If you are care about Metro Vancouver, or urban issues, or how your church should relate to the city surrounding you – come to Tenth Church next Thursday afternoon (November 6) to participate in Tools for Neighbourhood and City Transformation.…
Every year the Halloween machine seems to grow larger. Christians have taken a wide range of stances, from vehemently opposed to creatively engaged to uncritically accepting. This year, writers from two local churches – Redemption and Reality – wrote helpful…
Many churches occupy old buildings on valuable property in the urban cores of big cities across North America. Some of them are renewing their facilities, and their relevance – often with the help of financially-savvy faith-based partners. This week we…
Forge Canada will host A Day With the New Parish Authors next Monday evening (June 2). The following piece is an extract from The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight Friesen. For several years the three of…
Artisan Church has been praying about what it would mean to be a Neighbourhood Parish Church. Already well established in the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library downtown, and planning a second community in East Vancouver, their vision is…
More teenagers in Canada now identify as Muslims than Anglicans, Uniteds and Baptists combined. That was just one of the findings put forward at Shifting Stats: Shaking the Church, a series of day-long forums for Christian leaders that attracted an…
Religious freedom is enshrined in both American and Canadian constitutions, and the separation of church and state is highly valued (see related article, Canadian society needs to find ways to respect religious diversity – and rights). This often makes for…
“Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.” We hear this gem from St. Francis of Assisi often these days. The phrase is introduced as an encouragement to good works, but also, commonly, to subtly disparage proclamation of…
Read through the 123-page West End Community Plan released by the City of Vancouver October 22 and you might come to the conclusion that there’s no longer much room for the church in that congested and secular environment. The comprehensive…
Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson’s website recently announced that his Engaged City Task Force is launching some “steps to modernize civic engagement” and some new online tools to achieve that goal. Noting how ironic it is that unprecedented access to communication technologies “should…