This hybrid church will be developed with all the theological elements of a Biblical church. At the same time it will be a contextualized, progressive, outside of the box, grass roots movement, with the specific purpose of reaching diverse urbanites from a variety of fringe subculture, who generally would not devotedly follow Jesus, be interested in church, or think favorably of Christians.
In essence church for people who do not like church. In order to do that, we will use methodologies and strategies that are different. They may seem unconventional and at times may feel uncomfortable, compared to some churches and yet are Biblically permissible.
There will be an emphasis on Jesus and His call to all His disciples, more than just the twelve, to follow and be transformed by Him. We will utilize contextualized evangelism, discipleship and leadership development approaches, as we live out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) Jesus gave to all His disciples. We will also live out the love for God and for people that is taught in the Great Commandment (Luke 10:27). We are praying for the opportunities to introduce many to Jesus for the first time and to reintroduce to Jesus many others who have strayed away, or have never really connected into community.
Primarily the target people are born in North America, from a variety of ethnic and mixed backgrounds. They are from various subcultures such as arts, music, extreme sports, business, drugs, Internet technology, and more. Within this focus, we are praying for the Holy Spirit to create a transformational ministry within a common community. These people are at different points in a journey of exploration and eventual hot pursuit of Jesus. They could consists of artists and addicts, athletes and anorexics, PHDs and prostitutes, employable and unemployable, the mentally sane and the mentally ill, multi-home owners and homeless, and more, because by His grace, He has pursued them first.
We are aiming to disciple our people to live out the Biblical idea that church is more than just a building. It is the community of believers called by Christ and that happen to meet in a building. Although the community of Jesus' followers corporately worships Him, a church ought to be considered more than just a worship service or mass that people attend one day a week. We also desire to disciple our target group, to understand that the church is more than an institution. It is a community of Christ-followers and the living body of Christ.
The community will be modeled somewhat like an open source software community, which is organized to facilitate hundreds or thousands of volunteers who contribute to the development of the core software and its plug-ins. Just as in this example, there will be a Core Team that is responsible to steward the vision and direction, as well as establish an infrastructure that encourages and empowers as many people as possible to contribute to the missional community. Their faith becomes more than the passive spiritual consumerism that is common in too many of today's churches within Metro Vancouver.
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