Kingdom teamwork
Ironies abound. Centre Street Church in Calgary is one of the largest churches in Canada, running a wide range of programs for people of all ages and the community at large. Last month it played host to a biannual Church Planting Congress—a gathering that challenged pastors and church workers to pay less attention to attendance, buildings and programs, but to focus instead on transforming their own neighbourhoods.
Let's talk first about the big church in Calgary. CSC operates out of two "campuses," one of which is its original church building, and the second a magnificent new edifice tucked a few blocks away in an industrial district of central Calgary. The newer campus houses a 2,400 seat state-of-the-art auditorium, a secondary chapel suitable for weddings and funerals and smaller services, a prayer chapel, administrative offices, attractive Christian education facilities and a large foyer with a food court.
It's a very nice place, a large-scale spiritual services delivery system. About 7,000 people gather at various CSC services for worship each week. The church employs 120 people and has some 3,400 volunteer positions. Centre Street is a long way from the classic little brown church in the vale.
Despite its size and unlikely location, Centre Street manages to cultivate a very generous spirit. Its leaders happily made church facilities and volunteers available to a conference that featured speakers who declared that the appeal of such "attractional" and "program-driven" churches is in steep decline. These speakers warned that these types of churches are producing consumers rather than missionaries. "We rely so much on people coming to us. That's a waste of time in many communities."
Some went so far as to recommend that churches get rid of their buildings in order to minister more effectively and economically in a changing context. "In some situations, not having a building frees you to think of things differently, while having a building limits you to thinking in a certain way."
None of which appeared to faze their hosts. And that's because everyone involved understands that fewer and fewer in our society have any meaningful connection with the church. Canada's Christians are increasingly in a missionary situation, which means that those who love Jesus and care about communicating His gospel must leave their comfortable church buildings and go to people and places where the message of God's great love is not getting through.
The irony is that people who work and worship at the big church called Centre Street seem fully prepared to lend a hand to any who will work to advance the Kingdom in this way. Even big buildings have a helpful role to play.
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