Around Town: Earthkeepers at New Brighton, Rikk Watts, Village Church . . .

Earthkeepers are inviting like-minded people to join them in cleaning up New Brighton Park Saturday morning.

The weather is likely to remain perfect this weekend, so some might want to spend Saturday morning (July 8) with the Earthkeepers down at New Brighton Park, on Burrard Inlet in east Vancouver.

They are gathering volunteers to “help clean up New Brighton Park, spend some time in God’s creation and enjoy the company of like-minded people!”

The focus of the clean-up is the eastern half of the park, which is located immediately west of the Second Narrows Bridge.

Earthkeepers: Christians for Climate Justice is “an ecumenical group in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories, working out biblical teachings in regards to ecology, love of neighbour and climate justice.”

In this cleanup they are working in cooperation with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, which notes that “since 1994, there have been 19,400 cleanups that have collected more than 1.2 million kg of trash across Canada’s shorelines.” Since 2010, there have been five cleanups that have collected 268 kg of trash at the New Brighton site.

The cleanup will take place from 10 am to noon. The Earthkeepers add: “Bring a bag lunch if you are able to stay afterward and share in a time of breaking bread.”

Rikk Watts is back at Regent College, for a couple of weeks.

Well, for a couple of weeks at least. Rikk Watts spent two decades teaching at Regent College before becoming dean of theology at Alphacrucis College in his native Australia.

Pastor Mark Clark began Village Church in his home in 2009.

Village Church was featured on CBC Radio’s Early Edition June 29. Host Stephen Quinn and reporter Jesse Johnston were both clearly surprised to have come across such a thriving church movement south of the Fraser River.

Here is how the interview began:

Stephen Quinn: Seven years ago a young pastor with Tourette’s Syndrome, who grew up in an atheist household, started a church in his home in Surrey. There wasn’t really anything newsworthy about Village Church in those days – it only had 16 members – but today Village Church has thousands of people in its congregation, a dozen Sunday services at three campuses in Surrey and Langley, and they’re looking to expand right across the country.

Now it happened at a time when a lot of Canadian churches are struggling with dwindling attendance and aging populations. So how did Village go from a living room with 16 people to a megachurch? South of Fraser reporter Jesse Johnston has been looking into that question . . .

Jesse Johnston: Sixteen friends of his, hanging out [pastor Mark Clark’s] living room, and that was the birth of Village Church. That was late 2009, and at the time he was reading a lot about what goes into starting a church. Through his research he found out that churches that don’t grow to about 200 people in 18 to 24 months don’t tend to do that well. So, that became his goal. . . .

Go here to listen to the interview, starting at 2:09:50. And here is the article by Johnston.

Surrey Christian School Belonging Benches

Twenty-two groups of Surrey Christian School students made ‘belonging’ benches for the surrounding community. Photo by Eric Fernhout.

Students at Surrey Christian School offered a gift to the community before letting out for the summer.

Students at Surrey Christian School sawed, nailed and painted their way to a greater sense of community belonging.

As part of a “Belonging Bench” project, more than 100 Grade 6 and 7 students were urged to contact local organizations to see if they’d be interested in having a bench “that would tell the story of what it means to belong to their organization.”

During three months of work this spring, 22 benches were built and later given to the organizations, which include BC Vintage Truck Museum, Royal Canadian Legion, Urban Safari Rescue Society, Options Community Services Society and NightShift Street Ministry, among others.

For the full story go here. There was also an article in The Light Magazine and set of pictures on the Surrey Christian School site.

The Anglican Parish Church of the Epiphany may be rebuilt in order to accommodate the Surrey Food Bank.

The Surrey Now-Leader reported June 28 that the Anglican Parish Church of the Epiphany may make room for the Surrey Food Bank over the next couple of years.