About Us

In, For and With the Neighbourhood

We believe that God is a missional or a sending God. Missio Dei (the “God of Mission”) is one of the ways we refer to God. God forms and sends people into our world to be a sign, servant and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The term “Missional Church” is being used today and we are part of that movement if it is described as a “renewed theological vision for the church.”

Our read of scripture informs us that God the Father, Son and Spirit created our world and placed humankind in it. God the Father sent the Son who sent the Spirit who, in turn, sent the Church into all corners of the world (and neighbourhoods) to fulfill the purposes of the Kingdom of God. We think the Kingdom of God is that place where what God wants done gets done.

This is why we take seriously where God is calling us. We ask people to considering moving into places where we see Him at work and form Mission Groups together that will love God with our heart, mind, strength, love our neighbours and love one another. We engage practices of listening and watchfulness to see what God is up to in these places and then we humbly join him.

Several Mission Groups make up a congregation in a specific neighbourhood and when we gather (typically on Sundays) it is a time of worship, celebration, sharing stories of God at work and engaging the story of God through the scriptures.

Our Story

Since the start of our faith community in 1992, we have been involved in four neighbourhoods in the Lower Mainland area around Vancouver, BC.

We began by engaging in the Edmonds area of Burnaby with a 1912 church building that had closed a few years previous.

We multiplied into two congregations with the addition of a congregation in the Robson Parkneighbourhood in Surrey in 1996.

By 2000 we became engaged in two other communities: Willoughby in Langley and Forest Grove in north Burnaby. We are currently evaluating our future in Willoughby.

Neighbours are very important to us. They are the people in the place where we live, work, play, rest and worship. They are the people we experience life with in the place we call “home.”

We want to network people together who want to be involved in helping make the world a better place, starting with our own community.

We have expanded on the neighbourhood theme in two ways: one was to begin to help plant a church in Sauk, Albania. The second was to initiate a missional training network called “Forge Canada” that grew out of a leadership intern program and that is currently connected with hundreds of church leaders across North America.