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We would like to thank our speakers- Skye Jethani, Gary Nelson, David Fitch & Christine Pohl- for the wisdom, honesty and encouragement they provided.  A huge thank you also goes out to all the workshop presenters- remember, in the coming days, ALL workshop audio recordings will be made available for FREE, as a gift from Church Planting Canada.  And to the countless volunteers- we could NOT have done it without you.

Most of all, we would like to thank all of you who participated in this incredible event, giving life, energy, voice and feet to the Congress.  We know you will carry the conversation with you, back to your churches and communities.  We are excited to see how God continues His transformational work across the nation, in and through you all.

Remember, the next Congress will be held in Toronto in 2013.  See you all there.

Maybe you think the same way.

But let me let you in on a little secret.

People who move to Winnipeg have a tendency to fall in love with this place and never leave. I know
that’s what happened to me and a lot of my friends. It’s a place that inspires deep loyalty and love,
despite the extreme weather and mosquitos.

So I’m thrilled as part of the Design Team for the Recall conference to be able to welcome you all to
Winnipeg in a few weeks. I hope you will get a glimpse of why this is the place I have chosen to make my
home. If you want to know the best places to eat, shop, or take in the rich culture of our city just let me
know.

But more than just a great city to live in, Winnipeg is a city where God is alive and active and up to
something unique. It is such a privilege to live in a place where so many passionate and creative people
are dedicating their lives to partnering with what God is up to in our city.

Do you want to meet them? Want to learn more about what God is up to in our city, our country, our
world? Join us at ReCall.

I look forward to meeting you when you do.

Rachel Twigg Boyce is the pastor of House Blend Ministries (www.houseblendministries.com) and is part of the Design Team. When she is not working she can often be found drinking coffee, walking her dog, or doing both at the same time.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci, pastor of Little Flowers Community & workshop leader at the upcoming re:Call Congress, has just released his new book “The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & the Cost of Community”  (Likewise Books,an imprint of InterVarsity Press).  Here are a few videos for the book. This first one is a great overview of the book, exploring the three main focuses of the book: St. Francis, Little Flowers Community and the Sermon on the Mount. Check it out:

• There are plenty of churches  already.  Surely we don’t need another church!
• There are plenty of struggling churches around.  Let’s work at strengthening and renewing them before we try to plant more churches.
• Planting a new congregation will cost us too much in terms of dollars and effort.   The cost is too great!

How are we to respond to these objections?  Let’s look at them one at a time.

First, there are plenty of churches in our area (town, city) already.  We don’t need another one.  The answer to this objection is that new churches are better at reaching the unchurched than are older churches.  Dozens of studies by a wide range of denominations confirm that the average new church gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of the unchurched, while churches over 10-15 years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other congregations.   There are a number of reasons for this, but basically it boils down to the fact that new congregations are forced to focus on the needs of its non-members in order to simply survive while older congregations naturally focus on meeting the needs of their members.  The first objection assumes that older congregations can reach the unchurched as well as new congregations.  But that is not the case.  We need both renewed older churches and lots of new church.

The second objection is “We already have too many struggling congregations.”  Tied to this objection is the fact that in our church culture we tend to reward churches that grow to be large and honor their pastors rather than rewarding those that grow God’s kingdom by sending people out to do evangelism.  We need to reward both.  The answer to this objection is that planting new churches is one of the best ways to revitalize many older churches and renew a whole denomination.

New congregations often have the freedom to try new ideas that may appear too risky for the older congregation.  When these ideas work, the older congregations take note and get the courage to try it themselves.  The growth of a new congregation can give hope to the older ones that growth is possible.  A new attitude and faith can spread through the churches.

This second objection often boils down to, will we rejoice over the new people who are coming into God’s kingdom or will we object to the possibility of losing families to the new congregation?

The third objection is that planting a congregation is too costly.  Yes church planting is expensive, but it is the most effective way to win new believers.  God calls us to costly commitments.  In spite of the cost, new church planting is the only way we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in Canada and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ.

It is easier to give birth than raise the dead!

