Imago Dei Blog

Easter 2009 Imago launched a local expression of Imago Dei Community in Vancouver, and over the last year that local expression has met in four different locations. Each location, be it a school cafeteria or a historic building, has had its positives and negatives, as any mobile location does.  But, this last move God is using to sharpen our identity as we live on mission, seeing the Gospel of Christ move forward in Vancouver.

Through a myriad of not so random circumstances, as the New Year started, we landed in the middle of a ballroom on a property in Vancouver called The Academy.  The owner toured us through this property and invited us to consider using this space. It had some quirks, but something about it felt like God’s leading.  Come to find out, this property, used to be the House of Providence. It was the first hospital in Vancouver and became an orphanage, school, and the primary social service center for Vancouver for many years.

This building was 1 of 29 built by Mother Joseph, (Her History) who in her final days, articulated to her successors the heartbeat, her life embodied. “My dear sisters, allow me to recommend to you the care of the poor in our houses, as well as those without. Take good care of them; have no fear of them; assist them and receive them. Then, you will have no regrets. Do not say: ah! This does not concern me, let others see to them. My sisters, whatever concerns the poor is always our affair.” These words of Mother Joseph served as our first call to worship in this ballroom, our new house.  They have become a helpful clarification to God’s call for us.

God has used this relocation to both settle and unsettle us as we consider what it means live a misional journey. We hope to be a House of Providence for our community, we hope our lives will receive this woman’s call from over a hundred years ago and our lives might echo this priority, where hospitality rules for all sorts of poor.  Where God in His grace, grants the economically poor, the spiritually destitute, the relationally meager, a place to experience blessing in the richness of Christ.

We don’t exactly know how this all plays out in reality, but can envision three ways that we might be the people of God engaging this mission as we live out a hospitable life.  We hope that as a larger community, as we meet in this House of Providence or engage in serving our city that we have this hospitable call echoing in who we are and what we do.  We hope that we might find a relational presence in the public houses around Vancouver, where we are able to find a voice to speak into our community.  And that through a generous heart our individual lives and our personal homes be places that tell a hospitable Gospel story.

This isn’t really a new idea.  Christ was the champion of the hospitable life, and the apostle Paul calls Christ’s Disciples to the same.  It isn’t really new in Vancouver either; Imago’s home communities have met in Vancouver for 8 or so years.  Hospitality has always been at the center of what goes on in and through the people of Imago that live in Vancouver.  As we lead into the future, we are grateful for the foundation Christ has laid in our hearts and the care fostered by those who have gone before us patiently and faithfully unveiling the Gospel through their hospitality.