Phase 1 – Community Integration.

Objectives – to integrate family into the city, identify and contextualize vision for new church, grow support network.

May 22, 2010 – Our family rolls into Medicine Hat, as sleet falls from the sky.  So much for the sunniest place in Canada.

June 2010 – Working on wrapping up training to start in Real Estate, transferring insurance, driver’s licenses, etc.

June 13-18 – Great Canadian Adventure.  Community Surveys and service projects with local organizations.

July 2010 – Travel to Ohio to participate in Fellowship’s National Conference.  Invaluable face time with leaders and supporters.  Added new prayer supporters.  Begin attending at the Link Church, a 4 year old church with similar values.

August 2010 – Finish Training, deal with major repair bill for van, launch Real Estate Career.  Also, meet my associate church planter, discover his calling.

September 2010 – Kids start school (first day ever – they had been homeschooled previously).  Start driving School bus for extra cash flow.  Join local ministerium to network with local pastors.

October 2010 – volunteer with Exchange Student Alpha program at the Link.

December 2010 – First listing ever!  Christmas trip to parents’ house.

Phase 2 – Pre-Launch

Objectives – form a launch team continue to gather support, cast vision, invite people into relationship.

January 2011 – transition out of school bussing and into real estate assistant role.  Associate church planter and family arrive in Medicine Hat.

January 8-11 – Participate in Northwest District Ministerium and Church Planter Assessment (added new prayer supporters)

January 31-Feb 2, 2011 – Southwest Pastor’s Retreat (added prayer supporters and a church to participate in Summer’s mission teams)

February, 2011 – Launch our first evangelistic Bible Study.  Invitations extended through various nontraditional means including craigslist and facebook.  Attenders come through craigslist ad.

February 28, 2011 – 1st Information Session.  Over 20 attend.  Form first core group, made up of us, the Blairs, and several new friends from the Info Session.

March 7-11 – Church Planter’s Boot Camp in Minneapolis with Bart.  Invaluable exercise.

March 25-30 – Northwest District Conference.  Added prayer supporters, visited potential financial supporters.

March 31 – 2nd Information Session.

May 2011 – 3 more core team members arrive from Surrey, BC

May 15 – Sunday Night Open meetings begin at Southview Church of God (Anderson)

May 16-18 – Northwest District Focus Retreat

May 31 – end employment as a realtor.  Begin temporary position at Census Canada.

July 12 – Cheryl begins work at the Hospital as a Nursing Educator.

July 16 – Couple from Evangelistic Bible Study accept Christ, renew their vows.

July 31-August 5 – Great Canadian Adventure (USA Mission Week)

August 14-18 – Trans-Canada Summit (First GBCanada National Conference, Canadian Mission Week)

August 28 – Begin another evangelistic bible study with 4 people.  First Sunday morning in the Galaxy Cinemas, Medicine Hat.

August 29 – Launch 2nd Community Group.

Phase 3 – Post-Launch

Objectives: to foster community, encourage commitment, and more towards true community creation (membership).

September 11, 2011 – CHURCH LAUNCH! 174 people in attendance.

September 2011 – numbers taper off from 174 to 115 to 76, by October average remains steady at 70 until the end of the year.

October 15 – Family Fun Day Connection Event. ~30 attend.

October 23 – 1st Lunch With Oliver (Initial Membership Lunch – leading to Bible Study and Membership Class)

October 30 – 1st Baptism Service – 5 Baptized!  3rd and 4th Evangelistic Bible Studies launched (in conjunction with Membership classes)

December 4 – 1st Baby Dedication.

December 24 – Christmas Eve Service at local restaurant.  Dec 25 Sunday morning service cancelled.

January 15, 2012 – Annual General Meeting/Vision 2012/3 more baptisms!

January 29 – launch of a new Evangelistic Bible Study, Discipleship class, and 2 new community groups!

That takes us pretty much up to the present.  We are excited to have 3 or 4 more in evangelistic Bible Studies and are about to celebrate our first crop of 17 members!  God has been so good to us.

On top of work, of course this is our big “Great Canadian Adventure” Week here in Surrey.  We have 46 people up from two churches – Ripon, CA and Ashland, OH.  They have been incredible servants and we’ve seen some powerful things happen as we serve alongside them.  I’ve been running the Yard Cleanup teams, and the reaction of people to completely free acts of service as big as yard cleanup has been amazing.  I myself have had 3 families tell me they will be at church on Sunday because of this – others I have talked to said there could be as many as 10-15.  Cheryl and I also had the opportunity to speak to the teams about our vision for Medicine Hat.  What a privelege!  More to come in our newsletter, which we will be emailing probably this weekend.

Anyways quick points:

• Thanks goes to Mike Silliman, fellow Grace Brethren Church Planter back east for the encouragement.  Check out his blog – he does good posts that really make you think.
• I found a neat Scripture memory application that I am going to try and talk Cheryl into letting me buy… when we have a moment to actually… you know… talk or something.  Yes, we are that busy this week!
• Just ran across a very good article (as usual) by Jonathan Dodson.  Advice for a 1st Year Planter.  I’ll be reviewing this article next year for sure.

Until next time!

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.

It occurs to me when (and I mean when, because I have no doubt in my mind that Cheryl and I will be putting together a vision video before the summer of ’09) I have a chance to talk about how I got to where I am, I will have that song playing in the background.

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.

Things are happening for our little clan, behind the scenes right now.  I can’t talk too much about it because much is still up in the air, but expect to hear about some significant steps coming in the next little while.  This dream of church planting is solidifying.  Even recently, it’s been a hazy object on the horizon, hard to distinguish through haze and geography between here and there.  Sometimes we have even asked ourselves if that objective in the distance wasn’t a mirage.

But it’s looking a whole lot more real.

And it’s getting realer.

Heh.  New word.

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.

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.