Early in 1994 Robert Leyland expressed a personal call of God to start a new church in London, Ontario. He had a sense that God wanted him to start an international church. On September 18, 1994 the newly formed Grace Community Church held its first worship service in a public school. The members of the church represented many nationalities, including Filipinos, Chileans, Ghanaians, Chinese, and Canadians whose ancestry was mainly European.

A core value of this new church was simplicity because there were people from various cultures, English being a second language for many of them. This value was reflected in the messages from the pulpit and in the singing of simple choruses. The church experienced moderate growth in numbers and the membership was stable. However, due to its small size and the high cost of overhead, Pastor Leyland served bi-vocationally.

In 1996 the church called Stan Starkey to be their pastor. Stan was greatly influenced by Rick Warren and the seeker sensitive movement. With this new influence, the focus of the church shifted away from Leyland’s model of simplicity and the spiritual growth of new Canadian Christians. The messages and services reflected a concern to be inoffensive to those who knew not Christ. The focus became outreach events: dinner theaters, pig roasts, parties, all of which were designed to bring the irreligious into the church by programs rather than by an exposition of Scripture, by works rather than by the Word. The emphasis became “cultural relevance” and a pursuit of unchurched people.

The music ministry soon became the most important aspect of the church. It wasn’t just the center of the worship service, it became the object of the worship.  This new focus was successful in human terms, it grew numerically. However, the membership was not stable, many were coming and many were going. Pastor Starkey resigned for personal reasons in the spring of 2003 and the church was left without a pastor for a period of 18 months, and the membership dwindled from 80 to 12.

During that period, Greg McManus was being encouraged to plant a church in London. By the autumn of 2004, the church that had been pruned to a core of 12 members became the plant that Greg was to pastor. With this, Grace Community Church was revived with a new purpose and a different focus, namely the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31) and the growth and spiritual maturation of His people (Eph. 4:12-14). This most recent change in the history of Grace Community Church has unfolded in three distinct waves.

Initially, we underwent a discovery of the nature of our existence as a church. Our collective demeanour was motivated by a Berean spirit (Acts 17:11) and there were no assumptions nor practices that we would not reconsider very carefully. What resulted was a new Church Confession and Constitution, a plurality of eldership, and a hunger for real church unity, brought about by God’s transformative Word. With these essentials in place, a season of learning foundational truths began to shape our identity as a church. What has resulted from these efforts is a blessed conviction (Luke 1) and a confident desire to reach out to others with acts of Christian service.

God has been faithful. The members have grown and matured spiritually. Our ever deepening understanding of Scripture continues to enhance our communion with God and fellowship with each other. This narration reminds me of the nation of Israel when they asked for a king. God gave them everything they foolishly desired in Saul. After that He gave them all that they needed in David, a type of Jesus Christ, who is the eternal King of Glory and the only hope of salvation.

The seeker movement is like Saul, who outwardly was big and strong and handsome, but inwardly was small, impotent, and godless. It has the form but denies the power. A church that is Christ-centered, a church that is concerned to know Him and to serve Him, a church that is committed to the advancement of His kingdom, is a force to be reckoned with. Isn’t that the lesson in the David and Goliath story? It is as Christ who said, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our mission is to take the gospel into the world, not to change the nature of what a church is by bringing the world into our worship service.

Soli Deo Gloria

JS
London, ON
November, 2010