Over the past year or so I have been gradually getting out on to the internets, and attempting to network with other church planters and such through blogs and twitter.  I have also become more and more involved in facebook.  There are some that might look on these things as time wasters but they have been instrumental in planning this scouting trip.

Through facebook I contacted my cousins in Calgary, who graciously agreed to put us up for a couple of days.  Through facebook I reconnected with an old old friend, Tom, from High School – who just got back from a mission trip to Chile and is part of a church worship team in Lethbridge.  They also agreed to let us crash at their house.  Through blogs I met the Wilks‘ in Medicine Hat, and through twitter I made arrangements to spend the night at their place.  Through my long-time blogging relationship with Greg we have another place to stay in the Lethbridge area.  The only accomodation I didn’t use social networking for was my sister’s place in Edmonton.  I just called her.

I hope that even more opportunities will come of this, as I would like to meet some other local church planters and people like that in come of the other communities we are looking at.

So if you read this blog, you may well be one of them.

Heh.  Don’t worry.  We aren’t asking for money (yet!)  At this stage, we would like to build a base of prayer support.  If there is one thing to be learned from Philip and Beth’s experience with Community of Hope, it is that prayer support is one of your most important weapons.

Given the next big thing on our agenda will be a scouting trip to Alberta in March, now would be a great time to get prayer warriors interceding for us.  We will have a very significant decision to make in looking at a target community, culture, and people.  We will need wisdom and discernment, and we will also be begging God to make our sight clear and unclouded by our own selfish preferences.   We will also need prayer to direct us to those who we need to talk to locally, or even those who God wants to talk to us.  There are so many things that could come out of this trip, but we desire God’s handiwork to be all over it, and that takes prayer.

To that end, we are now compiling a list of people who would like to receive an emailed monthly newsletter updating them on our journey, and outlining our current prayer needs.  I have a number of people on a list now, but I haven’t actually asked them if they’d like to receive this prayer newsletter.  So, to that end, I want to ask all of our readers here if they would like to sign up to receive it.  If you come here and read this blog, then you already have some interest in our endeavours.  All we are asking for is that you consider committing to praying for us – daily, weekly, as often as you can, with a focus on our current needs.  If you would like to receive this newsletter, please sign up by dropping your email in this handy-dandy newsletter signup below.  Note, this is different from the email sign up on the right.  That one is to have the blog posts emailed to you instead of having to surf here on the internet.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Issue 1 will be emailed in early February, and every month after that.  Thanks again, and God bless you for your interest!

But yes, that’s the big news.  We’ve set a week aside now.  March 22-28 we will be touring through the five cities (Spruce Grove, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Okotoks and Cochrane) we are considering for our church plant.  The really cool thing is that we have local ministry leaders we can meet with in two already, and I am hopeful we can meet with someone in each city to get the lay of the land from people right in there already.

Last night I had a very interesting conversation with Jason Wilks, who just started Pathway Church in Medicine Hat.  He had all kinds of things to say about his church planting experiences, and what’s been his challenges where he is.  He is also connected to a number of other pastors in various towns we are looking at so we may be able to mine him for more contacts to speak to.  It’s all very exciting to me, to network and try to congeal the best path forward.  (And yes, I meant to use the word “congeal” to what I want to do with a path!)

But I have a request of you, our readers.  Please make an appointment to pray for us both leading up to that trip and while we are gone – for safety, for discernment, and for God to reveal his will for us.

So, going into the holidays, I can feel momentum beginning to build with my wife and I, and also with my pastor, Philip, about what needs to be done to move our dream of planting in Alberta forward. I thought you might be curious, so I’ll let you into the next few months.

First on the plate, I will be seeking licensure with the Grace Brethren. This means I will be able to marry people! Ooooo… However, being quite rigorous, theologically, I have some study to do to pass it. I have a major written test to write, then based on that, they do an oral review as well. I hope to complete that before spring.

After that, my wife and I are beginning to plan a trip to tour about 5 or 6 different communities in Alberta with regards to seeking God’s will in which community to target. At this time the list includes Cochrane, Okotoks, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat (Redcliff), Spruce Grove/Stony Plain and perhaps St. Albert. We want to do this in the May/June time frame.

