Licensure is the “bar exam” for the pastoral profession.  Some denominations have more rigorous methods, some have less.  The Grace Brethren are on the more side.

Last month I wrote an 8 hour exam with around 80 questions, all short answer.  They were all based upon theological concepts with one five question set of historical questions.  The only resource  I was permitted to use during the exam was an unmarked Bible.  I did not finish  - three questions were not even answered.

Yesterday was the second part.  I had to sit in front of a panel of 5 pastors who then asked me questions based upon my answers, to expand on answers they deemed incomplete and demonstrate my ability to communicate both orally and in written form my theology.

They told me before they began that 50% of those who sit the exam are asked to retake it later after further study.

I passed.

This gives me a license to practice as a minister of the Grace Brethren Fellowship.  Once my church signs off on it, anyway.  It is a huge step.  They do have one further step – Ordination happens after practicing as a pastor for 3 years.  So I’ll come back to this in 3 years.  I am told that Ordination is less about what you know and more about “what would you do if…”

So, now I have passed church planter’s assessment, and now I have passed licensure.  I have formally met the standards that were asked of me to become a church planter for the Grace Brethren.  Its funny, but I don’t feel much relief.  I think that actually being a pastor is much more spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally demanding than the tests I have passed.  God holds me to a much higher standard than any exam.  I don’t feel worthy of the calling He has given me, but lucky for me, He will accomplish His will no matter how inadequate I am.  And that gives me a great deal of comfort, more than meeting human standards.

Cheers.

Matt Sweetman provides a list of what he thinks he did wrong in the first 6 months before launch.  I plan to heed those warnings.

8 Mistakes in the First 6 Months of Planting

I dropped off our breast pump and some extra diapers with Cheryl today at the BC Women’s Hospital.  Just in time… they were considering transferring them out to Surrey tomorrow. I have such brilliant timing.

She was telling me of a conversation with a lady in there with her new daughter, and how that woman was telling her she doesn’t go to church, has a vague sense of something holy and eternal but very little curiousity beyond that.  Digging deeper, she discovered that the woman was the daughter of a single Mom, and when they went to church when she was young, she was treated poorly because she “didn’t have a Daddy” – both by the other children and by adults in the church.  Subsequently, her mother continued to send her to Sunday school but ceased to go herself because of the people at church looking down on her.  Now, she has much the same desire – she knows her child needs to be instructed spiritually but knows she can’t do it, so she wants to send her to Sunday School – of course, her daughter will value it just as much or little as she does as long as her mother models its lack of importance in her life.

She is not the first person to tell us a story like this.  It is a story that has been repeated so much I seriously question what the heck was up with Christians 20 years ago.  It makes me wonder how much of the spiritual apathy that we are reaping today is the tragic result of thousands upon thousands of people who desperately needed the love of Jesus demonstrated by his body, but were soured. By what?  By  judgemental, sour, unloving people who were sitting in their pews and tsk-tsking the fruits of the “free love 60’s”.  In the meantime, the children of those Hippies, who only had the vaguest sense of church as something important but their parents lumped it into their rebellion, tried to come back to church but were turned away at the door because of sins that they may have not even been aware were sins.

What a disgusting mess we are in!  We are now facing two generations of adults whose experiences with church have been that of judgement and shame.  When Cheryl told me how lucky I was that I was saved in a church that showed real love for each other and the lost, and every church we have ever gone to had done that as best they could, I keep thinking that this is how most churches are.  But they aren’t are they?

I’ve just been working in the last few days on an application for a church planter’s assessment.  In one of the questions they as what makes me so sure that I am called to be a church planter.  Well, this sense of offense, of righteous anger, that so many churches are now continuing this sad trend and people are being driven away from the loving arms of Christ by people who expect the world to REPENT! and be done with sin.  I want to be a part of creating a new body, a body of renewal, that demonstrates this love in such a loud, brash, overwhelming manner to her community that people, even atheists, stand up and point and say, “Now THAT’S what a church should look like!”

