YES!

Friends,

“Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.”
19th century theologian William Newton Clarke

Sixteen months ago we started on a journey. Long story short, we purchased a house in Burnaby that we affectionately dubbed our “the house”. The cost? $867,500. Our sending church, the Estevan Church of God, mortgaged their property and loaned us $300,000 for a down payment. We agreed to pay it off over the next year. We partnered with people all across Canada and the United States, people gripped by a Kingdom dream.

And we have some GOOD news! As of July, the debt of $300,000 has been repaid!

Thank you for believing in us. For praying for us. For choosing to partner with us. He has been good to us!

What now?

I was reflecting on where we are and how we have gotten here during a conversation with a young leader in Western Canada. He asked me if I still believed in what we were doing. We have worked hard to get here. We have had to spend lots of time raising money and traveling, which is a tiring endeavor. We have chosen to engage our community and learn to breath the air of this city. And sometimes we have had less than kind responses to our passion from fellow believers who ask ,‘What exactly are you doing?’

This is what I know today:
God has a dream. And the dream is called redemption. The transformation of men and women, boys and girls; of people of all races and colours; of all cultures and belief systems; of all languages and geographical locations; of all perspectives and theological persuasions; of all political perspectives and intelligences; of every kind of brokenness and sinful reality; into a people who are called His.

I am more convinced than ever that Jesus has an incredibly high view of humanity and through the dream of redemption, people have the potential of greatness. I truly believe that He thinks we can change the world.

I think He calls us to dream a dangerous dream of Kingdom Reality. Where the systems and rules of this temporary world are brought into submission to a higher law; the laws of His Kingdom, the law of love. This idea is foreign to so many of us who have been taught to hunker down and hold on till He comes! God forgive us for allowing the Dominion of Darkness to scare us away from venturing into a place of influence in our communities.

We truly believe that everyone is longing for Jesus. They are yearning and hungering for what only He can bring. We believe that the role of the Christian in our time is to become translators of the deepest longings of men’s hearts. People are yearning for that which they have no language for…and yet it is a language we speak. The language of His Kingdom.

This means stepping into people’s lives. Into their darkness. Into their brokenness and forsaking the elaborate structures we have built within our hearts to protect us from the world. A world who desperately needs who we are. The People of God.

It’s messy. It's unpredictable. It’s dangerous. Scared? Look at that word. SCARED. Rearrange the letters a bit. S A C R E D.

I believe that as we step into the places of greatest need in the people who rub shoulders with us every day…we will find Jesus already at work there. And we will also find that He has been there waiting for us to get there.
SO…what will we do? We are going to pursue people. And love them with all that we are. And point them to the dangerous lover, Jesus the Christ. How will we do that? Well now, that is the great adventure. We will be sure to let you know as we experiment with love.

We will keep you updated on our journey.

Let me leave you with a prayer by Sir Francis Drake that my friend and brother Scott Wall sent me. It has captured my heart and urged me on. May it so with yours.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And push us in the future
In strength, courage, hope and love.

Pursuing Him,

Jonathan, along with the Mission Burnaby team.