Got this email from Jason and Charissa Shine the other day. They are campus missionaries in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Origins is partnering with them to pray, send money, send teams, and eventually send missionaries there to start a church in the Downtown.
Thank you for considering serving alongside us here in Canada, and specifically here in Edmonton. Let me start off by telling you a little about ourselves, some about our city, suggest some ministry ideas, and end with some questions.
The challenge that my wife and I have decided to address in the last year since we were called here by God is the eternal fate of Edmonton's 100,000 college and university students. At our main campus of the University of Alberta there are other campus ministries, but we are the only Christian ministry on the majority of the campuses where we work. The fact is the overwhelming number of Canadian students not only do not know God they literally know nothing about God. They have not rejected the gospel, they have simply never had it presented to them in a way that made sense to them even once. There are churches for them to go to, but they have no idea why people go there or what goes on inside them, and many of them do not even know one person who has told them that they are a Christian.
We came several thousand miles across the country for a promised salary of $1400 per month to engage in this task. God called us. Compared to what you know of Baptist Campus Ministries we have no resources and extremely limited budgets, but these are not the challenge; the challenge is impacting the souls of these students. On top of this we have further become aware that no one cares about the eternal fate of the young people (students, young professionals and new immigrant families) that make up our neighbourhood; there is no church focused on reaching this neighbourhood and they, like the students we feel called to reach, are far from a God they know nothing about. We feel compelled by God to do something about this and we would love your help!
Currently in Edmonton we have 8 Canadian National Baptist Convention affiliated churches. None of these churches is much over 200 at their biggest event of the year and most of them are less than 100 on an average Sunday morning. Only 5 of these churches have buildings of their own.So, that's the task at hand. To be honest, sometimes I can get overwhelmed at the lostness of Greenville, its 10,000 Downtown residents with less than 10% attending a church regularly. We are partnering with a city of a million, with more unchurched, pre-Christian people who are just as precious to God and in need to seeing and hearing the good news Jesus brings. We can forget about Canada in the midst of flashier (and warmer) church planting or mission partnerships with Europe or Central America or Africa. Yet God has clearly called Origins to partner with Edmonton, Alberta.
So would you consider the following:
- Would you consider, Origins, going to Edmonton February 7 - 11 to see, serve, and pray for Edmonton, its college students, and its young professional population?
- Would you consider giving financially to Origins for those going on this trip?
- Would you be willing to receive the Shines e-newsletters and other info they send out about Edmonton and their work in the city, to know how to best pray for them?