It’s a lofty goal.  And if it were simply up to me, I would probably fail.  But I trust that God is in this enterprise, and his will, will be done.

God continues to provide us with opportunity to grow, but in terms of direct preparation, not much is happening right now with all the other events swirling around us.

We are beginning the wrap-up of our Awana year and that has been an incredible experience.  I think I can safely say that both of us have grown to love the program itself and how it teaches our kids key spiritual disciplines alongside building a foundation for their faith and heart for evangelism.  I fully expect to see great things next year with all our leaders having a year under their belts and feeling comfortable, and kids returning understanding what is being asked of them, and even more intently reaching out to their friends and neighbours.  Shane Schneider’s leadership has grown so much in the last year, and we think he and his wife Laurie will take Awana to a whole other place next year.

Last Monday I had the opportunity to meet with a young man named Seth (follow the link to his Facebook group), who has been burdened with a heart for church planting.  He is currently touring Canada, connecting with churches and organizations who are seeing God move in this fashion, and seeking where God would have him serve.  We are praying for him to find his place (although it would be REALLY cool if he found his way back to us to join our team!)

Philip has had me organizing some things related to he Great Canadian Adventure here in Surrey.  We will be having fifty people from two churches in the USA come up in two short weeks from now, for a week of service and love on our community.  I have been working on arranging a couple of Senior’s Appreciation events at nursing homes, and I will also be organizing the service teams to do yardwork in a couple of target neighbourhoods.  There is much much more in store for that week.  But this is all run-up for me, because once that is over with, I will be working on plans for the 2010 Great Canadian Adventure, to Medicine Hat!  Stay tuned for more on that, and how you can join us for a week of foundation-building in Medicine Hat!

I’ve been truly blessed with my service in our Discovery class on Sunday mornings.  I am taking a family through a study of the Gospel of John and have been so excited to watch their excitement to learn about Jesus and the Bible and what it means to follow Christ.  We had them over for a barbeque on Thursday night, and found out that she is a fantastic singer and he play guitar!  They may have thought we were joking about guitar lessons but we’re pretty serious!  Last Sunday we were talking about what baptism looks like at our church, and I told them about the baptistry at Sunshine Ridge we have used the last couple of times.  They were thinking something much more literal, and told me they wanted to be baptized in the ocean!  Given our leanings toward practicing as closely to New Testament as possible, I think they will fit right in with us!

So now you are pretty close to up-to-date.  We will have our next newsletter out in a few days so stay tuned, and please keep us in your prayers!

I received a newsletter from Forge Canada today, and it had an interview with Karen Wilk, the leader of the River Community Church in Edmonton.  She talks about how they started as a church plant, and how they moved into a neighbourhood as 5 families with the intent of serving the community and seeing a church rise out of the people they grew in relationship with.  Take a read.

In visiting all these communities, we did repeatedly see some patterns.  Since the communities are all growing like gangbusters, we have definitely seen the truth of how new city planning leaves little room for churches.  When people say that the church is being marginalized, it truly is.  This was especially striking in Lethbridge but was evident everywhere – churches are being built on the fringes of cities, in the middle of farm areas.  Because city planners now make no room for them in the designs of new neighbourhoods.  New neighbourhoods are devoid of spiritual hubs, deliberately so.  It used to be that open lots would be left along the main thoroughfares because that was the lowest land value – no more.

The question then becomes, do you make an effort to focus on communities in older areas of town?  Two strikes against that – first, there are older churches there usually.  They may not be effective anymore (and that is a legitimate concern) but there is always hope for renewal.  Second, the people there have probably been in the community longer, have more connections and established social networks, which means making inroads is more difficult – more like a rural setting.

But, the new neighbourhoods – the ones in many cases still under construction – what about them?  They have nothing – no churches, perhaps except for Mormon churches – I think when an organization can just approach the city at the planning stage and say, “We have 3 million dollars and want a church in your new subdivision.”  Money makes it happen – but congregational church models like ours have to rely on building community first before building a building, which means by the time there are people there, the lots are all gone or increased in price because the neighbourhood has filled out.

