Tapestry: ‘A Time to Replant’

Since the launch of Tapestry Christian Reformed Church (CRC) on what is now its main campus in Richmond, B.C., near Vancouver, three other church plants have taken hold and grown quickly.

They have had no intensive phone campaigns or advertising pushes. Instead, Tapestry has expanded by the grace of God to serve a wide range of people, many of whom are new immigrants to Canada, said Pastor Albert Chu, who worked with a core group to help begin Tapestry more than 15 years ago. Resonate Global Mission has also been a key partner in all of the church plants.

Underlying the evolution of Tapestry, said Chu, has been the goal of welcoming people of all ages and church backgrounds — or those who come from no church background at all.

“Our church has, over time, become a sanctuary of brokeness. We are a people doing life together,” said Chu on a sunny Monday morning as he drove busy streets in Vancouver to Mundy Park Fellowship, the home for many years of a CRC congregation that turned a few years ago to Tapestry to help address declining membership.

At the urging of Martin Contant, then the regional leader for Christian Reformed Home Missions (now Resonate Global Mission), Chu came from Edmonton, Alta., to start Tapestry Church with a handful of people in the livingroom of his home.

“There was my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, my wife, and two other couples,” he said.

Eventually they began to meet in the fellowship hall at First CRC of Richmond — and then after a time the church closed, making room for Tapestry to take over.

Chu, now a local mission leader for Resonate's Western Canada team, brings to his ministry work an awareness of how difficult it can be for people to believe in God and attend church.

“I grew up going to church, but had serious doubts about church,” he said.

Looking for answers in his college years, he read many books on various religions. While he found kernels of truth in other faith traditions, he kept coming back to his own. Only Christ, God made man, rang true for him in the long run.

“I understand the confusion and disappointment people have with church, but I came to realize that the Christian God makes sense” — and that is the God he wanted to serve, he said.

Planting new churches has become part of Tapestry’s desire to serve — and especially to connect with Asian immigrants to Canada. A key element in the church’s vision — and likely in its success, by the Spirit’s leading — is being able to identify with people and make room for them to worship in whatever ways they are ready.

Some of this vision arises out of Chu’s experiences.

“Personally, I have been through some excruciatingly difficult things, but those things have humbled me,” said Chu, explaining that they brought him closer to God and gave him compassion and sensitivity for others facing struggles. He has developed the ability to see what others need and how they are wrestling with God — and he often speaks to that in his sermons.

Making the Change in Mundy Park

Neil Roos was a longtime member of what is now Tapestry: Mundy Park, and he had watched as the membership aged and declined and as ministries began to dry up for lack of resources.

He knew something had to be done if the church, founded in the 1950s, was to survive. At first, he reluctantly supported the move to have Tapestry Church in Richmond come in to consult with them about the future.

“We had grown to having 230 people or so in church on Sunday mornings. We were a fairly vibrant community. We had a choir and offered Coffee Break evangelism,” said Roos, who worked for many years for the Christian Labour Association of Canada.

“But in the last few years we saw younger families move away for different reasons. For one thing, they couldn’t afford to live in this area.”

At first, though, said Roos, he wasn’t too sure about changes that Sam Lee, one of the Tapestry representatives, suggested. Lee and others from Tapestry had said that without major shifts in worship style and outreach, things at the long-time CRC looked bleak.

“We’d always been able to run the show by ourselves, and now we had brought in these new people who seemed to be telling us what to do,” said Roos, who is now a leader of Tapestry: Mundy Park Fellowship.

Over a series meetings, the two groups began talking about the feasibility and desirability of a possible merger and what that might look like. Roos slowly began to see the Spirit at work, leading the church into a new day in which it opened itself to a wider range of people and possibilities.

“We increasingly realized this wasn’t a church grab,” said Roos. “Tapestry wanted to help us. It was about disciples making disciples. After one year of discussions, we decided to go for it.”

