A God Led Journey
Church Planting Featured Story
by Scott Street
The church plant from Chilliwack Alliance has been a lengthy but God led journey. It started about 5 years ago with initial conversations about how God was moving within our community, and finally opened a new chapter with our official launch on February 14, 2010. It survived a conflict assessment at Chilliwack Alliance, a major leadership change, and even the global economic crisis. It has been incredible and humbling to see God directly leading this journey at many times, and to see God leading my wife and I through this journey too.
One key aspect of this leading was approximately 2 years ago when both my wife and I spent time seeking God's guidance, specifically with our future. After praying for a day each, and then coming together to share what we felt impressed upon us, we both felt strongly that we needed to pursue planting the church here in Chilliwack, while understanding that it would mean sacrifice for us and our family.
Ultimately our goal was to take seriously the research brought forward by Alan Hirsch, that recognized only about 12% of a population connects with the traditional method of church in each community. We are not competing with other churches in Chilliwack; we are co-labouring with a different field of harvest. We are not out to show everyone how church 'should' be done, but doing something different hoping to reach a new group of people.
The style or method that our leadership team felt compelled to pursue is a House Church model with frequent gatherings of all of the House Churches. After spending time in prayer seeking wisdom and God's guidance, the values God impressed upon our leadership team best supported a House Church model. We launched with 3 house churches and a total of approximately 40 people. Our age range is anywhere from 2 to 82 years old, and includes quite a diverse age range within that spread.
We spent September and October 2009 educating our congregation at Chilliwack Alliance Church about what we would be doing, and then held 4 months of training (which is more accurately called 'enculturation'). We did our best to strongly lay out the values and vision of this church plant to see if it was resonating with those in attendance. After the training, we asked for a 1 year implied commitment. Amazingly every person who attended the training committed.
On Easter Sunday we had our first Large Group Gathering (which are where the pictures are from). It was a great time to gather everyone together, participate in the stations of the cross and communion as a meal together.
Our journey from this point forward involved taking deliberate and focused time on shaping our culture and ethos. This revolves around our values of Authenticity, Simplicity, Humility, Generosity and Action. We also include a key value of missional living.
Please continue to pray for us as we take our initial steps towards fulfilling the vision and calling God has for us in Chilliwack.
