Pray for Urban Canada

I read something today that really moved me. This is fuel for our Holy Spirit ignited passion. Please pray for us...

"Canada is changing. The population is becoming more urban with every passing year…We are less rural, less agrarian, less Caucasian. We are becoming a land with a few large, cosmopolitan concentrations of citizens.

"The Canada 2001 census indicates that 80 percent of Canada’s populations lives in an urban area, mostly in metropolises of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and the Edmonton-Calgary corridor... They are vibrant centers of business, education, and the arts. At the same time, they struggle with increasing poverty, homelessness and crime. Such contrasts bring large challenges to ministry in urban centers.

"How do we meet these challenges? How do we reach an increasingly urbanized population with the message of Jesus Christ? …We must plant churches and ministries that will meet the real needs of real people whoever they are.

"PRAY…

• For a new generation of pioneers, who in the power of the Holy Spirit, will be missionaries to Canada’s cities
• That God would inspire Canadians to innovative ministries that will engage the wide diversity of needs in urban areas
• That Canadians would have a renewed vision for the salvation of their nation

(from the 2005 Missions Information and Prayer Guide, PAOC)

The View - north

Some have asked about how close we live to the downtown eastside. Here's the view from our balcony to the north. The bus is on Hastings Street.

Vanguard Revisited - Vision, Values and CAKE!

We had another house full of students from Vanguard College here last night - what an awesome group of people! It was a totally different experience from the first group (not that the first group wasn't awesome - they were fantastic too!). The team was at the end of their challenging week in Vancouver and we were all a little on the tired side. Low key. Laid back. Hopefully not too dull. At least the cake Wanda brought made it worthwhile - WOW WAS IT GOOD!

Interesting discussion though - at least I thought so. We shared our story about why we are here, why cities are so important to God, about the incredible need for more churches in Vancouver, our dream of a community of faith in our neighborhood where people can find a safe place to take a fresh step on their spiritual journey and explore what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and our impression that the best way to accomplish this may be what we are beginning to call "the living room church".

I almost hate talking about our vision and values because we are so early in the process that we honestly don't know what we're doing or how we are going to do it yet. We are trying to be very intentional about not photocopying someone else's ministry model. (Wolfgang Simpson calls it importing other people's spiritual success-stories and instead he challenges us to search for the ways which God has ordained for us to put into practice in our time and place - what we feel He has revealed to us.) Sometimes the "creative tension" is agonizing!

But we do have some thoughts that are in the process of development. Our values are certainly not original, but I can honestly say that we haven't stolen them from anyone. They have come out of literal years of heart-searching, God-wrestling, and lifestyle-struggling. We own them, or are in the process of paying a big price to own them! I refuse to live the lie of "aspirational values", and if what I say next isn't in process in my life, please get in my face and let me know!

It's been interesting that as we have struggled to articulate the stirring in our hearts we have stumbled on others on the same journey. We' have been surprised and comforted that many, many others are echoing the same notions - mostly people associated with the 'emerging church'. We are not the only whacko out there!

So, with the caveat of understanding that we are in process and that we are being context specific to the North False Creek area of downtown Vancouver, here goes...

Holistic Christianity - It's about being the church, not going to church. Living church, not doing church. Christianity as life, not a series of meetings. Basically it's about stepping out of the "church culture" bubble and being a part of the real world. (Maybe that's not an issue for you, but for me it has been an intense, personal journey! It has become an experiment about living my calling from God in the community, rather than a church focused ministry position. What would this look like for you?)

Intentionally inclusive community - God is already at work in the world, and I want to join Him there. An individual's spiritual journey begins long before conversion to Christ and I yearn to get in on the conversation before they get up the nerve to "go to church". (Frankly, I don't see most of the people who live in my building ever "going to church". What are we really after - conversion to church, or conversion to Christ? But I digress...) If I can be their friend - not with an agenda of getting them to "go to church", but just truly be a friend... And if they hang around me and my faith family and BELONG to us and we to them , maybe eventually they will discover that they BELIEVE with us, and then they can continue to BECOME what God desires them to become... The spiritual trajectory / direction of someone's life is more important than our perception of their distance or closeness to Christ (especially if it is defined by their involvement in church). Do we really believe that someone can be "far" from God? Not if you believe that God is not far from them!

