Christianity & Culture
Transcript:
Rev. Darren Herbold:
Hi Alliance Family, it’s summer. Everybody is out making the most of their short, glorious summer. So we’ll keep this short as well—sweet and to the point with a few resources and a story. Christianity and Culture is a six part video series with a discussion guide built for small groups, and it was created by our very own Peace Portal Alliance Church. The series wrestles with the question of what does faithfulness to Jesus look like in our culture, in our time in Canada? I love when our churches create content like this, because this content is uniquely Alliance and Canadian. Also, an extra special thank you to the team at Peace Portal for being so generous with this content and sharing it with the Church of Canada. So you can find a link below the video here, and let’s check out this trailer together.
Christianity & Culture trailer
As Christians, we’re not just saved from something. We’re also saved for something. We are filled with the Spirit of God and sent into the world to be on mission with Christ. Is Christian faith the absence of thinking? Is it a vague sentiment or a wish about the way we want things to be, or is faith something more? When we grow in personal and corporate reconciliation, God grows in us a posture of humility. Sometimes it’s also the power of an alternative culture that bears witness. Culture is the shared human project of actually emerging out in the world. We’re here to make something of it that gives glory to God. That’s actually something every human being is invited into. Welcome to Christianity and Culture, a multi-week course that lives in the intersection of our faith in Christ and the world we live in. Our goal in these weeks is not so much to give you answers, but to deepen the Gospel lens by which you view all things. This is a lifelong journey. It is the work of engaging culture Christianly. Shape
Darren Herbold:
Okay, a few save the dates: General Assembly firstly— it’s going to be next June in Calgary. Pastors, as you’re preparing your 2026 budgets, please plan to join us in Calgary. You won’t want to miss it. I just came out of a planning session today and I’m growing in excitement. We want to grow in our individual and corporate prayer rhythms, as well as we seek to be a movement rooted in a culture of corporate prayer. I’ve heard that you need to have seven touchpoints for somebody to take action. So I’m going to remind you again that I’m setting an alarm on my phone to pray the vision prayer every day at noon. Would you join me in that?
And as we continue to develop rhythms and structures that foster corporate prayer, I’m excited to announce that there will be Online Alliance Canada prayer events held on the following dates: This fall we’re going to see that and pray together on September 18th and November 27th, and in the new year, February 12th and April 16th. Please hold these dates to join us as we collectively pray. Take time in unity to discern, to listen and pray for the things God is doing. We will have registration for these events soon so you can keep an eye on the next connection email for more details about the September 18th prayer event coming very soon. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer, and I’ll leave you with one last encouraging story about prayer in the Central District. Let’s watch this together.
Power of prayer CCD
We believe in the power of prayer. The prayerless church is a powerless church. Before Pastor Larry retired in 2019, we had a prayer group that met together once a month. We meet at the Chinese Alliance Church. We are about 7 or 8 of us, the pastors in Windsor. After a time, I think there were changes at the other churches, and so it was difficult for us to continue to meet together. And also Pastor Larry himself retired. And then Covid happened. And so we didn’t meet. 2023 came around. I’ve known Joseph for a long time. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. And so, I wanted to see how he was doing. So I gave him a call. And so I called him and we met, just to pray and, to chat. And then Joseph was like, you know, we really need to get the other pastors together to pray again and, to do this more often. So I offered to call around and contact the other pastors and see if we can get together. And so, I think we had our first meeting in August of 2023, and people were blessed by it. And so, we were like, hey, should we do this again? And so they were like, yeah, let’s do it again. Then the next time we met together, we invited everybody between Woodstock and Windsor. Prayer is a key to Christian ministry. Evangelism without prayer is useless evangelism. The more we pray, the more doors will be open for our ministry. Doubling our reach by 2030— that is not something I know how to do. So it’s got to be a God thing. If we pray for wisdom, God’ll answer that prayer.
So us getting together and praying and paying attention, some of us are going to see things that others of us can’t and we’ll share with each other the wisdom that God gives us. So I hope that we start meeting bi-monthly. The Lord helps us to love one another as a district body and have a commitment towards one another. If we are divided, the enemy has a way of destroying the church. But if we are united, there is a force of unity by the power of the Holy Spirit that will guide us to what we cannot do on our own, we can do it together. For united we stand, divided we fall.