One of my beloved worship songs is one written by Brooke Fraser called “The Desert Song”. The bridge says “All of my life, in every season, You are still God and I have a reason to sing, I have a reason to worship”.  The reason I love this song so much is that its words are true every single day. In the highs of life that I experience on the mountaintop, I can sing it and praise God that He is faithful and that He brings favour and blessing to his children.  And in those dark times in the valley, I can claim the promise that breakthrough is coming and that through the trials and pain, I am going to learn something that I haven’t yet learned and see God once again show His faithfulness.

Before we started Vantage Church when the vision was in our hearts and on our lips, we had many respected friends and leaders tell us that church planting is the hardest job in the world and that we needed to be prepared for a lot of challenges to come our way. They weren’t saying that to discourage us from the call but to prepare us for what was ahead. They wanted to make sure that we understood what it was going to take – spiritually, emotionally and physically – to make the vision in our heart a tangible reality.

The doors of Vantage have been open for almost 3 months and the journey so far has been a wave of emotion. We’ve had many mountaintop moments in our services and amongst our church community. And we’ve also experienced some challenges that have required us to have unwavering faith to believe that God will be true to His word and supply all of our need and that He will do exceedingly more than we could ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).

I can speak from experience and say that life is tough sometimes. These last few weeks have personally been some of the most challenging weeks of my life. And they have also been an incredible reminder of how God shows Himself faithful in every season.  Psalm 24:4-5 says “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior.”

God certainly doesn’t send us trials but He does allow them because as it says in James 1:3-4 “the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Trials and challenge develop our character. And if our hearts and motives are pure, He has promised us that we will be blessed.

This season of challenge in my life has been greeted with nothing less than supernatural provision and favour on every side. And that is because we serve a good and faithful God! What the enemy causes for destruction, God uses for our benefit and to bring Him glory.

So, be encouraged. Whatever you face today, know that God is bigger and that He loves you and is moving on your behalf!  Just persevere, keep your heart pure and God will do the rest!

The vision statement of Vantage Church is to build a large and thriving church that grows engaged, passionate and mature disciples of Christ by challenging mind-sets, caring for and empowering people and raising up generations of believers who are committed to being the hands and feet of Jesus.

Everything we do as a church is to bring about this vision. Vantage Church is a church that doesn’t seek to be served. As a congregation, we shouldn’t be asking “what can I get out of this?” but rather “what can I do to be a blessing?” For too long, there has been a lot of selfishness within the church… people attending, critiquing and analysing church. Seeing the church as place they go to have their needs met. And there lies the problem… the church isn’t a place. The movie theatre that we meet in each Sunday isn’t our church. Our church is you. You ARE the church. And you know what that means? It means that when you leave church on a Sunday, you can’t leave God at the door and go about your week without Him. You, as a believer in Jesus, ARE part of His church and God is with you wherever you go.

The church is all about bringing Him glory, through everything, in everything.  John 4:23-24 says “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”  This passage isn’t talking about the 20 minutes we spend singing to God in our services. It is talking about sacrificial lives that are spending their time, energy and breath to bring God glory wherever we are.

The IHEART revolution highlighted many destructive and sobering situations happening across our globe. All of these issues break the heart of our God because there are hurting, lost people involved. And it is easy for us to sit in our comfy, movie theatre seats and watch the big screen and then walk away, having been inspired or challenged or both. But unless we act, it’s all in vein.

There are hurting, lost people on our doorstep. We don’t have to go very far at all to find them. They live in our communities, we work with them, and our kids go to school with them. And yet how easy is it for us to get complacent, to take our first-world living for granted and go about our lives with our head in the sand? Jesus came to this earth and made the ultimate sacrifice for us. He died an excruciating, humiliating death and took the sin of the world on His shoulders so that we didn’t have to. He conquered the grave – the power of sin and death – so that we could be reconciled to Him and have a relationship with Him.

On thanksgiving, we talked about how as a church we are called to be generous people who live lives of gratitude. We defined gratitude as a feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return.  I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ has been good at feeling it in the heart and has even been good at expressing it. But we haven’t necessarily been very good at giving in return.

The Church is God’s solution to the problems facing humanity. He has given us everything that we need, through His spirit, to minister to the broken and hurting. Vantage Church is one of many bodies of believers that are in Toronto and we are a church that stands for truth and righteousness, a church that is passionate about making everyone feel a part of the family and above all, being a congregation known for their love of God and their love for people.

We are not perfect and we have a long way to go. We have a big vision and in our early days as a church, our vision far exceeds our resource. The theme of our first launch service was ‘We’re all in this together” and we truly believe that. It is going to take each of us being wholly committed to the vision to fulfil what we’re called to do. If you call Vantage Church home, what can you do to become more committed to seeing the vision of Vantage Church come to pass?

