Reaching Our City (ROC)

 Reaching Our City (ROC) weekends at SAC in 2009
January 15, 2009 Update

A: The Big Idea:
We have spoken much in our weekend services about the missional essence of the church. We are the “sent ones” of God to announce and live out the good news to our city and our world. The challenge is that even though we have spoken of the vision of being “missional-incarnational” at South Abbotsford, the vision rarely makes its way to the reality of where we live. Beyond inspirational messages, we need to discover together how to become missional, beginning where we live here in Abbotsford.

The idea of monthly ROC weekends is to go deeper than inspiration, and to provide concrete understanding of who are the people in our city and what can be done to reach them. We want to pinpoint broad subcultures of our city that are within our grasp to reach, and then concretely consider how we can reach them in 2009. Our people (middle school to retired) should be able to leave an R0C service saying: That is something I could do, or better yet, that is something our Life Group could do!

Each ROC weekend would have this theme: Reaching the_______ in Our City with the blank being filled in with the sub-culture. So for example in February we will begin with Reaching the Neighborhoods of Our City.

B. Themes and Schedules:
1. The Neighborhoods: February 14-15: explores the theme of being incarnational within the neighborhoods in which we live. Coordinator: Doug Harder

2. The Poor: March 28-29: this could include the homeless, the hungry, with the accompanying mix of prostitution, drug and alcoholic abuse, and mental disability. It could include the working poor and those forced to rely on low-income housing and food bank handouts. Coordinator: Graham Schultz

3. The Indo-Canadian: April 25-26: With 25,000 in Abbotsford- what is their world like? Their world-view, the impact of Sikhism on daily life, their perspective on Christians in Abbotsford, the way to build friendships among them. What about generational gaps between 2nd and 3rd generation Punjabis who are fluent in English?

4. The Workplace: May 30-31: this would take a good look at what life is like where most of us spend 40+ hours each week- rubbing shoulders with people in white-collar offices, retail businesses, construction industry, municipal service sector, and other workplaces that typify many in our congregations.

5. The Marginalized (by Age, Mental and Physical Health): June 27-28: Hidden behind closed doors or institutions in our city are those who have been shut-off from the mainstream because of mental or physical heath along with the challenges of old age. Many of these people are lonely and would welcome anyone who would visit and extend care. These would include those in hospitals, the Menno Place, other senior care homes, and often the condos, townhouses and even neighbourhoods where we live.

6. The Student: September: here we explore the educational sectors of our city from elementary to UFV. How does one reach fellow students- or express our faith in the classroom? What about the influence of parents of elementary kids in the school system? Teachers? Or the role of ESL teachers to the increasing flow of immigrants?

7. Other topics might include: the prisoner, the addict (substance abuse), the immigrant….We need to keep the themes (sectors) broad enough to include those who many in our congregations would have access to, and not be able to dismiss the sector as “not applicable.”

C: ACTION POINTS:
• Each ROC Sunday should have a pastor who coordinates the services- and draws together a small team of people who will plan and implement the ROC for that weekend.
• The ROC team for THE POOR (for example) would need to determine the design of the service, and search for the right people to involve in the intro, incarnational stories, rep of the sub-culture, practitioner, etc.
• MEDIA: We need to develop a graphic that will tie the ROC weekends together that can be used for PP, etc. It would also be awesome to have someone who would be willing to go into the city and make a video clip of the sub-cultures we are targeting.

The ULTIMATE GOAL of all of this is to see our people actually investing relationally in the lives of people who do not know Christ, and to see those recipients of love and grace join our Life Groups, our weekend celebrations and become devoted followers of Jesus. Any less than this, and we have missed the mark.