A group of Winnipeg churches is joining forces to put faith into action in Fort Garry, as they invite the community to come together for prayer, unity, and a neighbourhood cleanup aimed at loving their city one area at a time.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been a part of the leadership team for the city-wide ministerial for 10 years,” says Donovan Friesen, lead pastor at Anchorpoint Church in Winnipeg. “Part of the journey, you’re looking at the whole city. Sometimes, the whole city becomes a little too large to grasp. How do we reach, or care for, or love, the entire city? For our church in particular, we had to narrow it down to the local area, Fort Garry.”<\/p>\n
Anchorpoint Church partnered with Church of the Rock and Grant Church for prayer and fasting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We thought, ‘If we can love Fort Garry well, other churches can also do this within their communities.’ If you don’t have proximity, walking alongside people in the community, how in the world are you ever going to have an influence or care for them or love them?”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On May 9, the three churches and anyone else in the area of Fort Garry who wants to can come out for a day of cleaning up the neighbourhood. Friesen has watched other churches do this separately, however,\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One of the mission statements for the city-wide ministerial is, ‘How do we seek the welfare of the city?’ Welfare being the good of all the things of a community, regardless if you’re a believer or not. How do we make the city a little more like heaven? Let’s know each other and find unity.”<\/p>\n
Biblical Theme Lived Out in the Community<\/p>\n
Friesen shares that Jesus’ heart cry near the end of his life and ministry was that the body of Christ be unified.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The same unity that the Father and Son have, we’re invited into this unity, by the Spirit, altogether in one. And yet, I think we’ve sort of settled on a fake, or little unity. Which is, we know each other from a distance, so we don’t really know what’s going on with each other, so we don’t know the ugly, and so we have ‘unity’ because we’re nice to each other. Instead of, how do we really know and love each other, even though the more that’s exposed, that is good and not good, actually, we still love all the more. That’s the beautiful part, and that’s what we’re fighting for.”<\/p>\n
Anchorpoint’s pastor, who is also a husband and father, says that getting closely connected to each other is messy, but worthwhile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As pastors, we kind of get locked in our world. We do our little thing and stay there because it takes so much more work to get out and meet with other people or pastors. So we set up programs because it’s more efficient. But in the long haul, I think what it does is make an organization, instead of like an organism, where the kingdom can go forward. I think it takes a lot more work on the front end, and it’s much more fruitful and can move on the long end.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friesen shares a few ideas for people who want to move towards unity with other believers but may not know where to start.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Show up to church like 30 minutes early and come and be ready to serve. Wipe down counters in the bathroom, wait for people to come in, help make coffee. Stay there, be there, and care for people. After the service, stay long, and get to know people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of Winnipeg churches is joining forces to put faith into action in Fort Garry, as they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-542160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}