An update on New Hope Alliance Church in Surrey BC
by Pastor Jeremy Rios
Every week at New Hope Alliance Church we pray that God would send us deeper - deeper to know Him more, to experience Him more, to be more like Him. This isn't idle prayer. We need to know God, we need to crave and depend on Him. Above all, we need His help if we are going to fulfill the mission He has called us to fulfill. This prayer recognizes that depth precedes breadth; that having a firm and rooted knowledge of God is essential if we are going to make sharing that knowledge of God with others a priority in our lives. We recognize that, as a Church, in some ways the gospel is our 'product' - one that is made manifest in the lives, character, and work of our people. If we don't have a good product, we won't sell it well, and what we do sell will be flawed.
That said, New Hope is a unique 'church plant'. The scare quotes are appropriate because it is only recently that our members are beginning to realize the magnitude and responsibility of our call - that there is a certain and definite cost to being the Church for each other and the world. Compositionally, we are made up of some three 'crops' of English speaking Vietnamese Youth groups that have grown up in our midst, combined with a smattering of other ethnicities that have joined in for the ride along the way. This diverse mixture, and the natural closeness they have with one another, is one of the greatest assets that New Hope has. Still, when I first became their pastor, many of our members didn't know the gospel. For some there was a language barrier between generations; for others, they attended for the fellowship and didn't understand the deep, central message of the Gospel.
Because of that, New Hope's members had no developed sense of what it meant to be Church. They were (and still are) sincere, but at that time we were still, before anything else, a church plant within the Church - in other words, we were a plant that was bringing the gospel to a new generation within the Church first. Our mission was to our own members.
We've seen great things happen in the past years. Many people who attended but didn't have faith have committed their lives to Christ. We've had several new believers come to faith in our midst. Though small, our members have tithed faithfully. Now, three years in, New Hope's members are beginning to get a sense - however shadowy - of the greater mission of God to which they are called. We are now beginning to learn that we have a deeper call to be a Church plant for our friends, and family, and city as well. The journey ahead will be difficult - but if we prevail it will be unimaginably rewarding.
And yet we still will pray - will always pray while I am their pastor - for depth. We want to be in Christ so that we can be for Christ. We want the gospel message, the person of Christ, to so invade our hearts and minds that we can do nothing other than be evangelists. We want our sails in the air, attentive and patient, for the wind of the Spirit to blow us where He wills. We want our eyes and ears open to observe the mission that God has laid at our feet.
So please pray for New Hope. Pray for our depth in Christ. Pray for the burden of God's call to fall on us. Pray for a sense of urgency about the gospel message. And pray as well for a spirit of sacrifice and dedication to the work of truly becoming a Church that makes a difference in the Kingdom of God.
