A Family’s Journey from Suburban Vancouverites to Albertan Church Planters
7 May
Ran across this youtube from Medicine Hat’s News. It is about their school system, and how they need more.
I present this here because this represents important information for us.
12 Mar
I had coffee with a really nice guy yesterday. The more I think about how much time he gave me, a little ole’ misguided Joe who has the audacity to think God might want to use him to plant a church, the more I am amazed. Cam Roxburgh is the lead pastor of the multi-site Southside Church, involved with Outreach Canada and director of the Forge Network Canada. Yet we had a chance to sit down and chat. In my misdirected scattered thoughts I managed to glean some important things from him.
What were they? Mostly in the way of forcing me to ask some hard questions about assumptions. How important are Sundays to new church? How important are big catchment events? How relevant are they to the people we are trying to reach? Is full-time ministry a given, have I looked hard at my reasons why I think that necessary? Those are some of the questions he laid on the table before me and caused me to think about.
Of course, going home, I was prepared to grab hold of such questions and wrestle with them. In my debrief with Cheryl of course, I was still in this “engagement” mindset which rubbed Cheryl the wrong way. She isn’t a debater in that sense, so it took me a bit to get past that and switch gears as it were.
I am excited that he shook the tree for me with regards to getting more information about the settings we will be investigating. I am going to be calling Lorne at Outreach Canada today to see if I can get a better spiritual “lay of the land” for where we are going. Cam also said he would send me some contacts for the communities we are going to, to listen to people on the ground there.
23 Dec
Our last in the series. These ones are the furthest north.
Spruce Grove and Stony Plain are distinct communities but really close to each other. 5 minutes, if that, by 4 lane freeway between them. They are both west of Edmonton off the Yellowhead Highway. Both have seen tremendous growth in the last 20 years – Spruce Grove has doubled from 10 thousand to 20 thousand, and Stony Plain has gone from 4800 to 12 thousand.
Pros:
Cons:
23 Dec
Continuing the series on possible locations, we move up west of Calgary now.
Cochrane is another one of these badly swelling small towns, driven by the boom. It has going for it the proximity to the mountains which makes the views and the geography of the town very homey to me. In 1981 it was a paltry 3500 people. In 2006 it has grown to 13 760. This makes it perhaps the smallest of the cities we are considering (with the exception of Redcliff).
We managed to drive through the edges of it on our way up to my parents’ a couple of weeks ago. As you noticed, I loved the geography of the town. But we don’t know a whole lot about it yet.
Pros:
Cons:
22 Dec
Moving north of Lethbridge, but still well south of Calgary, we encounter the growing suburb community of Okotoks.
This is a bedroom community of Calgary, but only for the last 20 years or so. Before that it was just another small prairie ranching/farming village. Since Calgary really started exploding, it has become something close enough that people who don’t want to live in the “big city” began to find it desireable. In 1981 it was a town of 3800 people. In 2006 it broke 17 thousand.
According to Outreach Canada, this is a location that needs churches. The proportion of evangelical churches to population is up around 3000, and the target for Canada is 2000.
Pros:
Cons:
22 Dec
Here is our second possible location. 2.5 hours from Calgary so marginally closer to a big city.
Lethbridge
This city was actually brought to my attention by a blogger friend of mine. He was lamenting the lack of quality churches and told me a major problem is that while there appear to be a lot of churches in this city, a great number of them are shrinking fast and on the verge of collapse. Admittedly, this is anecdotal, but it is enough for us to take a hard look at it.
Population right now is running 74 thousand, making it the 4th largest city in the province. Outreach Canada doesn’t list it as high need, but if churches are close to closing that ratio might be worsening.
Pros:
Cons:
22 Dec
For your edification, I thought I would give you an idea where all the different towns and cities are, and what we know about them right now.
Starting with the extreme southeast of the province:
Medicine Hat/Redcliff
This was actually the first community we became interested in. Population around 55 thousand, it is out on the prairies, in the valley of the South Saskatchewan River. 3 hours from Calgary. Interesting fact: the city owns its own natural gas reserves, so heating is cheap there.
Our specific interest is actually in Recliff, a small town abutting against the north side of the city. It has a population of 5000 people but only one(!) evangelical church. That makes it a community of interest according to Outreach Canada.
Pros:
Cons: