Simply Missional

In this episode, Byron Grant shares about his 40+ years of living and ministering among his first nations brothers and sisters in Vancouver, Canada. With joy and compassion, Byron unpacks why first nations people experience such difficulty in reconciling their culture and history to Christianity and the Church, much of it owing to the trauma experienced in Canada’s residential school system. He encourages us to take the time to listen more to the rich stories that First Nations people love to tell, to get to know their sense of humor and fun, and to enjoy them with all of the God-given gifts, skills and potential they possess.

Byron Grant is the Lead Pastor at New Beginnings Baptist Church in East Vancouver where he has pastored for many years alongside his wife Diane. Byron was commissioned as a missionary by North America Indigenous Ministries (NAIM) in 1979, and has lived and served among first nations people ever since.

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Joben David is the Executive Director of Jacob’s Well, a faith based non-profit located in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (DTES) with a rich history. In this episode, Joben shares about the Jacob’s Well community that he leads in Vancouver’s DTES and the challenges associated with this role. He explains how their welcome mat doesn’t stop at the door but extends to under their table, where Jesus is already sitting! He questions our motivation to rescue the poor, as it may actually be us who are in most need. And he challenges us, as Jesus followers, that we are all able to welcome and have mutual friendships with people who are not like us. As we do this, we can discover the true meaning and purpose of friendship and family.

"In 1976, at the age of 60 a woman by the name of Pauline Fell began walking the streets of the DTES. Although she was a new Christian, she asked God what He wanted her to do with her life and felt His prompting to befriend people in the neighborhood. For the next 25 years, almost every day she faithfully walked the streets and alleys, and visited the bars, prisons local hospitals and hotels where her many friends could be found. She was known to many as "sister" or "mom", and virtually everyone in the neighborhood respected this elderly woman. 

In November 2000, Pauline felt God urging her to give her inheritance away before she died. She pondered this and believing that God wasn't speaking to her about money, she asked what her inheritance was. Immediately she saw faces flashing before her, hundreds of faces of the people that she had become friends with over the past 25 years. She realized that the many friendships she had built were a rich inheritance, and that it would be squandered if she didn't pass them on before the end of her life. Jacob's Well was directly birthed out her diligence and obedience." - Jacobs Well History

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In this episode, Preston Gordon shares about his own unusual calling into the Anglican church, his journey into liturgy and how it ‘tells the story’, and becoming ‘Anglicans on mission’.

Preston Gordon is the Associate Pastor at St. Peters Fireside in downtown Vancouver, a thriving, urban church plant with the Anglican network (ANiC). Preston and his wife Deanna are originally from the US and moved to Vancouver in 2013 where they immediately joined the church.

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In this episode, Australian born Emma Narayanan shares how surrendering everything to God in her teenage years has led her on this incredible church planting journey to Vancouver, Canada. 

In pastoring church plants in three different locations, she shares insights into how to engage, disciple and mentor millennials, how to do mission within the coffee culture, and also emphasizes the need for boomers to come alongside and help build intergenerational community to become biblically literate churches.

Pastor Emma Narayanan co-pastors with her husband Ben as the Lead Pastors of Avant Life Church, a thriving, relevant and transformational Christ-centered community with three campuses in North Vancouver, Surrey and Squamish.

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Simply Missional is brought to you by Global Disciples Canada, and hosted by Cat Pienaar, a church planter in North Vancouver. GDC is a non-profit that believe it’s the Jesus-followers who need to respond to the injustice that one third of our world (or 3 billion people) have never heard the good news of Jesus in a language or context that they can understand. For over 25 years Global Disciples has been training and equipping indigenous leaders and church planters to go and make disciples in least reach-communities worldwide. We believe ‘near culture’ people can do a far better job of reaching out to those in their nations, than by sending those from the West to do this for them.

With the same heart of championing ordinary, local people into a missional way of life, Simply Missional is a podcast that seeks to enable ordinary people to feel encouraged and equipped to do mission simply and locally. Jesus has already commissioned us to go and make disciples of all nations but often we feel scared or ill-equipped for the task. This podcast is for you if you want some practical ideas and inspiration to go and make disciples for Jesus where you are.

The interviews are really interesting conversations with some awesome men and women who have simply said a big fat yes to Jesus and His Great Commission to make disciples of all nations beginning here at home in Canada. We will be hearing stories of both success and failure for many people who have had the courage to walk by faith in what and how and where they feel God has called them. It will be encouraging, challenging, inspiring and funny as we chat about living a life for Jesus.

Each podcast will end with a suggestion of how to do mission simply, here, where you’re at and watching God multiply the itsy bitsy bread and fishes that we offer to Him. May it also be a clarion call to the injustice that one third of the world still need to hear the good news of Jesus.