MissionGTA

I'm involved in a number of city-reaching activities in the Toronto area. Most of these activities are coordinated under the umbrella of MissionGTA (GTA stands for Greater Toronto Area). This week is filled with consulting and brainstorming activities that hopefully will refine our vision and move it forward. It is tiring work but we are making some good progress. Below are some parts of the documents that we are putting together. Definitely a work in progress!

After a number of months of battling to get our website back up we have finally launched a new MissionGTA website - albeit seriously lacking in content.

Our Purpose is ...

To see the kingdom of God impact every sphere of society by facilitating unity in the Body of Christ across the Greater Toronto Area.

Strategies

• Identify the key indicators of a transformed city and establish and monitor benchmarks for each of these indicators.
• Facilitate unity in the Body of Christ by…
a. Connecting various groups who are already causing a transformational impact in the different spheres of society as identified by the key indicators, and where such groups do not exist encourage their formation.
b. Providing representative leaders of the different geographical communities of the GTA with opportunities for interaction, prayer and strategy formation.
c. Providing representative leaders of the different ethnic communities of the GTA with opportunities for interaction, prayer and strategy formation.
d. Mobilizing unified intercession through the efforts of PrayGTA.
e. Providing the Body of Christ with opportunities for regional prayer gatherings (including City Hall Prayer, Prayer Summits and Global Day Of Prayer).
f. Encouraging the creation of a communication hub for all Christian activity in the GTA.

Activities

• City Hall Prayer Meetings
Having spiritual leaders pray in the seat of political power is an important step in transformation. Since 2000 MissionGTA has hosted a bimonthly pastors and leaders prayer meeting at Toronto City Hall’s Council Chambers. Every second month (usually on the 2nd Wednesday, but check our website for the latest info) we gather from 10am till noon to pray for our city and region. We also encourage other local networks to pray in their civic centres.

• GTA Prayer Summits
MissionGTA hosts an annual two-day Prayer Summit, bringing together pastors and leaders to listen to what God is saying to the GTA

• Global Day of Prayer
MissionGTA provides the visionary and administrative foundation for the annual Global Day of Prayer. Visit www.gdoptoronto.com for more info.

• Prayer Assemblies
We email prayer newsletters to hundreds of intercessors a couple of times a month and gather intercessors for strategic prayer several times a year.

• Promoting Christian Activities
Through our regular email updates we attempt to keep leaders informed of significant events in the GTA.

Our Core Values

Relational Unity
• Encouraging the expression of the one church in each geographic locality in the Greater Toronto Area
• Honouring our fellow Christians and celebrating diversity within the context of historic Christian orthodoxy

Servant Leadership
• Respecting and valuing every part of the Body of Christ through a consultative style of leadership
• Serving the local networks, helping them function as a corporate church in their locality
• Maintaining integrity before God and all people by personal and corporate accountability in all humility

Listening Prayer
• Calling the church in the GTA to corporate prayer
• Listening to hear clearly what the Holy Spirit is saying to and through the church in the region.

Four Streams

I was in Birmingham Alabama this past week to participate in a conference jointly hosted by the National City Impact Roundtable and the Mission America Coalition. Here's the brochure.

The City Impact Roundtables (CIR) have developed out of Mission America Coalition meetings. Christian transformational leaders from cities across the world have gathered twice a year for the purpose of building relationships, sharing kingdom-sized vision for holistic evangelism and revival, and praying together for united ministry throughout the Body of Christ. They have met in the roundtable format so that participants might also be contributors to the "city-reaching" process in their area. The CIR is a peer-to-peer meeting of Christian leaders who are prayerfully seeking the unity of the Church for holistic evangelism, the revival and renewal of the Church, leading to a cultural awakening and transformation.


The National City Impact Roundtable (CIR) examined four streams of cityreaching:
► Presence-Based (creating the environment in the city through unity and persevering prayer which welcomes in the presence of the Holy Spirit bringing in revival and transformation) with George Otis, Jr.
► Christian Community Development with John Perkins and the three "R's" (Relocation - moving into the area that needs redevelopment. Reconciliation - bringing harmony and peacemaking to those who are at odds with the system and with one another [particularly along racial lines] and redistribution - returning the power and influence back to those who live in the neighbourhood so that they can say that they have done it themselves),
► Evangelism with Paul Cedar (which focuses on evangelistic activities involving a Prayer/Care/Share approach involving the whole church sharing the whole Gospel with the whole city), and
► Marketplace Ministry (encouraging those who work outside of full time ministry positions to be ministers in their workplace environment and creating ministry through the "church of your workplace") featuring a panel that included Brad Fieldhouse, Steve Capper, Kent Humphrey and Bob Varney.

David Kinnaman wrapped up the event with a presentation of the research he did connected with his book "UnChristian".

The description of the four streams is actually very helpful in understanding different ways of approaching ministry in the city (even though there are more than four - these are just the best developed). Sometimes working in a city as large as Toronto is very overwhelming. All kinds of people have ideas of how to reach the city or transform the city or win the city for Christ. Their ideas are sincere but they often work at cross purposes because they have different approaches. These approaches are not wrong - they just focus on different faces of the mission.

At MissionGTA we tend to focus more on the "presence-based" style of city reaching. As such we invest in prayer for the city and gathering Christian leaders to act together in unity. The main activities are the Toronto City Hall Pastors and Leaders Prayer gatherings, The Global Day of Prayer and occasional prayer summits and targeted prayer events.