Special pre-launch open house at Feast & Fallow Cafe - this coming Friday, Aug 19!

Enjoy this late Tuesday afternoon invitation to Feast & Fallow Cafe's special pre-launch open house!

VIP Day for Pacific Mountain Region - members, clergy, staff and community
Special pre-launch open house
Friday August 19, 2022
8am 'till 2:30pm
305 West 41st Ave, Vancouver BC

A new community within LeaderSHIFT's Church Planting network, Feast & Fallow Cafe is a social enterprise that's connecting people to their food and to each other. Co-located with Oakridge United Church, Feast & Fallow Cafe bakes bread, serves coffee, educates, and honours food security as a Christian value - and they want us all to come celebrate with their opening!

• RSVP to Feast & Fallow's Pacific Mountain VIP Day here.

• Contact Feast & Fallow's Stevan Mirkovich directly for additional information (and follow @FeastAndFallowCafe on Instagram!).

"Feast and Fallow is a Christian social enterprise. At the core of the historical Christian witness, is the celebration of the earth, human connection and community, and the sharing of food (communion is one such example). In recognition of this core Christian value and practice, some congregations are now choosing to focus on the role that food plays as both a humanizing and isolation reducing mechanism in our society. However, the issues around food are larger and transcend the social sphere. Take for instance how our food systems are exploited and extended in unsustainable ways. Many Christians, therefore, also share in the conviction that the Christian Church should raise its voice in advocacy for regenerative, sustainable, organic, holistic, and just food systems." - FeastAndFallow.ca/our-vision

This Week. These Hours. Pray them –

Many of us from the Pacific Mountain Region were transformed during our trip to Inhabit last year.   

There we heard so many stories about 'coming alongside what God is doing in the neighbourhood'.

This article picks up similar calls to incarnation, to being rooted in place, and not merely re-creating Church an merely another attractional, or consumer choice.

This is important to recall when it comes to who we live into our present situation as a church in physical isolation. For, as the article notes, what we do now will shape our future as the post-pandemic Church.  

If we now move to create virtual church, if we merely produce more polished product, more disembodied 'virtual' communities-of-consumption, do we risk missing the point of being the blessed, counter-cultural and incarnational (and, I would add, this Holy Week 'cruciform') community of Christ?  

This writer warns us about leaning too heavily on our newly found technologies - lest we create patterns where we become 'passive consumers' of product and program instead of seeking God's reign by incarnating more deeply into each other's lives and the life of the world.  

I spoke yesterday to a clergy friend, who told me that when their former congregation decided to livestream, they talked about doing a media-blackout for those who lived anywhere within driving distance. "Only those who absolutely can't attend should watch from home", was their posture.

I'm not sure we need to be so hard line as all that, not even when this is all 'over' (I'm not sure things will ever be the same - but that's another article!). But I do think we need this challenge - and we need it now - to sharpen our ways of being Church. We need to  be conscious of we prayerfully adapt to the current situation.   

Even as we use technology to keep us connected, and even to offer word, sacrament and pastoral care -  what we will put in place now to challenge the potential for disembodiment and consumerism? How are we setting a foundation to be a distributed, connective, collaborative and high-participation Church?

What a beautiful challenge for us to discern at this time of crisis.

May we deepen our connections as we move into the Story of this Holy Week together.

- Rob  
--

(The Rev.) Rob Crosby-Shearer
LeaderShift Church Planting Project Regional Minister
The Emmaus Community and the Abbey Church
www.emmauscommunity.ca / www.abbeychurch.ca 
text / confidential voicemail 778 977 7562