We Are The City Harmonic Prøve

"Life Together: One Lord, One City, Many Churches"

We were alone.  We were pastors and ministry leaders, struggling to represent Jesus in a large city, dissatisfied with the size of our response to that enormous task.  So, we found one another.  We recognized the worth and importance of what each of our congregations were doing; we all believed we could do more.  We began to learn from one another, to treat the poorest among us as the most important; to agree about the basics of our faith, but not to require complete agreement in all the details of our separatist heritage.  Our time together produced great encouragement, we deepened our connection with Jesus, and we saw rich fruit.

Then, we came across the story of the Jewish Exiles in Babylon - those who were taken as slaves from Jerusalem and marched to Babylon.  Their prophets told them to fight, to resist, to flee to Jerusalem.  God’s message through Jeremiah the prophet must have stung the hearers.  

Through Jeremiah, God said what the false prophets would not.  God told the Exiles to stay where they were.  His intentions for them were that they become a gift to their captors.  “Build houses”—that takes time; done well, it lasts for generations.  “Marry and have sons and daughters”—that takes even more time; raise generations there.  “Work to see that the city…enjoys peace and prosperity”—don’t merely survive, but diligently seek the stability, the well-being of the entire city.  “For as it prospers you will prosper”—a completely unexpected promise!

That promise to Judah-in-Exile was the foundation of what became the TrueCity Movement in Hamilton, Ontario.  Beginning in 2003, several pastors of congregations that had “separatist” roots began to talk, pray, and dream together about what might happen if we took those words seriously.  

We began to learn more deeply from one another—two congregations with food pantries exchanged ideas and became better at serving the poor in their neighborhoods.  One congregation with a strong ministry to a downtown struggling with mental illness trained another congregation to help their neighbors caught in the same struggle.  Congregations with a passion for arriving refugees collaborated in helping them settle, find work, and become citizens of their new land.

TrueCity’s motto has become “Churches Working Together For The Good Of The City,” our own translation of Jeremiah 29:7.  We work together to provide opportunity for “human flourishing.”
That’s God’s call for us all.

-Lane Fusilier, Pastor of Philpott Memorial Church in Hamilton, Ontario