The Graveyard of Church Planting

As much as we love downtown Vancouver, our motive for living here goes a bit beyond wanting the lifestyle promised by the all the new condo marketers. The dream we are chasing involves fostering a new community of faith that would incarnate the love of Jesus in our neighborhood. Some would simply call it planting a new church.

Hopefully that doesn't freak you out. If you live in our neighborhood and this worries you, I really want to try and allay your fears by promising not to try and jam a Bible down your throat the first chance I get. I won't even do it on the second chance. In fact, I have to admit that I probably have more of an aversion to that kind of thing than you do.

Actually, I don't think you have to worry too much about me and my friends messing up what is a pretty good neighborhood by turning loose a bunch of weird Jesus freaks on you and your friends. I read this week that there has only been one successful new church plan in downtown Vancouver in the past 50 years. One person said "The soil for church planting in Vancouver is cement." Another described it as "the graveyard of downtown church planting." So relax. The odds of us actually seeing our dream fulfilled would seem pretty small.

But having said that, I have to say we're not going away. For one thing, we kind of like the lifestyle promised by all the new condo marketers. And we are serious about this church thing. Maybe we're just dumb. Maybe we're just suckers for punishment, or have some sort of martyr's death wish.

Or maybe we're just passionate about Jesus and serious about doing what we think he's called us to do that all of the above don't matter much to us. Or maybe we're just stuck on the idea that our community would be better a better place with a vibrant Christian faith community woven into the fabric of the neighborhood that all the statistics and long history of failure are irrelevant. Or maybe we think church can and should be lived a way that might just click with your friends and mine as being as meaningful, important, and refreshing. Maybe we can express the reality of the life we say we've experienced in a way that you might even think is helpful to our city, even if it is not personally interesting. Or maybe we just believe that God is up to something and it's a kick to be along for the ride.

Or maybe we just need to get a life.