At Outreach Canada, we love to share stories, and today we are excited to share this story from a church in Canada: South Delta Baptist Church in Delta, British Columbia. 

Paul Park, the Lead Pastor at South Delta Baptist Church, is spearheading a growing Korean language speaking congregation within SDBC. Pastor Park's bilingual skills and passion for making disciples are the catalyst for uniting all who attend to engage and support this multilingual staff and congregation.

We are excited to share this story from this Canadian church - as it touches on key themes that are core to Outreach Canada: disciple-making; innovation in ministry; and Diaspora in Canada. 

*This article was orginally shared by South Delta Baptist Church on their blog, in November 2023, and has been reshared here with their permission. You can find the original article here: Living in Deep Community as Disciples of Jesus

Living in Deep Community as Disciples of Jesus

Last week, Grace and Leesoo (leaders of our Korean Ministry) and I attended a conference in Calgary called Church Planting Congress 2023 hosted by an organization called Church Planting Canada. Learning about innovations and trends in church planting across North America was helpful for us and we were encouraged to see how God is working in his church today.

Although our Korean ministry is not a traditional church plant, we have planted a different language ministry within our church family. This is a growing trend in church planting—rather than asking new church plants to become self-sustaining in 3-5 years, it is often better to work in partnership instead of eventual autonomy being the goal. We enjoy having our Korean brothers and sisters being a part of our church family. Despite our linguistic and cultural differences, we worship together, serve together, and embrace being one church family.

At the conference, we learned that there is a significant effort in the North American church planting world to plant a different kind of church rather than our traditional "gathering focused church." These new churches focus on building a deep community where God's word is lived out together as a family. It was highly encouraging to hear that what we are emphasizing in our church (Radical Hospitality and Meaningful Connections) is something that church leaders all across the continent are focusing on at the moment. At the conference, they highlighted some exemplary churches that embody these values and, in these communities, people in the church often live in close proximity to one another so that they could share life and share mission. There is an open-door policy so that people of the church are in one another's homes all the time. They refer to the people in the church having "refrigerator rights" in one another's homes, meaning that they are so close relationally that they are allowed to come and open the refrigerator to get food or beverages without asking. In fact, sharing life is so crucial to the success of the church community that many people even move in together in co-ownership of houses among church members, especially since home ownership has become more expensive than ever in places like California, British Columbia, Ontario, etc.

These churches that emphasize radical community are now sending out the laity to plant churches rather than ministry professionals. They are "co-vocational" church planters who have full-time jobs as doctors, lawyers, teachers, software engineers, etc., but they understand that their primary identity in life is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. These churches are sending 30, 40, or even over a hundred people at a time to move to different areas and live in close proximity to one another to plant a church there; to share the gospel, baptize new believers, and make disciples of Jesus. Rather than church planting being focused on a minister with the support of a core-group, everyone carries the responsibility as a co-vocational planter in the church. Instead of their careers determining where they live and how they spend their time, these people commit to making their faith community the determiner of where they live and spend their time. Some of them even shared how they chose a different job because they wanted to make sure they had time to do the Lord's work. These are some deeply committed disciples of Jesus.

Grace and Leesoo have extensive experience in this kind of church community. In fact, Grace and Leesoo lived in a similarly radical church community in Korea and were sent out by their church in Korea to plant a church here in the Lower Mainland alongside 40 other people from their church community. Some of those people planted a church in Abbotsford and some of them have joined Grace and Leesoo in planting a Korean language ministry as a part of our church. Their sending church still supports them financially as they support our Korean Ministry funds. Grace and Leesoo's community know how to do Radical Hospitality and Meaningful Connections really well, and they are bringing their experience of sharing life and mission to our church. This is a huge gift to our church family.

Please continue to pray for our Korean ministry as they continue to share life and share mission with us. May the Lord bless our church family so that we embrace God's call to live in deep community as disciples of Jesus.

Paul joined South Delta Baptist Church in 2013 and has fallen in love with the church since then. He transitioned into the lead pastor role in late 2017, and has been blessed to serve Jesus and the community of South Delta alongside SDBC. He has a strong passion for preaching God’s word and living a missional life empowered by the love of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Outside of ministry, Paul enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Sarah, and their children Nathan and Christianne.