Becoming a Church Out Serving
Picture this: A church in a rural Ontario town is approaching its 50th anniversary. As a congregation, they would like to mark the milestone by giving something to the town, but they aren’t sure what a good gift might be. The church is without a pastor, so any action on this will need to come from the council. A young deacon decides to visit a meeting of the local ministerial to see if he can glean some ideas there.
At the meeting, local pastors discuss the question but don’t come up with a lot of ideas. Then the young deacon remembers the Community Opportunity Scan, a tool he’s heard about from Diaconal Ministries Canada (DMC), an organization that equips deacons in their work and has close ties to the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA). He mentions it to the pastors, and before long all 13 churches in town have signed on and are working to assess the needs, assets, and opportunities in the town, and to figure out ways they can work together in service.
That scenario played out more than 15 years ago when Eric Haverkamp, then a deacon at Immanuel CRC in Simcoe, Ont., shared the idea that eventually became a thriving local shared ministry, Church Out Serving, which he now helps to run.
After two years of working together, the churches of Simcoe came up with a report in 2010, in which they identified three main areas of opportunity in their town: family matters, building community, and overcoming poverty. This gave them a lot to work on, and they knew they needed to continue as a team to work most effectively – so Church Out Serving was born. The assessment work was called a Community Opportunity Scan, and it became known as COS – which “stuck with us,” states the Church Out Serving website. Over time the name they settled on would still be “affectionately abbreviated to COS.”
As Church Out Serving grew slowly, leaders and volunteers from the various churches created projects; formed partnerships with local agencies and social services; connected with community leaders, politicians, and business people; and drew more volunteers from local churches. Setting aside things that can divide people, churches, and denominations, participants in Church Out Serving embrace the vision of being “a community that loves, and is transformed by it.”
More recently, on Feb. 24, 13 people representing DMC, Immanuel CRC of Simcoe, the CRCNA Indigenous Ministry, and Church Out Serving gathered at Riversyde 83, a cafe and eatery in Simcoe run by Church Out Serving. One of the objectives that DMC’s Mark Vanderwees said he had in bringing the group together was to learn from the story of Church Out Serving – and included in the meeting were two new DMC diaconal coaches and a new staff member who came to see the impact and the possibilities of DMC’s work.
Adrian Jacobs, the CRCNA’s senior leader for Indigenous Justice and Reconciliation, attended the meeting to discern possible connecting points with the CRC’s Indigenous Ministry. He was encouraged, he said, by the stories of how much of a difference collaboration between churches can make in a community, and he added, “I really appreciated the embodied theology in community ministry – not just prayer and great ideas but also love and compassion in action.”
Some of the ministries of Church Out Serving, Jacobs noted, include community gardens to address food sovereignty issues, fresh-food boxes (including referrals from community paramedics), and a teaching kitchen to build skills for community empowerment. In addition, he said, “Church Out Serving collaborates with [supportive housing ministry] Indwell to address housing needs through the provision of household basics, including furniture. About 15 to 20 percent of the houseless community is Indigenous,” and this collaboration can be really helpful in providing services.
Mark Vandervliet, a ministering elder and clerk at Immanuel CRC in Simcoe, noted that the ministry of Church Out Serving also includes a donation station, hot meals, and frozen meals for upwards of 100 people, as well as a warming place in winter, in cooperation with a local Baptist church.
“A ‘tiny homes’ project is something they have also begun to explore to see if this is an initiative God is leading them to engage in – still in the early stages,” Vandervliet shared. Trinity CRC in Goderich, Ont., had hoped to send representatives to the meeting to discuss how they might have a meaningful role in a ‘tiny home’ community, but they were prevented from attending because of snowy, dangerous driving conditions.
Vanderwees said he believes that more churches are starting to think about the possibilities of ‘tiny home’ communities and how they could be part of the conversation. A lot of churches have properties, many of which are well placed for opportunities, he added. “They’re trying to work out what to do that would be stewardly with their assets, rather than just selling them off or building a bigger church or whatever,” he explained.
The ministry of Church Out Serving also addresses more than material needs, drawing people into community and mutual service. For years, Vandervliet said, an annual “We Believe in Simcoe” event included benefits like free clothing and groceries, home-maintenance help, a clean-up of local streets, and more, powered by hundreds of volunteers from most of the churches. While the event eventually ended during the COVID-19 pandemic, it had helped to foster a good relationship between Church Out Serving and the town council.
“I personally celebrate how we were able to break the ‘CRC only’ barrier and began to recognize Jesus’ team in all the denominations in our town – including Roman Catholics and Salvation Army, Pentecostals and Baptists, etc.,” said Vandervliet. He explained that while Immanuel CRC and their DMC connection had a role in the creation of Church Out Serving, everyone involved really brought it to life through prayer and patience. “To this day they still center their ministry on prayer for God’s direction. . . . Immanuel [CRC]’s participation amounts to financial support and many of our members’ being part of the Church Out Serving volunteer team.”
Immanuel CRC of Simcoe has gone through some difficult times in recent years, admitted Vandervliet. Reactions to decisions made at recent synods have brought division, and the pastor, along with a number of elders, deacons, and members, left the congregation. “The few council members that remained didn't know if Immanuel [CRC] would survive,” said Henrietta Irwin, currently serving as an elder at the church. “We started an intentional prayer time, asking God for some assurance that he had not left Immanuel, that he did indeed have a plan and a future for us. The answers were fairly quick to follow.”
“God poured more than two dozen refugees into our worship setting in a matter of a few weeks,” explained Vandervliet. “Meeting their immediate needs distracted us from our troubles and focused us on how we could band together to serve.”
Around the same time, a generous donation from a past member helped to stabilize the church’s finances, said Irwin. As members of the congregation learned to rely on God’s provision, “People began to step up to fill various roles, and by God's goodness and grace, we have hope for the future,” she said.
Hilda Van Gyssel joined Immanuel CRC around the same time as many of the refugees, she said, and she now serves the congregation as a deacon. She was one of three people representing the church at the Feb. 24 meeting. When she began her role on council, she was new to the church, she said – “And hopefully I have brought some refreshed energies to the church, but not without the grace of God leading the way. When there is talk of past hurts, I can go past that and encourage fresh beginnings without a past. I think God allowed me to be here at just the right time.”
When Van Gyssel attended the meeting, she said, she was encouraged by what she learned about Church Out Serving and Immanuel CRC’s role in its beginnings.
In the stories that emerged at the meeting – of how an idea and a desire to serve birthed a flourishing ecumenical community ministry, of a growing discussion on addressing homelessness through ‘tiny home’ communities, of a church being recreated after challenging times, and of new partnerships between churches and the CRC’s Indigenous Ministry – Vanderwees said he sees a lot of hope.
“The beautiful thread in there,” he said, “is how God uses churches in unexpected ways, constantly redeeming them.”