I am a church planter. I also manage a Starbucks.  Full time at the store…part-time with the church. There was a time when I thought that these two vocations were mutually exclusive.  Starbucks was just a means to pay the bills so that I could do the real ministry of the church plant.  It happened that the company shared many of the same ideals I had personally, but that was just a perk of working for a company that believed in equality and respect.  After all what could spreading the good news about Jesus Christ have in common with slinging coffee?

More than you might think.

Being a barista, I come in contact with hundreds of people every day.  People of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, beliefs, colors and creeds.  I get the opportunity to build relationship, sometimes over the course of 3 minutes…sometimes over a cup of coffee.   I get to share my life with people.  I get to pour myself (pun intended) into the lives of my staff–helping them–doing life with them.  It quickly became apparent that I was ministering to people at work.  Giving advice, answering questions that they had about faith, listening to their hopes and dreams.   I felt as though I was pastoring this small group.  So I had a small church that met on Sundays, and a small group that met every day at Starbucks.  The lines between my ministry and my job became a little blurry.

Often we compartmentalize our lives – this is where I meet with God, this is church, this is sacred–and this is where I do my work to pay my bills, this is secular.  What if there was never meant to be any separation?

What if our vocations, our jobs, were also our calling?  What if the place that we worked was also our place of ministry?  What if we were called to be a plumber?

The Starbucks Mission Statement reads like a church mission statement…to inspire and nurture the human spirit…one neighbourhood at a time.  What does your calling look like?  Is your job just a job?  Do you work just to pay the bills?  Do you work so that you can do ìrealî ministry on the weekends?  What if our calling was our vocation?  What if our ministry was also our job?

The Congress in November is all about moving us from Consumers to Missionaries.  When I first started as a barista I was merely using Starbucks to pay my bills (Consumer)…I now see that I have the opportunity to influence people with the good news as I live alongside them making cappuccinos. (Missionary)

What could your job look like if you saw it as your calling?  

(Scot Eastveld is part of the re:Call Design Team & a church planter in Winnipeg)

“We, like the early church, find ourselves in a fragmented and multicultural society that yearns for relationships, identity and meaning.” (From “Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition” by Christine Pohl, p. 33)

Many Christians would agree with Christine Pohl’s assessment as stated in her must-read book.  However, where there is less agreement is on how to live faithfully as Christian communities in this context.  Pohl points a way forward that is profound and simple, yet extremely difficult.  She argues that we need to recover the ancient practice of hospitality.

After sketching a brief historical overview of the practice, including biblical evidence, she moves to a more detailed exploration of the subject and concludes with some practical ideas for recovering a robust practice of hospitality.  It reads with a powerful and compelling authority that keeps readers glued to the page.

Pohl’s call to recover the practice of hospitality is not a naïve call to recover a better past.  She recognizes that history is checkered with both the Church’s faithfulness and failures.  Pohl understands (and demonstrates) how hospitality is at the heart of the gospel, reflecting the very nature and character of God.  Jesus, God among us, is the greatest example of that hospitality.

Pohl states that Christian hospitality is subversive and counter-cultural because it so often challenges the values of dominant culture.  How might Pohl’s call to practice radical hospitality shape how we plant churches & the development of new congregations?  Do our congregations, old or new, model being those subversive communities or do we simply reflect the values of the world around us?  What would happen if the Church rediscovered this ancient Christian tradition of hospitality?

Through her book, as well as her role as one of the plenary speakers at re:Call, Christine Pohl helps us to explore what church planting and faithfulness looks like in our Canadian context in the 21st century.  We hope to see you there!

Online Registration is now available here.

• Individual Rate (Early Bird – up until August 31st) CDN$199.00
• Individual Rate (Effective Sept 1st) CDN$249.00
• Student Rate (This subsidized rate is available to students who are taking a minimum of three courses per semester during the fall of 2011.) CDN$99.00
• Denomination Group Rate (20+ People – up until May 31st)* CDN$169.00

Please pay using Visa or Mastercard

For Denominational Groups Only:

Your denominational group cheque must be made out to “Church Planting Canada” with “CPC Congress DP6515″ on the memo line.

Please mail a printed copy of your registration form along with your cheque to:

re:CALL Congress
c/o The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada
2450 Milltower Court, Mississauga, Ontario
L5N 5Z6  Canada

Please note: Your finalized group registrant list must be sent to info@churchplantingcanada.ca by Sep. 15, 2011.