Participatory Leadership - Church were the body of Christ leads and ministers to each other. Simply put, the deemphasizing of professionalized ministry. Simpson talks about the 3 reformations of church history: a) the theological reformation (Luther's justification by faith), b) the spiritual reformation (the pietistic / holiness movement that birthed the Pentecostal movement that has encouraged us to know and experience God personally), c) the structural reformation. Actually, I don't think the third one has really hit yet, but the unprofessional-izing of the church has started. Hopefully the clergy / laity divide will be destroyed. This is not to say that there is no place for leadership in the church; it's just that in our culture context I believe this leadership needs to be more relational and participatory, rather than positional and hierarchical. (This has huge impact on the way we function as a church, but I'll save that for another time.)

Incarnational Ministry - We expect the primary calling of Christians to be expressed in the community, rather than inside the church. Someone has said that the quickest way to church the unchurched may be to unchurch the churched. Frost and Hirsch talk about the 'attractional' model of ministry that the western church has adopted, which ends up being an extractional model of ministry that actually pulls those involved in the church out of their community and any relational context they have with those not 'in' the church.

Community - Living life together. Relationship, relationship, relationship! Taking seriously the 'one-another's' in scripture. Living room church provides a great context for this because it's hard to get lost in the crowd when there are only 9 people there!

The grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit - Without God we are nothing. It's his church and his call. We are dependent. Totally. To paraphrase an old song, if anything good happens out of this, if from Jesus.

Alberta Beef

Coming back from our family reunion in Alberta we had to stop and wait for the cowboys to heard the cattle down the road. This is what Albertan's call "going for a drive". (Cattle drive, that is.) Our girls were very impressed to see this. Maryn said "Awesome!" 

Vanguard Visits Vancouver

Tonight was a great night! The Canuck's won, the Lion's won, and we had a house full of students from Vanguard College in Edmonton doing field work on urban missions.

Vanguard is my alma matter - only it was called NBC way back then. Times have changed - never got to go to exotic places like Vancouver when I was in college!

One of the cool things was that the team was led by Roger Graham who was a kid in our church in Whitecourt. It was really great to see where life has taken him and see him leading the team. It definitely makes you feel like some of those wild Friday night youth group meetings were worth it!

The Vanguard team had spent the morning in the downtown east-side, and then we walked them through our neighborhood before sitting down with them over mac and cheese and trying to explain what missions looks like in the affluent side of the second most densely populated inner city in North America. I think the contrast between what they had seen in the morning and where we lived was a shock. It's only 2 blocks, but it is a world away. Some expressed real anger over the obvious wealth of Yaletown and the whole Urban Fare scene when there is such desperate need just around the corner.

But they were still able to understand our mission. One of the many comments really spoke to me was the observation that when they were in the east-side, they never looked at the people on mission there and wondered why they were not doing something in Yaletown! So it wouldn't be fair to ask why people on mission to Yaletown are not fully engaged with the downtown east-side. The need for mission in Yaletown is just as real, just not as obvious.

Then we got into the whole living room church thing. What a provocative discussion that led to! WOW! Students have a lot of energy! I haven't been in that kind of dynamic, hyper dialogue for a long time! Mostly Paul and I had to answer the questions by saying "I don't know." I mean, what do we really know about perpetuating living room churches in the condo-jungle at this point? Come back in 5 years and we may have some more refined answers, or at least some experience to speak from. Right now we're just mainly talking about initial impressions and aspirations. But whatever we said, it sure stirred up some interesting dialogue.

Lynn Canyon

Vancouver is a beautiful place - urbanity with wilderness at your doorstep. Here's a picture of the bottom Lynn Canyon in North Vancouver. There is a great swinging bridge at the top of the canyon that I think is much more fun than the Capilano Suspension Bridge - and Lynn Canyon is free, too!

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.

