Update Tuesday 4/10/11 - What are the chances!

It was around four o'clock in the afternoon and I was just about to help my wife in the kitchen as we prepared to host our first house church meeting when I heard the knock on the door.   The knock was from our friendly neighbourhood Jehovah's witness.  This may have been one of those moments where I would have just blown them off, politely of course.   If you have been following this blog for the past few weeks, however, you will know that I have been trying to engage in conversation and witness to this particular visitor whose name is Rose.  This must be the sixth or seventh time Rose has visited, and despite the fact that I have begun to ask some harder questions and push back, albeit gently, she continues to return and when she does she keeps mentioning how there is something different about our home.  In all honestly, I think this growing relationship and opportunity to share is all because we have been friendly, welcoming and loving.  So Rose keeps coming back, and I keep engaging.  I am learning a lot in the process, about what she believes, about what it is like to share with someone who has a very firmly rooted belief system and how to do so in love.  This particular meeting was the biggest challenge of all, especially in regards to the later point - to do so in love.  Being an inopportune time I was distracted and it made it much harder to resist my natural temptation to jump into a debate.  I was also a little frustrated by the end when it seemed that all my sharing so far has made little impact and it has been hard to shift the conversation from me listening, to me sharing (there is no doubt that she still thinks she is trying to convert me).  That is when my neighbour Diane arrived for our first house church meeting.  She was coming for dinner, followed by worship, study and prayer.  When she arrived on the front porch where I was meeting with Rose, they looked at each other and realized that they knew one another!  Diane had been Rose's boss when they were both nurses in a seniors care residence a few years ago.  As one of Diane's employees, Diane would regularly pray for her.   What are the chances!
I still have no idea what will happen in this relationship with Rose, although I continue to pray for our times together and I pray John 16:8.  I pray that the spirit would convict her of sin, righteousness and judgement and that she would see these things clearly, untainted by the twisted truth she has received.  This, however, seems at the very least a small confirmation from God that we are supposed to be here, that we are on the right track and that most importantly, He is here at work.  I have been encouraged.  And so with this in mind we continue to look around us, we continue look to the future and we are trying to put things in place to get us from here to there.  Here are a number of things that we are currently working on for which we would appreciate your prayers:

October 31 Halloween outreach - this is something we started in Milton where we would have the worship band set up in the driveway and play music while we handed out candy for the kids and hot chocolate for parents.  It gave people a reason to pause, during which we tried to engage our neighbours in conversation.  We are working on the details of doing something similar here in Hamilton.

Our local paper has recently run some statistics regarding poverty in our city, some of which you can read here:  the Spec   .  I continue to try to meet with different people across the city with experience in this field as we pray through how a little group might be engaged in addressing these issues our city faces.   Please pray that God would give us clear direction as we seek opportunities to serve right from the very beginnings of our group. 

We continue to look towards starting a work on the McMaster campus.  We are praying through the best approach and how God might most effectively use us as a local church in partnership with an on campus presence.  Our next step is to meet with a number of students that we know through various channels who now study at McMaster as we seek there observations, input and advice.

Budget - The Sanctuary Church in Milton (our sending/parent church) has a year end of Dec. 31st which means that budget time is upon us!  We will be working over the next few weeks to prepare our Hamilton portion of that budget.  Although numbers may not be that exciting to everyone, I recognize that setting a budget is also a time to pray and consider all the things that God may be calling this church to accomplish over this coming year.   Please pray that God would speak clearly to us, that we would be inspired by the Spirit and have a clear vision of the possibilities for this coming year.  Please also pray as we seek to discern the ways in which God will provide for all that He calls us to do.

Once again, thank you for your role in what God is doing here in the Hammer.  Your support and prayers are a vital part of all that we do here.