I had lunch with a couple of pastors from Ottawa on Monday, and can I just tell you what I wanted to talk about and did talk about with them?
In April, I got invited to a church planters network meeting of downtown pastors held in Miami. The keynote speaker was Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan.
One of the things that Tim said was that when you look at a city, if the rate of conversions every year in that city doesn't match or exceed the rate of immigration each year, the percentage of population that is Christian diminishes. In other words, you want to see more people come to Christ each year, than move into the city that year.
So, any guesses on how many people moved into Ottawa last year? I don't know exactly, if you do, please comment. But, I'll bet it's between 1k and 20k.
If you were to add up all the conversions in all the churches here in Ottawa last year, would it match that number?
What it means to me, is that people coming into relationship with Jesus Christ should become a normal function of our church. We need to be the open door, the welcome mat, for all kinds of people to meet Jesus.
I also think we all need to get familiar with sharing the good news of Jesus with people.
Anyway, that's what I was talking about.
There was no coffee by the way...
just lunch...
at Louis'
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