A New Beginning!
February 3, 2025
Church, our visioning journey is almost at an end, we are nearly ready for a new beginning as we move into the implementation stage!
Throughout our year-long discernment journey, the Lord has helped us identify what He wants of New City Church over the next 3-5 years. Namely, we believe that God wants us to have
Fruitful Mission
A Clear Discipleship Path
Impactful Neighborhood Engagement
Deep Spiritual Community
A Stable and Sacrificial Core
As we have prayed, discussed, and sought your input through various measures and means, we believe that these are the ways the Lord wants us to grow, serve, and bear fruit over the next key phase of our church’s mission.
So, how did we get here?
Click HERE for the summary of our progress between Winter 2023 and Fall 2024.
Click HERE for the report of our congregational meeting on Oct 27, 2024.
Since the congregational meeting, here is what has happened:
On November 20, 2024, we gathered our core ministry leaders to hear from about our emerging vision, especially about the way that it impacts their ministries and vice-versa. It was a very encouraging, hope-filled evening. There was much enthusiasm about the emerging vision, but people were also honest about their fears and personal costs of doing ministry. People appreciated how the emerging vision seemed to present a good balance of discipleship and an outward focus. People spoke about the excitement of greater neighborhood engagement. And we wondered aloud how we could shepherd the church well through these changes, and the pace at which we should implement them.
Ministry leaders saw a great deal of alignment between the emerging vision and their ministries. Here are a few examples of how people thought the new vision would present greater opportunities for them.
More connection with vulnerable children and families
Greater opportunities to adorn the gospel through the arts
Training and equipping missionaries
More opportunities for the youth and young adults to interact with unbelievers
Possibility of offering daytime ESL classes
Creating welcoming and warm spaces in the building
Here are some challenges that were identified:
We will require more funding.
How do we avoid losing the global vision as we focus on our neighborhood?
How will small groups fit into the emerging vision?
Where will the volunteers come from?
How do we move newcomers to the core?
How do we make all our ministries be more evangelistic?
On December 17, 2024, the elders gathered for a strategic directions workshop to answer the question, “How will the Lord use New City Church to overcome the obstacles and challenges that were identified?” Together, we began developing the following strategies:
Growing in Dependence means finding ways to grow more reliant on the Lord, his power, his Word, and his Spirit, as we strive to do his will. This will involve increased sustained practices of vibrant prayer, both individual and corporate. We also spoke of the need to encourage one another through stories of people coming to faith and those living missionally faithful lives. This will be essential for all five areas of our vision.
Partnering to Attain the Vision means investing in partnerships with like-minded friends for mutual encouragement, support, and the ability to accomplish what we cannot on our own. This might look like greater connection to the Steeltown network of churches, partnerships with foundations for external funding, and new building-related opportunities. This will be important especially for impactful neighborhood engagement and fruitful mission.
Understanding the Neighborhood means just that! Downtown Hamilton is a rapidly changing and growing place. We need to identify who our neighbors are, so that we can effectively reach them with the gospel. This will involve finding new and creative ways to meet our neighbors, doing demographics analysis, gathering information on the needs and assets of our area, panel discussions with community leaders, etc. This will be important for impactful neighborhood engagement and fruitful mission.
Bridging the Gap between the Church & the City is also self-explanatory. We cannot have impactful neighbourhood engagement if we do not make meaningful connections with our neighbors! To this end, we spoke of hosting creative and engaging community events, outdoor worship services, daytime ESL classes, and doing church-based mercy ministry. This will be essential for impactful neighborhood engagement and fruitful mission.
Deep Spiritual Community is both strategy and vision. Through deep gospel-centered discipleship, Spirit-filled worship gatherings, and intentional community, we long to see a tightly-bound community of disciples who are bearing good fruit. This will involve the completion and rollout of a new, comprehensive discipleship model, including discipleship groups that address cultural pressures and idols, age-and-stage-specific needs (e.g., youth, young adults, parents, men, women), training in evangelism and missions, etc. Building deep spiritual community will also mean more intentional community gatherings, discipling people in gospel hospitality, encouraging greater commitment and membership, and more. This is a wide-ranging strategy and will be important for all five areas of our emerging vision, but especially deep spiritual community (obviously), a clear discipleship path, and a stable and sacrificial core.
Launching Vision is about how we will bring people together in unity of vision. Without clarity, inspiration, and intentionality, even the most compelling vision will flounder. To this end, we will invest the necessary time, energy, and resources to make sure that we communicate the vision clearly and compellingly, lay out a roadmap for how we will get there, invite people to meaningful commitment, and encourage more people join in. This strategy will be important for all five areas of our vision.
On January 22, 2025, the elders gathered to develop the strategic action plan for achieving our five vision goals. For each vision goal (e.g., clear discipleship pathway), we began to identify the objectives (e.g., complete one full cycle of discipleship pathway), identify the tasks needed to accomplish the objectives (e.g., train teachers), determine how long it will take (e.g., 1 year), identify the champion(s) who will lead the way, and set the budget for each task.
The action plan is still a work in progress, but we expect to complete this final stage of our visioning process soon.
Well, there you have it, church. We are nearing the finish line and we are very excited to take this new journey with all of you. So, please pray, pray, pray!
How, you ask? Please pray
For the Lord to give us the strength, clarity of thought and speech, and desperate dependence on the Spirit to finish the visioning process well.
For the courage, power, and unity to follow through on our vision commitments.
For the Lord to lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.
For the Lord to provide all we need, including people, opportunities, time, and resources to accomplish His goals in His ways.
For the Lord to move powerfully through our new vision to revive sleepy Christians, convert non-Christians, and to build His kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
We love you so much, dear church. And we are incredibly privileged to share in the Lord’s work with all of you!
Moses, on behalf of your elders
