Hope-Vancouver has big plans for the Lower Mainland

By Meghan Wood

BEING a member of a church brings with it a sense of community and belonging. Imagine driving to church, walking in without the usual handshake or hug at the door, sitting next to 'brothers and sisters' who won't look you in the eye, listening to a dry sermon by a person you don't know, then leaving right away. There is no fellowship, no carrying of one another's burdens, no compassion or support. Somehow, that's not so appealing, is it?

So why is it any different between churches in neighbouring cities? Are they not considered part of the same body of Christ? We are conditioned to remain in our own churches in our community bubbles, not seeking partnership with other ministries or churches. How do we hope to influence and transform our regions if we do not have camraderie in Christ?

Hope-Vancouver wants to transform the Lower Mainland's 25 municipalities from Hope to Vancouver by uniting its spiritual leaders to pray for and encourage common goals between churches, ministries, parachurch ministres, lay people and the public sector.

Their mission statement says they will "mobilize the whole body of Christ in a geographically identified area to strategically focus all of its resources on reaching the whole of Greater Vancouver and Lower Mainland with the whole gospel, resulting in the redemption of society and contributing to the transformation of the region and province."

"It is a huge and exciting vision and a powerful definition," says Dave Carson, prayer coordinator for Hope-Vancouver. "Over the last couple of years everything from Hope to Whistler has become a connected community. One of the things that became apparent after the last census is that we have eight percent of the Canadian population in the Lower Mainland. It is such a compact community that it lends itself to evangelization. If you want to reach the country for Christ, you have to aim at this mega-centre."

The vision...

Hope-Vancouver began in the mid-1990s, after six British Columbians attended a 'City Reaching in Canada' conference in Ontario.

Dr. Jack Dennison, founder and president of CitiReach International, an agency that targets the cities of the world as the modern global mission, was giving pastoral input to 20 Canadian cities for urban transformation. He featured segments from his book, City Reaching, which focused on eight major points toward initiating this goal:

- mission casting (awakening leadership)
- leadership team (identifying persons of influence)
- research (determining the current status of the city)
- gathering the presbytery (establishing pstoral commitment)
- strategic planning (goals considered)
- first congress (goals set at a meeting)
- models presented and implementation begins (doing instead of preparing)
- follow-up congresses (evaluation)

"We began to look at the harvest field (needs of the community) and the harvest force (the community's resources)," says Moerman.

Dave Richardson is CEO of African Enterprise Canada, which aims to reach major African cities with the gospel, and is the point person for linking parachurch and church ministries within Hope-Vancouver. Another of the original six, he says the conference opened their eyes to the fact that historically, churches didn't steward well the results of revival.

"They rode the wave, but then hit the beach and didn't know what happened to them," he says. "The six of us asked ourselves what we were doing back home and we began to meet. The Council of Churches for Greater Vancouver had become defunct, so we became an interim group. Over time, we became a service to the church community in the Lower Mainland. We only defined our name about a year ago."

Richardson served as vice-chair to Moerman from that time until this past October. He says their goal was to encourage churches to know what was happening in each municipality and to link downtown ministries with valley ministries.

What can we do?

"We've identified over 500 ministries operating in just the downtown Vancouver core," Richardson says. "There are many wonderful things going on on our doorstep that we may not even know about. There is a great deal of things happening within the body of Christ, we are just not connected; [Hope-Vancouver] wants to connect the dots."

"The trust level of the church in Vancouver is high," says Moerman. "I don't sense barriers between traditions. There may be benign neglect but there's the ability to cooperate on evangelistic efforts. That said, each municipality should establish its own strategy without Hope-Vancouver telling them what to do."

Leadership initiative...

According to Dr. Tom Cooper, newly elected chairman of Hope-Vancouver, each of the 25 municipalities from Hope to Vancouver has a group dedicated to praying four times per year for their cities.

"There are 25 different quarterly meetings," says the ordained Presbyterian minister and former businessman. "We just encourage and serve that idea of connecting people together to transform their area."

Carson says his prayer team has been mobilizing prayer for Hope-Vancouver in the Lower Mainland and recently they have drawn up an "inter-municiple prayer strategy."

As prayer coordinator for Hope-Vancouver, part of Carson's job is to work toward linking pastors from different municipalities to come together in a regular monthly conference call where they corporately pray for one another's municpalities. Under that covering, they want to establish prayer cells of intercessors that will pray for the needs of that community and for the entire region from Hope to Whistler.

Hope-Whistler 2010

"Whistler and Vancouver are the sites of the 2010 Olympics and we are seeking to mobilize prayer throughout the region for that upcoming event as well," Carson explains. He is the prayer leader for what he refers to as the "Four Opens" for the Games.

"Open minds to hear the gospel, open hearts to embrace the gospel, open doors for the spread of the gospel and open heaven over the Lower Mainland for the supernatural blessing of God on our area," he says.

