Go Local: Becoming Open to the Work of God’s Spirit

On October 31, Angelica Nunes will be standing outside her home in Kamloops, B.C., to greet her neighbors who bring their children by for Halloween trick or treating.

She is open to seeing how the Holy Spirit will be at work on the evening youngsters go door-to-door in their costumes.

“The idea is to meet people. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we’ll reflect on it afterward,” said Nunes, whose church, Sahali Fellowship CRC, is taking part in Resonate Global Mission’s Go Local initiative.

Going Local

A journey of 18-24 months, the intent of Go Local is to engage congregations in practices that help them discover and join God in their neighborhoods. The process involves congregational guiding teams and pastors who commit to listen, discern, experiment, and reflect together. The goal is to develop habits and practices that the entire congregation can participate in as a way to engage their communities.

Ultimately, the agenda is set by God, as discerned by the guiding teams, made up of four to seven laypeople who guide the process. Nunes is a member of the guiding team at Sahali.

“We come together to listen to God and to one another, and we try to discern what is God is doing,” she said.

Preparing to Join the Harvest

During the first phase of Go Local, the  Sahali guiding team has met regularly over the past several months to “dwell in the Word.” In this, the team reflects on one passage of Scripture, Luke 10:1-12, in which we read of Jesus sending out 72 disciples, two-by-two, “ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”

Each time the four-person Sahali guiding team meets, they reflect on how the passage hits them and discuss what new things — because there are always new things — the Spirit has been telling them.

As part of this effort, they have met periodically with church members to read the same Scripture passage. The second listening practice is to walk and pray in their neighborhoods. This exercise helps in familiarizing themselves with the people living nearby — and planning for the next phase, in which they develop experiments that are shaped by what they have been discerning and that will further their understanding of what God is doing in their neighborhoods.

The church council also participates in dwelling in the Word at its meetings.

“I have had many stories of interaction with our neighbors,” said Rev. Jana Vander Laan, who is a copastor of Sahali Fellowship with her husband, Michael. She and Michael are not members of the guiding team. Instead they meet with a leadership team of other pastors.

“We have not begun any grandiose programs out of this, but we definitely know God is on the move,” said Jana.

Learning to Listen
Launched as a pilot about three years ago in a few select areas across the CRC, Go Local is aimed at renewing the church by teaching and helping church members to connect more deeply with Christ and one another and to engage their neighbors. It is not a program; instead, it involves stepping into and learning from the mystery of God.

“Go Local is helping churches to open their imaginations to what the church is and can be in their local neighborhoods and communities through simple practices of listening, experimenting, and reflecting, with a goal of discerning and joining in God's activities in those local places,” said Moses Chung, Resonate’s director of mission innovation.

“Go Local has two foundational practices — listening to God through dwelling in the Word and dwelling in the neighborhood.”

Put God First

Earlier this year, Resonate wrapped up its first pilot cohort of churches involved in the Go Local process. Using what they learned, they have been expanding additional cohorts throughout the United States and Canada.

“Go Local teaches people to slow down and listen to God and one another through simple practices,” said Chung. “It involves learning as you go, and it is catching on and expanding.”

Known by other names in different denominations, Go Local arises from the writing of such authors as Alan Roxburgh. In his book Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World, Roxburgh says that over the past few decades many Christian churches have turned to secular business models and programs to address issues such as church growth and renewal. Understandably, he writes, churches want to know what the future holds and to prepare for it, as well as to address issues facing it today. But God needs to be first.

“All this planning, strategizing, data gathering, and managing tells a true story about who we think is really in charge of this world. God’s agency is secondary, functioning as a background resource to support our own management efforts. . . . God’s primary agency is out ahead of the churches, not only inside them.”

Taste and See

As in other regions, the cohort in British Columbia began with several “taste and see” introductory workshops in which church leaders and members were invited to experience a taste of the initiative, explore the reasons for this adaptive approach, and ask questions.

These four-to-five-hour participatory “Joining God in the Neighborhood” workshops seem to be very helpful and inspiring for participants, even if their congregation decides that they are not ready to join in the process.

Since Go Local is a learning journey, Resonate wants to engage four to seven congregations in a region to form a community of practice in which neighboring congregations can encourage and learn from one another and also begin to tell their stories and share their experiences at classis and beyond.

Living on the High Ground

Located in the neighborhood for which it is named, Sahali (which means “high ground” in the Chinook language) Fellowship CRC is close to a fairly large retirement home, a hospice facility, a series of hiking trails, low-income as well as market-rate apartments, and residential neighborhoods. These are all places to which their Go Local experiments could take them. Their experiments might also simply take them next door to meet their neighbors, “share peace” and “eat what is set before them” as the foundational text for the process (Luke 10:1-12) instructs.

As it turns out, Go Local has already helped to revitalize this congregation.

Stunned but Still Strong

In 2012, Sahali — some 75 miles from the nearest CRC in its area — was stunned by the sudden loss of Rev. Henry De Vries, their pastor for 23 years. “That was a very difficult period, and we put many of our ministries on hold,” said Nunes.

The Vander Laans arrived in 2014. Coming into Sahali, they saw that the people’s grief over their pastor’s death hung on. Probably because of that sudden event, church members seemed to be uncertain of their future.

“There seemed to be a lack of confidence in who they were as God’s people,” said Jana Vander Laan.

At the same time, Jana could see resilience and hope in the congregation. The members were close and stuck together.

Initially, they tried a couple of traditional outreach programs, trying to bring new life to Sahali. “There was no traction until we got involved with Go Local,” said Jana. “Now, there is a new spirit percolating as we learn with help from our guiding team.”

A New Way

People are beginning to pay attention to God’s creative Spirit moving everywhere — at home, at work, in friendships, and even in “chance” meetings. They see God’s hand at work in all things.

During this journey, said Nunes, the process has been hard at times. Go Local isn’t about starting a program and waiting to see the results. “Many of us are very goal-oriented, and this can be difficult for us,” she said.

In a report submitted in connection with the Sustaining Congregational Excellence grant* Sahali received to help with Go Local expenses, Jana Vander Laan wrote: “The discipline of dwelling in the Word is teaching us how to listen to God and to each other. Listening takes so much practice, even when we think we are good at it.”

Also challenging is the matter of reorienting one’s connection with God. Go Local isn’t about praying for things we want or for things in a church or its ministries to go a certain way. It is about being available and open to whatever surprises and seemingly wild ideas God has for the congregation. It’s about learning to trust by letting go of our agendas and stepping out of our comfort zones.

“The whole Go Local process can be confusing because you don’t know how it will end,” said Nunes. “You have to trust that God will speak and move even though you don’t know when or where that will be.”

*The Sustaining Congregational Excellence program, which for several years awarded grants to smaller churches for creative projects and programs, came to an end on June 30, 2018. If your church would like to apply for a similar grant to fund a ministry idea, check out the Ignite program.