A moment we’ve all been waiting for

As church planters, there are two questions that are often asked when people find out you moved to start a new Gospel outpost. The first one (which is also the hardest to answer) is often, “Oh, where is your church?” There’s a concept that so many people (Christians included) have of what the church is, and it so often revolves around the building.

I’m not sure if people just assume that we must be independently wealthy or that there must be some huge benefactor or organization behind us that can just afford to buy us land and a building, but unfortunately for us, we don’t just happen to have the means to spend the millions of dollars required to build a beautiful new building to house our church plant (unless of course you’re reading this and you are supposed to be that person - then by all means please send us an email and let’s make it happen). But that means the answer to that first question has often been, “We’re not sure yet. We’re hoping to mostly reach the west part of Edmonton. And we’re looking into finding whatever space we can use to that end.”

And the second question that typically is asked is, “When are you starting your Sunday services?” 

In terms of what a church is, the word church literally means assembly. It’s God’s people who assemble together in local expressions to live out being the community of God. Therefore one of the aspects is to gather for corporate worship. For edification, for rejoicing in song, for prayer, for discipleship through learning and growing through the scriptures, and for participating in communion. It’s something we’ve been looking forward to getting started since we landed just over a year ago, but in order to do so, we’ve been working on gathering enough of a core team so that our Sunday gathering is inviting and hospitable. 

And so now that we feel like we have that minimum core team that we would need to start gathering together regularly on Sundays, this week (yes, that’s September 7th!) we’re going to be starting what we’re calling our Beta (or even Alpha) Services. You might be familiar with beta software programs or the like, but it essentially means we’re starting to gather, but things aren’t going to be super polished and we’re looking for input and help in continuing to make things better. It’s not a full Public Launch yet. We’re hoping to do that in January once we have a more permanent space to work with and we can invite people from the community and general public to gather with us.

But for now it’s like a special invite-only: you-have-to-know-someone-who-knows-someone kind of weekly gathering.

We’ll be starting a sermon series working through the book of Paul to the Philippians, singing together, and praying for God’s work to be done in us and through us.

And at least for the month of September, for our Sunday gathering we’re going to be meeting in a home on Sunday afternoons at 2:30pm. And then for the months of October through December (the plan for now), we’ll be meeting at West Edmonton Baptist church at 2:30pm every Sunday afternoon as well.

If you’re able to join us on Sundays in September, please contact us for the address, and we’d love to have you take part with us.

And if you’re praying for us, please pray that we’d be able to find a space starting in January that can serve us for the longer-term as our Gospel outpost in order for people in Edmonton to hear, receive, and believe the Gospel.

Thank you again for praying for us. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you for being behind us in this mission to see those who are lost become found and delight themselves in our wonderful Saviour. If you want to contribute by praying or through financial support, or if you know of others who would like to be a part of this mission to Edmonton, head over to https://graceyeg.com.

On behalf of our families, 

Clay & Jared