Cooper wants Hope-Vancouver to be one of the partners with the Vancouver Whistler Games Partnership (VWGP) that will offer volunteers to the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) for such services as hospitality for the families of athletes, translation, handing out water, and a chaplain's program. VWGP will serve as an umbrella organization for Christian individuals, organizations and churches to work together in a volunteer sense to meet for Olympic sanctioned events and non-sanctioned events. Hope-Vancouver is perfectly placed to encourage this connection.

The VANOC technically doesn't have to take any help that Hope-Vancouver, or anyone else, offers. But the benefit is that such groups can offer free beds in the Whistler area that they can't get to for families of athletes from poorer countries.

Follow the leader...

Cooper is currently the executive director at City in Focus, which calls itself "a ministry in the city of Vancouver and province of B.C. which attempts build relationships with the business and political leadership throughout the province." It encourages workplace Bible studies, retreats, alpha courses and monthly breakfasts for sharing with guest speakers.

"I came to some of the (Hope-Vancouver) meetings in early 2003 as a visitor, then they asked me to be a member," he remembers. "My motivation is that I am a firm believer in the body of Christ working together. The more diverse, the more impact we can have."

Hope-Vancouver's leadership was transferred in October. Moerman planned to step down and Cooper was nominated for the position of chairman.

"Hope-Vancouver wanted to widen its network particularly in the city and specifically with the lay leadership of the province," he says. "They are tied in strongly in the valley, but I am more tied in with Christian organizations, lay people in the province and the city."

Moerman still attends all the meetings in a consultative role, with no responsibilites.

"I turned leadership over because I recognized that my ideal would be a full-time person, which we'll need soon," says Moerman. "But my responsibilities with Outreach Canada are full-time and more. We need to trust another leader now and Tom is a great connector, a great networker. He empowers people."

Says Carson: "We want to see the gospel spill over the walls of the church to affect education, arts, media, politics, and even sports. When the nations visit Vancouver in 2010, the church will be ready for them."

But Cooper wants members of Hope-Vancouver to know that it's not only him representing the group.

"Any member being somewhere is a representative of all the others." Surrey... Kevin Cavanaugh is the senior pastor at Cedar Grove Baptist Church in Surrey, where the movement to care for the city's homeless is reaching a pinnacle. "[Surrey] represents what Hope-Vancouver is about," Cavanaugh explained. "A vision in Surrey needs to focus in Surrey, otherwise it won't grow. But there needs to be a separate vehicle to heighten that vision and make the little flames (from surrounding cities) into one."

MaryAnne Connor of Nightshift Street Ministries Society says her group feeds 600 to 800 hungry people per week in Whalley, a low-income, rough area of Surrey, setting up tarps in a park to serve food every night from 6:30 to 8:30 pm because they were evicted from their building.

"We feed love and have worship, then at 8:30, the street people help us knock the tables down and cleanup the area," Connor says. "You'd never know we were there."

Once a centre is established and programs are implemented, Connor wants to "love them long enough that they start to love themselves so they can seek rehab."

Cavanaugh says church leaders in Surrey have been invited to participate in city functions with city leaders. He says the church has come "a gargantuan way "from having no voice in the city to actually being invited to the table.

"We've been called upon to bring influence of the kingdom of God into the arena of city officials," Cavanaugh says.

Moerman wants to see the municipalities involved in Hope-Vancouver join together for a Love Your City-style day to bless the entire Lower Mainland, where churches choose a date together to be on the streets, giving out cold drinks on hot days at intersections, cleaning washrooms in businesses, cutting lawns, etc.

Langley...

Dave McTaggart is the senior pastor at Southgate Christian Fellowship in Langley City. Eight years ago, as he moved into Langley to plant Southgate, he began to pray with other local pastors on a weekly basis.

"Now in north Langley there are 15 to 20 pastors meeting weekly, and three in south Langley," he says. "Once a month, we all get together. We get people praying for the city, civic and school board members, city councillors, church and pastoral leadership, and one another."

McTaggart also wants to see community-wide service being organized by neighbourhood churches together.

"If we could do an outreach thing where churches focus together, that'd be great!" he exclaims.

Tri-Cities...

Dave Barker, Hope-Vancouver representative for the Tri-Cities (Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody) says the relationship between evangelical pastors in the Tri-Cities is "wonderful," and considers it one community, even though it's three cities.

"We meet every Wednesday for prayer at lunch and one of the things we pray for is healing in the community," says Barker. "Years ago, there were lots of failed church plants and splits in churches. We've seen that turn right around. There's a new atmosphere of care so that's a blessing.

The leaders in the Tri-Cities have worked hard at it and their annual municiple prayer breakfast, held for mayors, councillors, school board, MLAs and MPs was a huge success this year.

"They love to come because it's a time when they know they re not going to be put on the spot, they are just encouraged and prayed for," Barker says.

The associate pastor of Calvary Baptist Church stresses the power of united prayer is very important.

"That is central to Hope-Vancouver's vision."