Location:

The congress will be held at Calvary Temple, located at 400 Hargrave Street:

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Accommodations:

Hotels:

The following is Darryl Dash’s latest column at Christian Week reviewing one our speakers excellent books:

Gary Nelson has a word for our new context: borderlands. Borderlands are the place where “Christian faith, other faiths and unfaith intersect.” According to Nelson, it’s where the Canadian church finds itself. It’s a “strange and safe place that promises nothing and delivers nothing.” It’s a “holy wild” where God is present.

Nelson is author of the book Borderland Churches: A Congregation’s Introduction to Missional Living. Last July, he began a new job as president of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. I visited Nelson in his office and asked him about the challenges facing the Canadian church.

It’s clear that Nelson loves the challenges that we face. “This is a very comfortable time for me,” he says. He’s pastored and led a group of Baptist pastors, so he knows that not everyone is excited. People don’t like chaos. It’s clear, though, that most pastors and church leaders intuitively know that something is different. “There’s not much you can do with people who think it’s 1950.”

I’ve grown somewhat cynical of authors who write about church from a theoretician’s viewpoint. What I appreciate about Nelson is that he’s steeped in local church ministry. He’s a member of a small Baptist church not far from where I live, and he’s lived out what he’s talking about. It’s a church that doesn’t get a lot press, but I know from some of my friends in the community that it’s building strong connections there. I love it when he writes, “The greatest secret of the Christian faith is the community of the local church.”

Nelson says pastors and church leaders need to experience deep change. We have a tendency to look for “magic bullet” solutions. These inevitably fall short of the change that’s required. It will take more than a few cosmetic changes to appear “contemporary” or relevant. Rather, we need to be changed, beginning with ourselves. “Effective leaders wishing transformational change in their congregations must first be transformed,” he writes. It’s not about developing a new way of being church. It’s about “discovering the core essential quality of what it has always meant to be the church.”

We also need to learn patience. “We need to come with a long-term view. We will not change a place overnight,” he says. Learning to adapt to these times is going to be tough for some congregations, especially those who have been effective at a more attractional model of church.

We also need to learn to become comfortable in the borderlands. He uses the Hebrew word ‘abar (pronounced HABAR) to describe our context. It means “crossover.” Nelson believes we’re in a crossover time; we’re no longer inside Christendom, but we haven’t yet arrived on the other side. Because it’s a crossover time, we need humble sensitivity. We’re in discovery time; some of the things we thought were dying aren’t. We need to patiently resist cosmetic solutions and discern some of the deeper adjustments required as we discover, or rediscover, a God who is present and at work.

Pastoral ministry has been turned upside-down in this context. We’ve lost social significance, and face “ambiguity and cross-purposed assumptions.” Many pastors can articulate where they want to go, but are struggling to implement change. Nelson suggests we need each other more; that we can help each other by finding that we’re not alone. He suggests the answers aren’t found in conventions, conferences and books; we have many of the answers ourselves. “We’re in this together,” he says.

As Nelson talked, I found myself looking for the magic bullet solution he warned against. Nelson never gave me anything like a magic bullet – “three steps to missional transformation” or anything like that. What he gave me were some good questions, and optimism that God is at work in our context.

“People are asking questions,” he says. “When I talk in churches, I don’t get lots of resistance. We’re further on the journey than we realize. It’s a fun time to be the church.”

I left our meeting grateful for Nelson’s leadership at Tyndale, and encouraged about the challenges of ministry in the borderlands. It is indeed a fun and challenging time to be the church.

John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, makes it clear:

“Here at the end of the 1900s, set your face like flint against the messages of American consumerism, because you confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper! He will never leave me. He is enough. And he is always the same. I am content.’”

And Piper also reminds us that salvation in Jesus brings liberty, like it did for the Apostle Paul:

“The hope of the resurrection radically changed the way Paul lived. It freed him from materialism and consumerism. It gave him the power to go without things that many people feel they must have in this life.”

Rick Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life” reminds us:

“This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.”

We believe that every Christian- every follower of Jesus Christ- is called to be missionary of His good news to their neighbours and to the world.  In that commitment, we cannot divided or distracted.  As Jesus Himself reminds us:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” – Matthew 6:24 (NIV)