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Transforming Our City Through Relational Unity

It's one thing to say we are One Church but it's another to have real relational unity. The recent CAPITALYZE Conference in Ottawa (hosted by Love Ottawa and One Way Ministries) gathered church, ministry, and marketplace leaders to inspire city-wide initiatives. Keynote speakers were flown in from all over the world (Mark Visvasam Nannan from India, Stephen & Roger Sutton from Teesside, UK, and Kevin Palau from Oregon) to deliver inspiring testimonies and practical takeaways on how we can work towards social, spiritual AND cultural change in our city.

Think of the impact we, The Church, can have in our city if we think beyond ourselves and outside our own church family.
To begin making a greater impact through unity:

1.Gather with the Christians in your sphere (for example, if you work in health care, gather other Christians in health care, if you're a teacher, gather with teachers, law, business, justice, the arts, etc.).
Then ask the question "How can our city be different in 10, or 20 years?"
Then ask "God, what do you want us to do?"

2. Cast a Big Picture vision and pray about it regularly. When Christians from different congregations, backgrounds and denominations come together to pray, true relational unity is formed and we begin to work together as One Church.
As Stephen Sutton said: "We have the same King, the same mission, and we're placed in the same land." so why aren’t we prioritizing people over our own church’s vision?!

3. Think about what we can do together that we really can’t do alone. This may be something big like influencing the education system or relief in a disaster or in times of desperation.
The convicting reality is that your church growth has little to no impact on the transformation of its surrounding community. We tend to view everything from a ‘church’ lens, but it’s the community around us that is hurting and Jesus USES the church.
Christians weren’t created to be chained to a pew, we were created to be part of the answer to the world. Love one another, honour each other, then work towards meeting the needs of our city

Core Worship
I am thankful for the opportunity to launch Core Worship at CAPITALYZE. My co-founder Jason McNabb and I led a workshop for worship leaders in alignment with the theme of the conference: Prioritizing real, loving, personal relationships with other Christian leaders in the city. As leaders in the church, it’s easy to start here.
If you’re a worship leader, you can learn more about Core Worship: Equipping and Encouraging Worship Leaders for Meaningful Kingdom Ministry, at coreworship.ca

By Care Baldwin
Promotions Director and Host of the Home Stretch

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