This fall we hope to form a small group made up entirely of prospective team members who will accompany us to Alberta. We are praying that some people are stirred by God to join us.

This fall there is a church planting conference in Calgary – details on speakers and such have yet to be finalizedd but we are already in agreement that we should go. That will be a great learning experience.

So, that is a big picture snapshot of what 2009 will look like for us. We still need to colour it in, but Lord willing, our future will take a much clearer shape as we go next year.

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday, and he started talking about what next year would look like at Community of Hope.  We look forward to passing the leadership of Awana on to somebody else (we’re already moving him in that direction – he’s already been taking huge stides along that path).  But the question was asked for us, what next?

Well, I told him I hope to take Freedom Session next fall, an intensive class to help people struggle with and overcome past issues in a Biblical framework.  Both Community of Hope and my previous church, Cedar Grove run this program, and I have had a lot of contact with both the people who run it and people who have taken it.  It is very good at what it does, helping people to recognize what hurts they have caused or experienced in the past, and how they affect their lives today, and act to resolve them.  I realized in my many interactions with people involved, that while I function pretty well, like most other people I have some hurts that definitely affect how I relate to people.  I wouldn’t mind dealing with those.

But, that’s not all by a long shot.  The vision that Cheryl and I have is to begin the process of planting a church in Alberta in the fall of 2010.  That is not far away at all!  Working back from a fall 2010 departure, that means we need to make a final decision about a destination city/town probably by the beginning of summer 2010, and before that we need to be building our team if there will be one.  It would probably make sense if we are going to have a team that our small group in the fall of 2009 be made up of those who are interested in planting with us.  We will need that fall and winter and spring to make decisions and pray and vision together what that new church will look like.

Fall 2009 seems so far away, but a quick check of the calendar is only 9 months!

On the bright side, if all these dates come too fast they are always subject to revision.  And on the brighter side, with every passing week, I do feel we are being prepared more and more for the task ahead.  There is still so much to do, but I still think we can get there.

Their parents assumed that the teachings of the church would be well received via religious osmosis. But the Great Commission explicitly commands us to teach and disciple. Neglecting this element of the gospel imperative creates an atmosphere of spiritual and doctrinal atrophy resulting in a nonessential church.

The passage about the assumption made by parents and leaders that their kids would “just get it” by coming to church stuck out at me.  I was struck that training people to follow Jesus needs to be central to the purpose of any church.  This made me think of Matthew 28:18-20.  I am seeing a framework for a vision coming out of that verse.

“(18b) All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (19) Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

I see in this passage bookends of worship: looking to God for our authority “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and his promise to be present with us “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”.  Worshipping God for who he is and seeking his presence is the first and last thing a church stands for.

Then we have the mission of the church – to make disciples and baptize “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”.  We are here to bring lost souls to Jesus.

Then we have a mandate to train up the disciples we have been entrusted with.  “…teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,”.

So a suggested mission statement of our future church plant could be, “To worship God, first and last, and guide his followers to him.”

A suggested vision:

Using Matthew 28 as our guide, we desire to pursue the mission that Jesus entrusts us with:

• To acknowledge our Lord Jesus as King, and worship him together;
• To guide our neighbours to be baptized as followers of Jesus;
• To teach and encourage each other in the love that Jesus has for us and the world;
• To raise up new leaders to pursue this mission everywhere;

What excites me about this is that it is short and sweet. It is not overly complicated with layers of process and form. It feels clean and simple, and that is what church should be, it seems to me. You look at any great movement, and it had a distilled message that was simple to grasp and follow. Like our faith. All God really asks of us is to love God and love our neighbour. That’s it. And the structure we are to use to accomplish this is the church.

Namely, like I was talking about yesterday, evangelism.

I’m banging that drum here so much, it might even be getting repetitive.  But all I wanted to say today about it is that it is good to share this struggle with someone, because we can then lift each other up and pray for each other in this area.  It is one thing to have a mentor encouraging you, but it is good to have an iron sharpening iron type guy with the same aims.