Celebrating 50 years of urban church planting

Jake Froese Girma Lulu Peter Rempel Henry Schmidt Lance Christie Len Fehr

When the question was asked why urban church planting would be celebrated in a rural church, the answer given was, “This is where it began – in rural Alberta.” The 2003 Alberta MB Conference convention was held in the small town of Vauxhall, but focused on the Conference’s urban church planting efforts, culminating in the recent successes of Mission Calgary.

Early church planters Jake Froese and Peter Rempel told the stories of the beginnings of the first Mennonite Brethren churches in Calgary and Edmonton respectively. Froese and his wife Justina were invited to move to Calgary to begin a city mission in 1953. Their mandate was primarily to gather those Mennonite Brethren who had moved to Calgary, and nurture and care for them. Secondly, they were to begin a city mission. They began Bible studies and prayer meetings, and held street meetings. Eventually this became Highland MB Church.

In Edmonton, Peter Rempel had a similar mission. However, here university students and people employed in the city were already gathering for fellowship. They were ready to begin a church where they would be able to share with each other and be free to develop their gifts and talents. The church would be a place where people would be motivated to seek a relationship with Christ, where they would study to search for God’s vision and where they would be encouraged in evangelism. This evolved into Lendrum MB Church.

Inspiration

Henry Schmidt, president of MB Biblical Seminary in Fresno, Calif., was the guest speaker for the weekend. His first message on Friday evening gave four principles for being a skilful urban church planter: 1) There needs to be a solid foundation. Mennonite Brethren have always been known to be “people of the Book” and this was demonstrated in the last century when 44 out of the 122 Bible schools in Canada were Mennonite and of those 24 were Mennonite Brethren. 2) There needs to be a confession that Jesus is Lord: “No other foundation can be laid” (1 Corinthians 3:11). This has been the motto for many Mennonite Brethren churches. 3) There has to be a realization that the church is the visible demonstration of Christ. Churches need to be healthy and reproducing. 4) Leadership development is crucial. Pastors need to be equippers and trainers as well as doers.

Schmidt’s second message on Saturday morning was based on Acts 17. He suggested there were five ways to talk to a postmodern culture, based on Paul’s example. When Paul talked to the Athenians, he did not talk about the divinity of Christ, but rather about the man, Jesus. 1) Conversations with people in the postmodern culture need to be seasoned, or marinated, rather than microwaved. Just presenting the 4 Spiritual Laws will not be accepted. 2) Conversations with postmodern people need to be spiritual but should not argue the validity of one’s position. 3) Conversations need to be simple – the unadorned truth. God persuades and convicts. 4) They need to be “seeing” conversations, movies rather than manuscripts, using parables and pictures. 5) They need to be suited conversations, adapted to the culture and to the audience. He encouraged the church to move from being concerned about self-preservation to winning others and to have a vision for multiple, global churches that will plant more churches.

New churches

Two new churches were accepted into the Conference on Friday evening. The first was New Hope Community Church in southwest Calgary where Kevin Carruthers and his wife Teresa, and about 50 other people have begun meeting. This is part of Mission Calgary, a Key City Initiative church planting project of the Alberta and Canadian MB Conferences. The church is growing; five people accepted Christ in recent weeks.

The second one, Grace Road Church, Tofield, was introduced by Gary Giesbrecht, chair of the Board of Faith and Life. He introduced Bruce Nickel and Gary Quiring as the leaders of a group which broke away from Tofield Gospel Church and now wanted to become accountable to a larger body of believers. Although the reconciliation process with the mother church is not yet complete, much progress has been made. Not everyone was in favour of accepting this new church at this time; however, this church, too, was warmly welcomed.

Testimonies

Interspersed throughout the weekend were testimonies from church planters and pastors. Included were:

• Grant Galpin, pastor of Saddle Ridge Community Church, Calgary, encouraged members of a seeker’s group to read through the Bible in a year. They discussed it each week, and from that questions began to arise, such as “What is that ‘born again’ thing?” The church was planning a Passover meal and a baptism during Easter week.
• Ray Wiens, pastor of Summerside Church in Edmonton, invited a young adult named Jesse into his home. Jesse had accepted Christ in jail and was reading his Bible. He now brought another jail buddy with him who also accepted Christ. Neither one of them was able to fathom the love shown in the young adult group that raised $270 to help a girl finish her grade 12 classes. The core value of the church is to be a life transforming church.
• Kelly and Donna Steffan moved to Airdrie last summer to explore planting a church. Grant Galpin invited Kelly to work with Mission Calgary. Kelly met Jake Balzer, church planting coach, and Ewald Unruh, executive director of the Canadian MB Conference Board of Evangelism, and agreed to work with them. He is finding that many of the people surveyed are looking for a small family-oriented church where they can experience the love of God.
• Girma Lulu represented the Ethiopian Church, which began in 1995. The church now has 115 baptized believers and is having difficulty finding an adequate house of worship. The church also has a vision to start humanitarian work in Ethiopia, where 55% of the people are Christian.
• Gerry Giesbrecht spoke about Dalhousie Community Church. The church has been in existence for 20 years and wanted to start another church in the area. Mission Calgary also wanted to begin a church, and when Lance and Sharlene Christie moved back to Canada from his native New Zealand to work in church planting, there seemed to be a match. The new church is to be a satellite church of Dalhousie, in that parts of the church will meet at different times and different places, but there will be only one pastoral team. This is designed to give lots of options as to language of worship and size of group, but it will also conserve resources.

Budget

Questions about accountability were raised when the budget was presented, since no audited statements were available at convention time. Because of a number of large bequests, income exceeded disbursements and the year ended with a surplus of $17,000. A budget of $205,500, which included increasing the provisional grant for Camp Evergreen from $10,000 to $20,000, was presented for the coming year. This was passed.

Camp Evergreen

Jake Doerksen, representing the Camp Evergreen board, indicated that the Camp had ended the year with an accrued operating deficit of $90,000 which was being covered by a long-term loan from the Canadian MB Conference Stewardship Ministry. However, he also indicated, and this was expanded on by new director Rick Arkell, that in order to make the camp attractive, a number of improvements will need to be made. Drawings of future plans were shown. Arkell also committed to letting churches know the names of the kids who attended camp from their respective areas, for more follow-up.

Board of Church Extension

Chair Murray Schmidt commented that there have been eight new churches planted in five years in the Mission Calgary initiative. A recommendation to change the name from Mission Calgary to Mission Alberta was approved, as was appointing Jake Balzer to one more year of coaching church planters. According to Schmidt, future church plants will be partnerships with existing churches, and in turn will plant new churches.

Executive Board

The biggest initiative the Executive Board tackled during the past year was to appoint an executive minister. The discussion about the position had happened at last year’s convention, and so when Merv and Carol Boschman were introduced as the candidates for this position, the vote was unanimous. They will begin their ministry July 1 (see related article).

Other items decided on were:

• affirmation for representation on the regional councils for the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary teaching centres in Langley, B.C. and Winnipeg, Man.
• investigation into creating a separate legal identity for Camp Evergreen.

Abe Konrad was thanked for his work as conference minister. A scrapbook of thanks is being prepared as a reminder of his ministry in the churches.

Len Fehr and Harry Heidebrecht were affirmed as moderator and assistant moderator respectively, while Irwin Warkentin, although not currently attending a Mennonite Brethren church, was invited to stay on as secretary. Next year’s convention will be hosted by Dalhousie Community Church, Calgary.

—sbb