Our Language Betrays Us

One aspect of the experiment we are living is trying to experience Christianity as a 24/7 lifestyle and understand it beyond what for us was a preoccupation with Sunday and going to church. But trying to step beyond the sacred / secular dichotomy is proving to be a bigger challenge than I thought. Maybe it's got a lot to do with being employed by the church as a Pastor for all of my adult life, but I have a hunch that it is much broader issue.

During our gathering the other night we were singing a great song that has a line about serving God with our "life and ministry". At the end one of the young people in our group quipped "But I thought life was supposed to be ministry..." Hmmm. Out of the mouth of babes.

Call it a Freudian slip, but I think our language betrays where our head and heart are really at. The issue of 'going to church' versus 'being the church' is more than just semantics. It is an issue that I think Christians need to wrestle with. But be prepared to get bruised in the tustle! I know I have been...

Game ON!

Need I say more?

The Catch

Vancouver's a great place to live. But...

Average bungalow price hits $500,000
Cozy character comes with a price
Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun, October 4, 2005

The average price for a Vancouver bungalow hit almost $500,000 in the third quarter of 2005, Royal LePage Real Estate said Monday. The price of the average Vancouver bungalow rose 8.8 per cent, year over year, to reach $499,667.

The average bungalow on the city's west side hit $775,000, topping even West Vancouver, which saw the average bungalow go up 6.9 per cent to $695,000. The average condominium price in Vancouver went up 14.1 per cent, year over year, to reach $254,333, the report said.

For people moving in "prices compare favourably . . . with oceanfront cities elsewhere."

Nationally, the average price of a standard bungalow is $265,405.

Snooty-tooty Vancouer

Here is a story from today's Vancouver Sun. If you don't live in Vancouver... sorry... (Our place is just off the picture to the left.)

Vancouver is the world's most 'liveable' place, according to a recent survey, while Toronto and Calgary were ranked No. 9 and 10 respectively on the list.

The Economist Intelligence Unit said its 'liveability ranking,' part of the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, assesses living conditions in 127 cities around the world by looking at nearly 40 individual indicators grouped into five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

With a low crime rate, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed infrastructure, the survey said that Canada has the most liveable destinations in the world.

With a rating of just 1 per cent, as a result of a small threat from petty crime, Vancouver is the highest ranked city. Montreal also scored high on the list, at No. 16

Downsizing

Daleena’s High School was doing a charity clothing drive this week so I dug into my closet and weeded out a bunch of stuff I haven’t worn in a long time. Discovered that the axiom "less is more" is very true: the less clothes you have in your closet, the more room you have!

We are heading to Edmonton, Alberta, for Thanksgiving next weekend, and we are going to fill up the van with a number of small but precious furniture items that we’ve decided we just don’t have room for in our townhouse. We’ve lived downtown for over a year, and we are still downsizing. (Thank God someone in the family has a big house and can store some stuff!)

We keep moving into smaller places and have had to be ruthless about what we keep. It seems like we’ve given away, sold, or junked more stuff than we’ve kept. An exaggeration to be sure, but we have found that it is incredibly freeing to get rid of stuff. Live light. If in doubt, throw it out! A mantra to live by.

A book I’m currently reading called Houses That Change the World has the same "less is more" theme. Simpson says most churches today are too big. In fact, he thinks that we are experiencing the cutting edge of a revolution that will radically transform the way future Christianity is practiced. Less buildings, less professionalism, less expenses, less crowds, more community, more mission, more life change, more impact. Hmmm. If this is real, sign me up…

Bookworm Review

**** 4 stars - profound!
*** 3 stars - worthwhile
** 2 stars - 'nuf said
* a book only the author could love...

Recent Reads:

*** The Dream Giver - Bruce Wilkinson;
- A good read. Thoughts on the 'wilderness' times of life very helpful

** Megashift - James Rutz;
- read Houses That Change The World instead

*** The Celtic Way of Evangelism - George C. Hunter III;
- challenging thoughs for living a missional lifestyle

Current Reads:

**** Houses That Change the World - Wolfgang Simpson;
- could be an extremely significant book!

*** Searching for God Knows What - Donald Miller;
- so far not as good as Blue Like Jazz