Perhaps you just need to commit to being in church every week, making it one of your non-negotiables in life. As you get connected to the family and are continually filled up by the teaching of the word and worship, you will be able to give to others out of the overflow of your life. There are thirsty people everywhere and without a full cup, you cannot quench their thirst.

Maybe you need to start contributing financially. The reality is that without people that understand the power of giving, our church cannot do what we’re called to do.

Maybe you need to have a conversation with your neighbour or colleague about church – they could just be waiting for an invitation to come.

Whatever it is, I pray that you would be searching your heart. Don’t walk away from the IHEART film unchanged. God commands a blessing where there is unity…. We are all in this together and with each of us moving forwards from strength to strength, united in our love for God and actively being the hands and feet of Jesus, our city will never be the same!

Our day started early… VERY early…. we bump in at 6am so needless to say it was still dark when we woke up! We arrived to our venue (a movie theatre complex of 14 cinemas) to meet up with our most amazing team. They were already busy at work and they all had smiles on their faces!! Pretty amazing at 6am BEFORE the coffee run!

There were a few hiccups… to be expected on your first Sunday I guess… but set up went pretty smooth. I watched our team get busy… some setting up the sound system, some blacking out seats and doing seat-drops, some setting up the foyers and making coffee, some setting up our kids rooms…. each role important and a valued part of our team.

As I talked to people throughout the morning, amongst the “task”, it was evident that there was so much anticipation. I asked one of our volunteers how he was feeling and he just simply said “I’m so excited”.

Several weeks ago, when we were planning our launch service, we decided that we wanted to open the service with an item. The song I couldn’t get out of my spirit was “God of this City” by Bluetree and I knew that it was a song that needed to be declared over our city of Toronto. So fittingly, after our pre-roll, we launched into that incredible song and it was powerful as the church declared that “greater things are still to be done in this city”.

We’ve been having acoustic worship services in the lead up to our launch – they were intimate and beautiful and we had some incredible worship moments in our Preview Services. But today we had a BAND!! And I LOVED it!! Bass, drums, electric guitar!!!! Oh how I missed it!!

At the outset of our service we praised and worshipped with all our passion.  And as we led, we watched streams of people walking in, filling up the seats. I got the sense that there were a lot of people there that have been waiting to be able to worship in spirit and in truth for a long time. It is so important to us that we build an atmosphere of engaged, passionate worship and the Holy Spirit responded and moved powerfully!

We were so encouraged this week as we were inundated with emails of support from churches and leaders all over this city and beyond. Many pastors emailed us to say they are praying for us and believing for the best… and today in our service we took the time to dedicate our church to God. A pastor friend of ours came and prayed over our church and committed it to God. The MP of Richmond Hill came and presented us with a gift on behalf of the city of Richmond Hill.

We received an awesome word from my hubby entitled “We’re all in this together” – how with unity of vision and commitment to the House, we can collectively see this city impacted for Jesus. It was a word that was birthed out of Damian’s passion for each person to find their fit in the local church – for people to allow their roots to go down deep, to contribute, to serve and to make church one of their non-negotiables in life.

At the conclusion of our service, we prayed and invited people to receive Christ. We haven’t seen a salvation yet but we’re full of faith and know full well that it’s only a matter of time. As people come and taste and see that the Lord is good, they will not be able to resist Him. And we wait in anticipation and look forward to celebrating when that happens!!

Vantage Church is now a reality – after years of dreaming and planning, God has made the dream a tangible, vibrant house that is passionate about God and passionate about seeing people empowered in life. And we can’t wait to see how the journey unfolds. Only God knows what is in store – but one thing I do know is that the greatest days are ahead of us.

Damian spoke about resting in God in relation to our capacity. We can do so much more when we rest in God – sometimes it’s not even about more in quantity, but more in quality. I believe that as we rest in God we can watch Vantage Church take shape and see God’s amazing work at hand in the lives of people in our community. When we enter in and choose to lift Him up we become a shining light in the darkness.  Last night as we sang “The same power that conquered the grave lives in me” those words of declaration stirred up a passion to see the Church become that light. Every week God continues to amaze us with His goodness.

And of course we had time to eat food and drink coffee as well! The team has loved getting to know everyone who is coming through our doors to check out Vantage Church and it is fantastic to be meeting new people every week! For those of you who have not come along to one of our services yet we would absolutely love to have you. You are welcome anytime!

As we get closer to our September 13^th launch we are expectant and excited for what is in store! We hope to see you at our next Preview Night on August 26th!

I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently. I guess it started after reading an article about the state of teenagers in our nation. It was an interesting article to read as it was full of studies and surveys of Canadian teenagers. The general gist was that teenagers of this millennium are drinking less, doing less drugs and having less sex. Which in itself, should be an encouraging statistic… except that according to the same article, the number of teenagers claiming to be Christian has fallen dramatically over the past 20 years. There are multitudes of teenagers converting to other faiths, like Islam and Buddhism, but sadly not to Christianity.

