Calgary Wesleyan Church and we have a recent update from Pastor Justin Bradbury.
While Covid was still a major national concern, Pastor Justin felt led to accept the challenge of leading a complete overhaul of a small congregation with a remnant of people. Together they prayerfully planned and moved forward in faith with a vision to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their plan included an every home gospel saturation using the Finding the Hope outreach materials, including a gospel message and an invitation to a special event for the entire family.
Their regular church attendance had 30 or so people meeting in a rented community hall. As they launched the outreach, they had no idea of what to expect. Here is Pastor Justin’s first update.
“We had a very good outreach weekend in early November! We had no clue how to gauge how many people would come to our Family Fun Day on Saturday, given that our church is new in the neighbourhood (and it’s the first time this church has done such an event!).
Our conservative estimate is that at least 150 attended Saturday afternoon! Likely more than that. We were helped greatly by 10 students from a local Bible College in Edmonton who came for the weekend to help us run the events. On Sunday morning, the students led the entire service and preached. It was a huge blessing to our congregation.
Throughout the Saturday and Sunday of the November events we collected contacts to at least 60 new people (21 households) and have already contacted them. Most people indicated on the ballot that they heard about our event through the EHC mailing they received in their mailbox.
Wanted to say a big thank you for the HUGE support EHC invested in us. I am confident that beyond the weekend events, there will be a long-term impact.”
The story continues. Approaching Christmas they kept up with cultivation of their outreach area and held another event that resulted in up to 40 of the new contacts returning.
Lets pray for this expanding congregation, for its leadership and for the many in their neighbourhood that they will become disciples of Christ.
Reaching communities with the gospel is an on-going process of praying, sowing, gathering, cultivating and discipling to the glory of God. Let’s pray that many more churches across Canada will be awakened to this vision.