Now a praise band plays on Sundays, and Pastor Sam Lee doesn’t stand behind a pulpit to preach. “Society is changing rapidly from all quarters, and we have to change with it,” said Roos.

“We have to look at how we can be the church together in this time as God’s people. The CRC reminds us that we have a local and a global calling.”

Pastor Sam Lee served as a chaplain for several years at a juvenile corrections facility and then took a position working for Tapestry as a chaplain at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Throughout that time, he didn’t see himself becoming a pastor of a church — not to mention one emerging from a largely Dutch heritage and seeking to find a way in the diverse world that is increasingly characterizing Vancouver and its suburbs.

But being a chaplain and having worked with people of many faiths prepared him to be a pastor in ways he could never have imagined, he said. Lee underwent the assessment process to become a church planter and was called to serve as the pastor at Tapestry: Mundy Park.

“I’ve come to realize that I love starting new things,” he said. “I like the whole process of bridge building.”

He uses the analogy of viewing a family portrait — such as the one that once defined the congregation — and helping to expand that portrait with new shades and dimensions of color.

When they decided to merge and make their new church a satellite of Tapestry, members of the former, well-established church in Mundy Park took a few weeks off and held no Sunday services.

“There was a feeling of sabbath rest and then a time to replant, a time of ending and a time of looking forward,” said Lee.

About 40 Tapestry members joined the remaining members of the former church to make up Mundy Park. They held a grand opening about two years ago.

Today the freshly painted and spacious sanctuary has a feel of openness and freedom. Roos, a woodworker, crafted a large cross that hangs on the front wall. Lee recalls how a retired college professor who said he was an atheist started coming.

“He was having a crisis of faith that sent him in search of churches. He came here and now loves this place and may get baptized,” said Lee.

While the number of children who had come to New West  had dwindled to four or five, Mundy Park now has 25, said Roos. “We have come to realize how important it is to somehow share God in a way that is working and speaks to the situation.”

Building a Future

Church planting is starting to make its way into the overall fabric of Tapestry. Besides the church plants in Marpole and Mundy Park, Tapestry has begun a Saturday-evening service at its main campus “that has a different vibe” for “soccer moms and dads and others who have a hard time making it on Sunday mornings,” said Albert Chu.

The leaders of Tapestry are also beginning to work with other churches facing declining membership, he said, “to help them dream what they can do to better serve God in their context.”

Chu said his hope is that the churches in Marpole and Mundy Park can plant other churches over the next 10 or so years. “Let them plant other churches, and let’s make sure their children plant churches. We don’t want this to be a one-generation thing.”

And More: Starting a Church at Home

Mae-Ling Yen, a longtime member of Tapestry, and her husband, Russell, are there nearly every Sunday to greet people coming in for the worship service in Richmond.

Hospitality, said Mae Ling, is their gift; welcoming others is a ministry to them. But she has thoughts of extending that hospitality and perhaps even starting a small church in the apartment building where they live.

A couple of years ago, she attended Inhabit, a conference in Seattle, Wash., that encouraged people to embrace new ideas for extending the walls of a church into the community. Being there fired her imagination, she said. Mae-Ling and Russell sold their home and moved into an apartment building.

Since then, she said, she has tried to share her faith, more through actions than words, with her neighbors. She invites them over to eat, she engages them in conversation, and she keeps the door to her apartment open for children to stop in if they wish.

“I’m done talking about where will we go on our next vacation,” she said. “I have said to God, ‘Here I am, send me.’ We need to be sent out and be able to love our neighbor right next door. You don’t have to preach Christianity but allow relationships to build.”

Her neighbors include people from Iraq, India, and Haiti. She tries to make them all feel welcome.

Chu said he is watching what Mae and Russell are doing and wonders if planting a church right where they are makes sense.

“Physical presence is an important thing,” he said. “We have to be always asking what we can do with the spaces we inhabit to be a blessing to our community.”