Laundry is being washed in the laundry room, Shea's sleeping, Kayla's at school, Keona's watching a movie, our newsletter is at Staples ready to be picked up, I'm in the process of addressing 100 or so envelopes, this is our life. This state of relative calm is temporary and very few and far between. I don't know how those of you who have three or more kids do this. One of John's classmates from his course said once you have three kids, you're going from "two to chaos", that pretty much sums it up. I was thinking about going to a gym to get some exercise but perhaps I don't need to do that, I'll be doing plenty of moving around now I think.
Now that we've been formally accepted as SIM members, we need to continue moving forward to see how God takes us further in determining specifics of our 'ministry assignment'. As John and I reflect on the past year since returning from the Philippines, God's taken us on an interesting journey. We've encountered all these different kinds of ministries and in turn have met amazing God fearing people. We asked ourselves where all of this fits into what God is wanting us to do. So far this is what we have -
We want to be involved in a Missional Church ministry. What is that you ask? It's a community based church: church reaching out to the community as opposed to a church focusing on trying to bring people into the church. There are different kinds of churches: one kind where the pews in the building are mostly empty; two where the people commute from all over the city to attend; and three, where people who attend are from the local neighborhood. People in a missional church aren't looking at locals to just attend a Sunday service to warm up a place in the sanctuary just so they can count how many people are at attendance. They want to find ways to show love, sincere Love, and find ways to meet not just their spiritual but physical needs as well. I would think this is a challenge but there are SO many people who live by a church building but do not know the love of Christ. Missional church is incarnational, holistic, and inclusive.
I look around our neighborhood and see a wide array of people: the man looking for pop cans in our recyclable bins, new immigrant parents taking and picking up their kids from school, upper class families, you name it. They all deserve to know what it's like to experience Christ in their lives.
All my life I've attended a building based church where people commuted from different areas of the city to attend church activities and service. This was due to the fact that it was an ethnic (Japanese) church. Presently, John and I are members of a Japanese church in Vancouver and again, it's the same kind of structure. There's nothing wrong with this because this church is focused on reaching out to the Japanese but the tension in an ethnic church in Canada is eventually the leadership needs to think about what the demographics of the members are going to look like in coming years as they consider longevity and growth of the church. It may not necessarily be a purely Japanese church as the second generation marry Canadians (or whatever other culture) and English is the only language spoken.
I guess for John and I, yes, we care about the Japanese but we also care about all these people who live around us too.
So that's what's on our hearts.
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