My Old Stomping Grounds

Yesterday and today I experienced a taste of what is to come in my new ministry as church planting coach and it happened at one of the churches in my old stoping grounds.

Vancouver Chinese Evangelical Free Church now meets in a new building in Vancouver but it wasn't the building that caused me to ponder what God has in store. Over 10 years ago I served as a District Superintendent of the LowerPacific District of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada, a district that has a growing multiu-ethnic look and sound. VCEFC is one of the churches that I worked with then and where I just returned from today - a wonderful church of over 500 Chinese people with services in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. This year it hosted the Lower Pacific District Conference and I was a guest from across the border.

I met many people including pastors and leaders whose birthplaces included Sri Lanka, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Korea and of course Canada and the US. The food, music, fellowship and teaching were great, but it was the people who impressed me and gave me a glimpse into the future of my ministry as a church planting coach and consultant in the Pacific Northwest.

There was Chad, a young former youth pastor but now a church planter struggling to make sense of his new ministry that he has dreamed about for many years. Chad and I taked about his experiences in the first few months of church planting, his frustrations and his faith. He encouraged me as I began to encourage him. We talked about his needs and he expressed to me that he and his wife had been looking for and praying about finding a coach who could help him. We talked some more and I offered to begin coaching him. He and his wife were excited to talk to someone who seemed to understand what they were going through and who could coach him in his journew of hard work and faith in God. He wants nothing more than to reach new people with the Good News of Jesus Christ and draw them into a new community (aka church) of believers and seekers. Our coaching sessions begin in the next couple of weeks.

Then there was a man who has helped to plant churches and still has a heart for church planting and who is a lay leader in another church . He was born in Viet Nam and has come close to completing a seminary degree. We talked much and I believe God will use him in some special ways in the near future to plant one or more "international" churches. I believe we will be in contact much more in the days ahead and I pray I will be a Barnabas to him in ministry and church planting in particular.

While at the Conference, I also met several Koreans who now live in Canada and are planting churches to reach Korean immigrants. One is the leader of a group of Korean pastors, church planters and churches. Hang around these dear folk and you can see and hear the love of Jesus and the vision to multiply churches that will multiply churches. They may struggle with the English language but they do not struggle with the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. The leader mentioned to me that he knows of two other Korean church plants in the Seattle area and he wants to get them in contact with me.

It's been a great encouraging first week of new ministry for me and I can't wait to see what God has planned. Next week begins the hard work of contacting people who would be willing to join our Ministry Support Team. Who will send us? (Matthew 9:36-38)