So I guess the question is, why?

Now of course the media tends to be anti-church – we know this because there definitely are thriving, amazing churches in this nation (which of course haven’t been mentioned in this article!). But I will say that the response of the church to the generations of the past 20 years has definitely not helped to change people’s perception of His church. Jesus himself gave the church very clear instructions about how to live. When questioned by the Pharisees about what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt 22:37-38). Is it possible that as we have progressed on our Christian walk, we have forgotten about the second part of that statement? Or maybe we haven’t forgotten, we have just ignored it perhaps. We recite grace before meals, say our bedtime prayers, read our bibles and attend church on Sundays as an expression of our love to God. Some of us also volunteer at church and tithe each week to show Him that we love Him and are willing to sacrifice our time and money for His cause.

The problem is that loving God and loving people are not mutually exclusive. You can’t love God without loving people. Jesus said that the second commandment was equally important to the first. And perhaps if we, the body of Christ, were better at loving people there wouldn’t be this trend in Canada of people seeking for answers anywhere else but the church.

The bible says in 1 Cor 13: 4 that “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

So how are you doing at loving the people around you? Your family, your friends, your colleagues, the strangers you meet on this journey called life? How are you, the church, loving your neighbour as yourself? I know that I’m not even close to where I want to be, where I need to be.

There is a generation of young people that may have never even stepped foot in to a church. We could argue that the church in Canada needs to be more evangelistic and not so inward focused or that it needs to be more relevant… change the method so that it relates more to this generation. Or we could argue that the church needs to be committed to excellence and then people would come. And to all of those things I would say… YES… absolutely! But don’t you think people come to church more for the community and friendship than for how excellent or relevant a service is? Imagine people coming to church because rather than the judgment and condemnation they are expecting to receive, they instead find a haven of unconditional love and acceptance.

I have a dear friend in Australia – she emailed me recently and her email confirmed these thoughts on love. She said “I was praying this morning and you and Vantage popped into mind and as I asked God what to pray for, the Holy Spirit said ‘By this will all men know that you are my disciples: if you have love for each other’. So I prayed that but when I tried to continue praying other things over you and your team, it seemed the Holy Spirit was stuck on ‘Love’. I pray that in all your excellence and wisdom and authority and faith, you will continue to be guided by love.”

It’s a challenge for all of us. My prayer is that a similar study is done in another 20 years and that the tides will have turned completely. That people will be rushing to the church for answers and that the church would be so appealing, so beautiful and so full of possibility and hope that there would be no other choice for searching hearts but the love and grace of Jesus Christ.

“There are three things that will endure – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.”

Since arriving in Toronto, our family has been visiting different churches every Sunday. It’s been such a foreign concept to us because we have never been church hoppers. We’ve always planted ourselves at a church so to now be going to unfamiliar churches on a regular basis is weird. But we thought it was important for a couple of reasons… mainly for research and relationship development. We are very aware that there are other churches in Toronto that are doing great things – there are churches that have growing congregations, are meeting the needs of people and are making a difference in their communities. In some respects, it would appear as if Toronto doesn’t need another church as there are so many.

But God would not have called us here if Vantage Church wasn’t needed. It is needed…. There are a lot of lost, desperate and hurting people in Toronto, not unlike any other city in the world. And although there are a lot of churches in Toronto, there aren’t any like Vantage Church. Every church we’ve visited has been a bible-believing church that allocated time to worship, teaching and giving. But they have all been different, with their own vision, values and culture… the message has been the same, but not so the method. And even when some of the churches have appeared to have the same worship or teaching style, they have all been unique because their DNA is unique. Each one has a pastor who has unique and God-given talents, gifting and ability. Each one is made up of different leadership teams and different people who contribute to the culture of that church and the ownership of the vision.

In 1 Corinthians 12, it talks about the church being the body of Christ. “¹⁸ But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. ¹⁹ How strange a body would be if it had only one part! ²⁰ Yes, there are many parts, but only one body.” How many people would miss out on hearing the gospel if it was only ever presented one way? That’s why the local church is so powerful… so beautiful! Because all churches are different, just like all people are different. There is a certain type of person that Vantage Church may never reach because of our “style”. But they may find that the church down the road presents the gospel in a way that relates more to them and through that style, they find Jesus! And how releasing is that for all of us? It means there doesn’t need to be a spirit of competition or striving. All we need to do is be obedient to the voice of the spirit and build the kind of church that we are called to build. God works out the rest. Only God himself can bring people to salvation… we can only use what is in our hand, with a spirit of faith and with diligence, and believe that God will be God and work on the hearts of the people.

