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.

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!

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.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2006 that people drive 79 percent more miles than they did in 1982 while roadways have only increased 3 percent, creating a frustrated commuter society living in permanent gridlock.1 People get home late in the evening, open their garage, and go right inside. Getting to know your neighbors has almost become a hassle.

Despite my own frustration in this area, I believe my wife is correct (of course). We should know our neighbors. We may have to schedule time with them, take the initiative, or simply make an effort to say hello. Christ calls us to be good neighbors. And this call extends beyond our own subdivisions, condos, and apartments. It is a call to the world. Our neighbors will never see
Christ exemplified in our lives unless we show them.

Read Essential Church.  It’s that good.  I’m only on page 50.

The whole week was a tremendous effort.  Everyone contributed in many ways.  I come away from this week thinking that this shouldn’t be a summer only thing.  We need to be doing this more often.  At the same time though, I realize that there was a massive drain of energy as well.  I mean, I was gone from home every evening this week.  It meant tons of things in my family’s life were put on hold to do this.  As I mentioned before, I was physically, emotionally and spiritually drained.  How do you balance this thing called the Christian life?  How do you love on people and demonstrate in real ways God’s love without burning up your candle and leaving behind ashes?  That’s some thing I will be wrestling with for a while.

Sunday will be exciting too, to see if there are fruits of our labour that walk through the doors at 10am.  If there aren’t, I won’t be disappointed though.  I know that the Spirit works at his own pace, and there will be people who were genuinely touched by us this week, but need time to reorganize their own thoughts about Christianity and what that means to them.  If you’ve lived your life believing that Christians are hypocritical jerks who judge and hate (as we are coloured too often in popular culture), but then encounter genuine love and compassion, and receive gifts with no strings, it would take time to deal with and sort out where the lies end and truth begins.  Every touch like this that happens brings the harvest closer to us.  It’s definitely fun to watch.

The Open House is advertised as “A missional community walking in a Jesus direction”.  From everything I have read about missional churches and the theology behind them, I am totally in agreement with much of their understanding of the purpose of a church body.  The flavour of missional churches that leans in an emergent direction becomes dischordant in my mind though, because it seems to lean too heavily on a concept of postmodernism that doesn’t really exist much.

I read the other day an author that claims that postmodernism doesn’t really exist.  That the classic anarchic view of young people or whoever, the rejection of absolutes does not exist.  That if you drill down any postmodern, you will find someone who is modern, and recognizes the necessity of modernity.  I think that could be true.  The stereotypical community of emergents as a fellowship body, meeting casually in bars or coffeeshops, talking about God and ancient forms of devotion doesn’t go anywhere.  It relies on the personality of the leader to hold it together because there is no call for loyalty or commitment from its constituent members.  Each member is ultimately self-directed in their own personal quest for deity, and only incidentally fellowships.

What this results in is a community that is temporary and transient.  It comes and goes in wisps.  It relies on flighty noncommital people to dedicate themselves to themselves and in so doing, a community.  Except, I have to think that the Bible teaches the opposite.  It teaches commitment to the body of Christ first, and your person second.  “Love the Lord your God with all you heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your stength, and love your neighbour as yourself.“  Where does the self come?  Last.

So when I see an emerging church with suspended services, I am not surprised.  I wish human nature wasn’t what it is, but that and a dollar will buy you a can of Coke.  I am convinced that one of the factors of a successful church is eliciting real concrete commitment – to doctrine, to fellowship, to service, to God, and to one another.  What comes of that commitment is growth in yourself.  Personal growth is the result of commitment – it can’t be sought for its own sake, and it should never come before anything else.

Now, to figure out how to communicate that to people who disagree.

Heh.  Still working on that.