Roxburgh Missional Network

I am writing this edition en route to Toronto the second day after the closing of the Vancouver, 2010 Olympics. The plane is full. People from all over Europe along with a collection of media, TV and sports groups are heading home. Many still wear the uniforms of their countries; others have the big, brown Moose horns given out at the closing ceremonies firmly set on their heads. It’s as if no one wants the Games to be over.

Something happened in Vancouver over the past seventeen days that’s hard to describe. The city came alive in celebration. Huge crowds filled the downtown all through the day and long into the evening. Hundreds of thousands of people lined up for hours at venues in a spirit of celebration. Police came in from across the country and spent most of the time in conversations together, sharing stories about recollections of being in their home towns. At one point a team of police officers started to play road hockey with a group of people. So much of it was spontaneous as people connected, talked, and joined one another in celebration.

This was not the Vancouver I knew in the months leading up to the Olympics. We were a grumpy city. Resistance to the games had grown. We didn’t like being told what we had to do and what we couldn’t do because this intrusive event was coming. The message that it would be best for residents to leave during the Olympics didn’t sit well with many of us. We were less than thrilled by all the announcements of road closures and needing permits to travel on our roads. It’s estimated that just prior to the event a majority of Vancouverites would have been glad to reconsider the whole thing.

Then the games began. I’m not sure what happened. It was as if we’d been waiting for a long time for someone or something to call back to life an identity we’d almost forgotten. What emerged was more than just a big, seventeen-day party with people from all over the world. What took place was the release of a joy over being Canadian that seemed to have been suppressed for a long, long time. Among all kinds of ordinary people something submerged, but waiting for its opportunity, broke out across the city and throughout the nation. People are now flying home to other parts of Canada; others are heading for connections to Europe, Russia, Georgia and so forth. The upsurge of life, joy and celebration among all these ordinary, everyday men and women is a moment I will never forget because I shared in the grumpiness and experienced the unexpected, unplanned transformation.

Over the past several weeks I’ve travelled back and forth across this amazing continent three of four times. I have met with leaders from a variety of church worlds. On the east coast I’ve been with Presbyterians, mid-continent I’ve been with Disciples and Methodists, in the West with Anglicans. Along the way I’ve had phone and Skype conversations with church leaders in New Zealand, the UK and Australia as well as Baptist, Nazarene, Methodists and Brethren leaders here in North America. That’s a lot of conversation across the breadth of the church in a single month. What I sense among them connects me with this moment, on this aircraft, heading for Toronto filled with a variety of people and nationalities heading home. A common thread runs through the conversations I’ve had with leaders. They all share an underlying concern for their churches.

These are denominational leaders. They are concerned for their denominations. On their watch they have experienced decline and have had to face both bad news and criticism about the future of denominations. I don’t need to repeat all the bad news - there are already too many grumpy people out there who relish that exercise. Another thread that connects them is their unapologetic love for God and the ways their traditions have been formed from the Gospel. Like the rest of us they’ve tried one model and program after another only to recognize that something much deeper than these technical fixes is happening. Something has happened at a subterranean level to the forms of church life that were so effective in the 20th century. These leaders know we are in a time when multiple narratives clash and compete to be heard in this strange new place where we find ourselves.

Alongside the daily struggle to guide their systems, these leaders have a firm conviction that God is not yet finished with them and their denominations. I agree! I believe we are coming through a long, dark tunnel into a time when many of these already written off denominations are about to discover the amazing ways God renews.

Over these last weeks as I have experienced the crowds and the emergence of this other, submerged, joy of being Canadian, I have listened to these leaders. Connecting these two experiences there’s something which, for me, is important to say. Just as this spirit that is Canadian found again a voice, denominations are finding a voice also. Denominations aren’t going away! They’re a part of this other, deeper, fabric of North America life. Over the past decades many have lost their way. As a result of endless criticism, they have lost their voices, their spirit, sometimes their identity. But God’s Spirit always works in the ordinary calling forth a new creation among people who have forgotten their stories and lost their way. The Spirit breaks forth with new life among those who no longer have the answers and who sense their programs and models are empty but don’t know where to turn next. These are the places where God’s future breaks out with celebration just when most folk are getting grumpy and can’t believe anything good can come from the old systems. Gestating in these denominations are the elements of God’s new future. That’s why I’m on this plane - on the way to meet with several of these creative men and women committed to the ways the Spirit will renew their traditions.