We have found it so encouraging to visit churches these past few weeks. If anything, it has reminded us that we can all learn from each other and that there isn’t one right way to “do” church. We’ve been able to meet some amazing people that are partners in the spread of the gospel in Toronto. Our church may look different to some but we are called to build a church that is true to the vision that God laid on our hearts. And as we listen to His leading, He will build His church. And how excited we are to see what God is going to do!

Blogs. These days everyone is writing them. Everybody, it seems, wants to have their opinion heard. There are a million blogs out there on a million different topics. So why another one?

Well, because it’s the start of a new season for the Bassett family. And this is a blog about that journey. It’s an exciting journey – one that involves moving countries and planting a church… seeing one season come to an end and another one begin. And all because of a God whisper… well, if I’m truthful it was actually more like a shout than a whisper.

In February 2009, we picked up our life in Sydney, Australia and moved to Toronto, Canada. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Going from glorious sunshine and beaches to the land of cold and snow. And in February at the height of winter! So why Toronto? Well…. here’s how it all unfolded….. this is the journey of Vantage Church.

One day about 7 years ago, Damian and I decided to go and visit our local Christian bookstore in Sydney. We were casually wandering through the store, browsing the aisles, when Damian saw a vision. It is one of the only visions he has ever had but it was so clear it was as if God was projecting it on to a movie screen. It was a vision of a vibrant, passionate, fresh, new church in Toronto. And then God spoke to him and said that He was calling us to plant that church.

That was 7 years ago and a lot of things happened between that time and now. God had to do some pretty major work on the inside of us to get us to the point of even talking about when we would go. We were settled in Sydney, Australia and very securely planted at Hillsong Church. And if you’ve ever been to Hillsong Church you know that it’s pretty incredible on so many levels. The worship, the teaching, the excellence, the vision, the leadership, the volunteer spirit, the generosity…. it is all spectacular. And that makes it a very hard place to leave. There is so much opportunity, so much possibility.

In April of 2007, we set up a meeting with our senior pastor, Brian Houston. We wanted to share our heart about Toronto and get his insight. We didn’t have an exact departure time in mind at that stage but knew that we needed to start planning. I still remember how nervous we were sitting in the waiting room. When we walked in to Brian’s office he knew why we were there without us having to say a thing. We had a great talk to him about our plans and were so appreciative of his wisdom. It was after that meeting that we started actively planning to build the church in our hearts.

A few months after our meeting, we decided that the time to go would be early 2009. Which at the time seemed so far away but oh how 22 months flew by. There was so much that happened in that time….and God was so faithful every step of the way. There were planning meetings, prayer meetings, emails, phone calls, research, moving quotes, packing, travel bookings,…. oh and Ebay! Anyone that has ever moved overseas knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Anyways, 22 months later and we were off to Toronto on a brand new, exciting (and somewhat frightening) faith adventure. I’d love to say that the whole journey was easy and that I never questioned God’s will. I’d be a liar though. God had to do some pretty major surgery on my heart to get me to the place where I was ready to leave the relative safety of Australia. I mean, being at Hillsong Church was a dream come true. And now God was asking me to leave? Why?

Well the answer to that was revealed to me one day while I was praying. I stopped doing all the stuff I was doing, long enough to talk to God about it… well it was probably more of a whine. A whinge session as my Aussie friends would say. I don’t really remember what I said, but I clearly remember God saying “Julie, you can stay here if you want to and it’ll be safe, comfortable and easy or you can live in obedience and step in to the unknown. It’s your choice…. but one will bring mediocrity in your life and the other will bring abundant blessing.” Well from then on the choice was clear and it was settled in my heart. And in that place the fear and uncertainty was replaced with faith.

Today, I sit here with so much excitement that we’re finally in Toronto and that what my incredible hubby saw 7 years ago is about to be birthed. Our last weeks in Sydney were so amazing, thanks to incredible friends and our church family. Our final Sunday in Sydney we were sent off with prayer and commissioned by our leadership to do what is in our hearts to do… and we didn’t leave with sadness , but knowing that we are loved and empowered to step in to our future. The last few weeks have been big for the Bassett family… we’ve overcome jetlag, seen our 5 year old start school for the first time, caught up with friends and family and gone through culture shock (well maybe it’s more climate shock if there is such a thing!). Oh and we’ve had to get used to mediocre coffee (we miss Gloria Jeans!) The vision in our hearts is clear and it’s about to become a reality. We are full of faith and the longer we are here we know that we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here, in the centre of God’s will.

So, this is the Vantage Church blog. And it’s all about our journey… our family of 4 that will soon become a church family of 10 as some dear friends from Sydney join us. And as the Vantage family grows, and services begin, we’ll write about it so that you can all celebrate with us, pray for us and praise God for His faithfulness and mighty acts!!