Community of Hope, the new Grace Brethren church in Vancouver, British Columbia, launched last week with 220 present. Here is an excerpt from church-planting pastor Philip Bryant. Access the church’s website at www.gethope.ca.
What a Sunday! Praise the Lord for all that He does! It was amazing to see how God worked out all those details. We had a few bumps along the way, but I am so delighted in how each of the team refused to let Satan have a foothold and they didn’t get rattled.
In the midst of the children’s computer not working right and the sound system in the main theatre acting up and the lights being difficult to set up and then the circuit breaker going in the middle of the first song – Wow! Great perseverance and God so protected us as by the time the first service was over we were totally ready for the 10:00 and our guests to be welcomed.
It was amazing to see people coming in at 9:30 to see what was going on and there was the entrance area looking very inviting and hot coffee and special baked goods welcoming our guests.
We had the iWorship DVD playing in all the lobby TVs and the music filling the hallways. Lots of people helped to welcome our new guests and the children’s area was ready to help people register their children.
People were filling up the theatre and the band was creating a great environment for worship. We interviewed pastor Jason during the announcements and by this time we had over 100 adult guest in the theatre and some 40 guest kids. In all we had over 220 people there on our first Sunday.
How many will come back? That is a great question, and how many new people will we continue to see? We are praying for more people who don’t know Jesus to come discover Hope – hope in Him.
In all, we think there were about 30 pre-Christians who came and we are praying that they will stay and that God would use us to bring them to become fully committed followers of Jesus.