AFTER THE GOLD RUSH

I downloaded Thom Yorke doing a version of the Neil Young classic "AFter the Gold Rush" - it is sweet.

Rolled out of bed. Went to staff prayer. Lots of people have cancer in the church community. I hate cancer. Had our lengthier pastor's meeting where we shared what was going on and did some planning.

Had lunch with Josh the youth pastor - discussed our plan to conquer the world - things seem to be on schedule.

Headed out to Kits to meet with Greg Laing of Point Grey Community Church. Greg is a fine fellow and good encourager in these tough times - the bottom line is that church planting and ministry in Vancouver is tough!!!

As we talked I made the point that most traditional church plants are a 3 yr. process which includes a large # of people from a mother church to form the core of the new church. I think this model has to be seriously re-thought when we tackle church planting in secular urban settings like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. In these urban centers you are talking about highly secular, and sometimes hostile mission fields. We would not send a missionary to go to Paris, Tokyo or Mumbai and expect a viable self-sustaining congregation to emerge in 3 years. Why do we expect that of church planting efforts in urban centers in Canada - also I am talking about church planting efforts in the urban core - NOT the suburbs.

I think you need to adopt a 5-10 year church planting plan, with a commited planter AND a core team who will commit to the long haul and realize that fruit might be scarce and the soil might stay tough. But the call and the need is what anchors the planter and her team - that's true of us.

We have had other offers at large successful churches dangled before us - but the tremendous need in downtown Vancouver keeps us here - it simple can not be overlooked. I will be meeting with leaders in our denomination in the coming weeks and am going to bounce these ideas off of them.

Tonight we also had a church council meeting - I was barely lucid towards the end. So in all I was on the go for 12 hours straight. Luckily, tomorrow doesn't really have anything until home group at night - might try to connect with a new guy from first@night for lunch.