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© Trinity Community Church 2007 — All Rights Reserved
Next Wave Unlimited
Congregational Meeting – Sunday, August 26th 2007- Issue Summary
introduction
A congregational meeting has been called for Sunday, August 26th 2007 at 1:00 p.m. in the auditorium at Trinity. This will be a place to hear the issues spelled out with clarity, a chance to discuss what is before us, and a chance for everyone to vote on our vision and our relationship with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Members and attenders can vote at this meeting. Representatives from our denomination will be present as well.
background
In 2003, the current facility was opened, three years into the life of Trinity Community Church. As we grew, our regional reach grew, and by 2005, we saw dozens of families driving from over an hour a way to be with us each Sunday. In late 2005 through to early 2006, the elders, leadership team and congregation wrestled down a call to a vision to become a multi-site church. That would mean we would become one congregation with multiple locations. It would test the bounds of what is practiced and permitted within our current denomination governmentally and stylistically, but our leadership truly see this as a call from God, as did so many in the congregation. Not every community has a church like the one God built here, and we believe we can help people in other communities find Christ by extending our church from location to location.
For more information on the multisite vision as it was presented in 2006, see the document called Next Wave UnLimited/May 2006 available with this package, or listen on line to the series Next Wave UnLimited at HYPERLINK "http://www.trinitycommunity.org" www.trinitycommunity.org. The challenge in this vision is that the denomination owns the land, building and assets of all local congregations. Potentially, if we walked away from the denomination, we might need to start fresh with a new facility.
process with the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC)
On July 4th 2006, Carey Nieuwhof, our lead pastor, wrote to the Presbytery of Barrie requesting a meeting with Presbytery and national officials from our denomination. The Presbytery arranged the first such meeting with local officials for December, 2006. It took until April 2007 to get national officials around the table. At that meeting, it became clear the denomination was open to us trying to become a multi-site congregation, however, they could not guarantee it would be an easy or reasonably quick process. In our elder’s views, becoming multi-site within the PCC would involve another five to ten year delay with no certainty of outcome, which in our view is not acceptable.
the leadership’s decision
Over the late spring of 2007, our elders came to the decision that in order to fulfill the vision we believe God has given us, it was best to leave the denomination. Since there is no process in the PCC for a congregation to leave (in the same way that there is no clear process for a congregation to become multi-site) the elders, Carey Nieuwhof and Patrick Voo made a decision to resign no later than November 15th 2007 and to begin a new church. Our hopes that all or most Trinity people would join us in this new church to fulfill and continue the vision we have discerned together.
The new church will in many ways be a continuation of the ministry God has given us in mission and purpose, and with substantial continuity in leadership (staff), small groups and ministries. Naturally, some things will be different, but the new church will be quite recognizable in mission and purpose. We would simply cease to be Presbyterian, and with it, if we could not reach a deal with the denomination, we might cease to be able to meet in this facility and need to begin again.
