led to her family uprooting from their lives spent entirely in the Vancouver area, to move to Red Deer, AB.  So we know that is where we are being called to plant, but not yet.  We have a lot of growing and developing as leaders and as a family before we go.  What is here is a chronicle of that journey.