The plus side about focusing on these new subdivisions is that there are few churches positioned to reach them, and the people there are generally newer to the community, have fewer social connections and are looking to build new relationships.  That makes them uniquely available to outreach efforts.

What occurred to us as we drove through a few of these was a mix of what Nathan Bryant told me when I visited him before Community of Hope launched, and what Philip has taught us about establishing a church culture.  Let me explain.

Nathan when I was visiting, was living out an experiment he said he found in a book called “The Connecting Church” by Randy Frazee (on my wishlist, by the way).  His premise is that if you have one planting family move into an unchurched neibourhood, their efforts will not yeild much fruit because there is an element of outsider in play.  They are the “religious folks” and are “different” so they are discounted and ignored.  Yet, if more than one family moves in at the same time, to the same local area, then they can form a network and begin to reach their neighbours as a team.  Now, there are more than one family working together to reach their neighbours, and they aren’t “odd” there are others too, and they can’t be set aside.   Also more touches relationally lead to more opportunities.  So there is that.

What Philip taught us about Community of Hope is that the core team is important because it forms the “culture”of the church.  In other churches, they try to move towards the type of structure we have, but it is met with resistance.  For example, small groups are rarely more than an afterthought, only participated in by a small percentage of the congregation.  Sharing meals together is a rarity in most churches in my experience, but in Community of Hope it happens every week.  When our core team forms a culture, then people coming in accept that culture as normal and integrate.

How do these two ideas synthesize?  Well, what if our core team are some of the first people into a new development?  What if our houses are some of the first ones on the street?  What if we adopt the idea of being the unofficial “welcoming committee” in our neighbourhood?  Every new arrival is self-evident – the house is built.  We don’t have to guess about when someone new is moving in.  We can serve them, helping get settled.  We can invite them to barbeques, invite their kids over while the parents get things in order, begin to create a culture of community and relationship right there on our street!  People might find it odd, but if that is what they get from several families as they arrive, then it must be accepted as the “norm” in this neighbourhood.  As others come, they do the same to them – and so on.  It is like transforming your community, except there wasn’t anything there to begin with so it is in fact easier.  And as these relationships grow and bloom, doors open to sharing the Gospel.

One objection to this strategy could be, “but new homes are expensive!”  Ah, but that is if you are thinking about doing this in Surrey!  It is different out here!  My cousins moved to Calgary about 8 or 9 years ago.  They told me that they were havin a house built for them.  I thought, “Man!  My cousin’s job must pay really well!”  They told me that in fact it was cheaper to buy land and build than it was to buy on the resale market!  Of course that was a while ago, but we took a boo at a couple of show homes, and that still seems to be the case.  A typical mid-scale development in Spruce Grove was priced around $350k, including lot, taxes in.  That’s a 1800 square foot house, not including another 700 square feet in the basement (which they will build out to suit for a bit more or you can do it yourself).  Other communities are even cheaper.  Given the markets and the slowness of the oilpatch right now, I almost expect to see more comedowns in price, making it even more affordable.

Having said all this, I am just putting this out there as an idea.  We don’t know who’s coming with us yet, or what their financial picture will look like.  There are lots more to discuss, but it’s a different idea, and one that sounds like it could be effective.

We finished visiting all the communities we wanted to Wednesday afternoon. The weather out here has been cold – below normal for the month of March. Hence, we didn’t spend as much time “on the ground” as we originally planned. However, thanks to many hands both likely and unlikely, I believe we saw what we needed to see.

We tried to reschedule our stay at my sister’s place in Edmonton a day early since things were progressing so quickly, but then I learned why she had not been responding – she has had the flu for a week. When I finally learned what was going on, she was staying at my Mom’s place because she couldn’t even watch her 2 year old daughter she was so sick. She is in good hands over there though. My Mom is a pretty good nurse when it comes to colds and flu.

