Rather than write my own post this month I thought I’d share an article from the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada about Country Hills Church. I gave a phone interview in early December and here’s what the wrote on Tue Dec 17, 2013.
This year’s Christmas Dinner at Country Hills Church had a different spirit. Families from the community and families from the church sat down together, enjoyed a meal and then stayed and visited. “It was a great night”, enthused Pastor Jeremy, whose passion for planting spiritual seeds and harvesting faith is quickly evident.
For many years Country Hills EMC has been involved in their community in Kitchener, Ontario. They’ve run food banks and drop-ins, and served Christmas dinners to people that might have experienced a very bleak day otherwise. These were good things that eased suffering and lightened loads. What was lacking, however, were lasting connections.
People came, were blessed, and left. Seldom were relationships forged between believers and those they served. The reason for benevolence was not made clear. It’s about relationships, ditching the ‘us and them’ mentality and going all out towards ‘we’.
The congregation is being encouraged to take their faith outside of the church building and to make intentional connections leading to relationships. ‘We have adopted a posture of listening’, says Pastor Jeremy, ‘and are focusing on doing things ‘with’, and not ‘for’ people. With this shift in approach we are slowly finding out what people in our community want and need, so we can serve them by working along with them to meet the need.
Getting people to ‘come to church’ is not the focus. Instead it’s ‘come to my house’, or ‘let’s go play floor hockey’, or ‘let’s work on that community project together’. With a little intentionality, doing life together can be the beginning of discipleship, modeling a life of faith, leading others to discover the God who loves them.