Showing Compassion in Calgary, AB
The young people of a New Venture called Horizon gave sacrificially to see the love of Jesus expressed to those in their neighbourhood.
We love seeing the shape New Ventures take as leaders listen to their communities and join Jesus at work. Take a look at this encouraging story from Nathan Hildenbrandt who leads a New Venture in Calgary called Horizon.
When we began Horizon, compassion was an essential part of the DNA we hoped to have as a New Venture. In the gospels we see the compassion of Christ expressed through tangible demonstrations of God's love towards the people Jesus interacted with on a daily basis. So we felt a calling to care for the unique needs of people in our neighbourhood. One initiative that came out of this was a desire to serve the families of students in schools in Brentwood.
During the Christmas season, we organized a hamper project. Our hamper project was organized and run by our Justice & Compassion team called the Better Brentwood Committee. This team is led by lay leaders, and they connected with the staff at the schools to receive the details of the families we were going to assemble hampers for, and then they communicated with our Community Groups to divvy up the hampers among our different groups.
“Our church is primarily made up of university students and other young people, but everyone was incredibly generous in order to make this happen. ”
This year we did 10 hampers for families in our neighbourhood or families who are personally connected to someone in Horizon Church. Each hamper cost about $800 to put together, and included non-perishable food, food to have a nice Christmas dinner, gift cards, clothes, household essentials, as well as Christmas gifts for each child in every family. Each community group pitched in to assemble hampers together, and we also mobilized members of the Brentwood Community (who do not attend Horizon) to put together one hamper as well. In the end, we only spent about $300 of our church budget to pull this off, as the rest of the donations came from the “above and beyond” generosity of our people in Horizon!
Our church is primarily made up of university students and other young people, but everyone was incredibly generous in order to make this happen. This has been a major way in which we've built relationships with the staff and students in the schools in our community, and one of the tangible ways that we've been able to continue to show and share the kindness of Jesus with our neighbours in a trying time of life!
Did you know?
There are around 1.3 million people living in Calgary, making it the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.
Calgary’s residents have the youngest average age of any major Canadian city.
Around one in three people living in Calgary were born outside Canada.
We’re so thankful for leaders like Nathan who are willing to dream creatively to see God’s kingdom in places like Calgary. You can learn more about Horizon here.