So, the backup plan was instead of staying overnight in the Edmonton area, we hightailed it back to Red Deer – which was only an hour and a half south anyway. That’s another neat thing about Alberta – everything is pretty close.

On the way south after seeing Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, we stopped for dinner at White Spot! Heh. They’ve even expanded out here. We prayed and looked at the material we had for the top two, and God brought us to a consensus. The deciding factors were definitely not on our list before we left so this trip was absolutely worth it.

So that was the good news. The bad news…

Cheryl was grateful that we would have another extra day to rest up as she was getting uncomfortable in the long rides. Being at her parents’ place that helped too. So we visited her grandmother yesterday afternoon and had a great dinner of Roast Buffalo(!) and went to bed, planning to leave today.

You might ask, “What is Shane doing up at 4am posting a blog entry?”  The answer would be Cheryl and her youngest brother Sasha waking up at 4am (Mountain) and throwing up into buckets.  Now they are both occupying different couches with buckets beside their heads and not feeling at all well.

So now the challenge, in addition to about 30 total centimeters of snow that has fallen on us since we got out here (don’t know if more fell last night or not – I haven’t checked), we have the challenge of waiting for this sickness to pass.  Which puts us…

Right back on schedule.  If we leave tomorrow morning, that is what we planned all along.

In our heart we may have planned this trip, but the Lord has definitely determined our steps! (Proverbs 16:9)

Finished with a look at High River and Okotoks yesterday. Shockingly, we saw more appeal in the suburbs of Calgary than with Lethbridge which surprised even me!

Something I didn’t mention before about the Hat. Didn’t see any Thai food there, but on the way out of town there was a little village called Bow Island. What’s right there on the main drag? A restaurant called “Bow Thai”! Sweet!

Anyway, back on subject. The waiter, Ryan at the Boston Pizza in High River turned out to be one of the most informative… informants we have encountered so far. He kept coming back with more info for us. Once he came back to tell us about the hospital… and for some reason brought up the fact that it includes a psych ward. Two possibilities there – 1) he thought we needed medication; 2) God told him to tell us because Cheryl’s a psychiatric nurse. I am choosing to believe the latter.

Here’s a video update:

We quite like High River, but not sure about the need there.  The real trick about this trip is separating our own emotions from the will of God.  They could be the same, but they might not be.

We got out of Kamloops in record time (due to a restless infant and a dog with a full bladder), and were ahead of schedule by the time we finished breakfast in Revelstoke.  But then a new challenge arose…

As it is distinctly possible that this blog could see search engine results for people googling terms like “Church Planting”, “Church Plant”, “Canada” and even “Western Canada”, I thought I would put up a link to my finished graduating essay, where I explore issues related to church planting and growth in resort communities, as a distinct class of church planting setting/culture.

Being in close proximity to Whistler, and hearing that in that village of 8000 permanent residents there were only 3 struggling churches (and one of them was a weird hybrid of Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans in the ame building), I wanted to study why that was.  What made resort communities so resistant to church planting and growth?

The abstract for the paper is this:

Church planting in the resort communities of Western Canada, with particular respect to the village of Whistler British Columbia and Canmore, Alberta face peculiar challenges. These communities share many characteristics of both typical urban and typical rural communities in their regions, but also share certain characteristics which are common between them. These create a unique planting context that is shared with other communities founded or experiencing growth through the expansion of the local tourism industry. Viewing the reported challenges and successes of local pastors provides some insight into what prospective church planters must prepare to face if they choose to pursue their vocation in such communities.

You can read the whole paper on my other blog, Confessions of a Shiftless Mind. I found the process of writing it to be really useful to my development as a one-day church planter, teaching me much about the realities of church planting, and giving me an opportunity to read a lot of books on church planting.

The paper ran about 40 pages, including title pages, contents, bibliography.  I switched the footnotes to endnotes for ease of use online.