As most of our prayer partners and friends now know, we have both a name for our church and a new logo. Special thanks to our good friend, Curtis Cottrell, with ChirpMill Communications, who designed it for us.

The past few months have been tremendously busy as our Wednesday Night Prayer & Vision Core Group has been growing very nicely—Praise Jesus! We now have enough adults and children that we are planning to commence preview Sunday gatherings in July and looking forward to seeing what the Lord has for us.

Our family has also just moved into our new home and we are still unpacking boxes. If buying a home wasn’t enough, we are also currently negotiating on a building in downtown Squamish for our Ledge Cafe & Live Music Venue, where we also hope to be holding our Sunday gatherings in September.

Finally, our next update should be to introduce the new website for The Rock Church in Squamish—Stay Tuned!

Time for a major update and to tell all of you, our faithful prayer partners in particular, that Squamish Now has served its purpose as our pre-launch name and website. Today, we are excited to announce to you that the Lord has confirmed a name in our hearts that is perfect for Squamish—The Rock Church!

You might think that with all the major ‘rock’ landmarks in this beautiful town that it would have been an obvious choice. Well, it was on our first-ever list almost 18 months ago, but the Lord only confirmed it to us once we moved here and, most importantly, from his Word.

We know that God has called us here and that He has a vision to see Squamish redeemed. Our calling is simply to join our missionary God by living among the people of Squamish, loving them and loving the city as Jesus would.

As the banner above says, Jesus is building His church, He is the chief cornerstone, the Master builder and the Rock of Ages! We are excited to see what he will do in us and through us as we serve him and his church.

We are currently working on a new logo and website for The Rock and should have that ready for our next Prayer Partner update.

Thank you so much for standing with us! You are a blessing and encouragement to us. We would love to hear from you as well.

Blessings to you,

Glenn

The Acts 29 Network held its annual Boot Camp March 9-10 in Seattle, WA at Mars Hill Church. Matthew and I, along with a friend from Squamish, attended the Boot Camp for the the two days, plus visited Mars Hill for their Sunday night service at the Ballard Campus on Sunday, March 8th.

Acts 29 is a church planting network born out of the ministry of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. A very bold venture on several fronts, this network is currently calling 900 men to respond to the call to plant missional and incarnational churches around the world.

Speakers for the week included pastor Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill, opening the Boot Camp Monday morning with The Call of the Church Planter. Mark was a little under the weather with a bad flu bug, but he delivered big time for those who came, many to hear Mark for the first time.

Up next was Scott Thomas the Director of the Acts 29 Network. He spoke on The Great Commission Call to Plant Churches and centered to the conference well on the great call. Once he was done, Scott introduced the most electrifying speaker of the day, Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church in the Dallas, Texas area. Matt was beyond hilarious as he spoke to The Call to Preach and powerful in his Biblical charge to the troops!

Tuesday morning we encountered the biggest surprise of the boot camp as we heard from P. J. Smyth, lead pastor of Godfirst Church in Johannesburg, South Africa - The Call to Proclaim the Gospel. To say that PJ blew everyone away would be a tremendous understatement. PJ combines the gifts of evangelist, prophet and teacher, with a large dose of humor and wit, to effectively command an audience of church planting leaders and pastors into worship and praise for the most awesome God that we all serve.

We had to leave the boot camp directly after PJ’s presentation, missing the final talk by Mark Driscoll on The Call to Endure, however PJ Smyth left all of us all with the spiritual highlight reel we came for—the Gospel!

Glenn

The past thirty days have been an incredible confirmation and answer to prayer. We moved to Squamish just a few days ago on February 10th! The Lord has provided beyond our expectations by introducing us to a wonderful family who have gone to Europe for a few months and were looking for someone to rent and care for their home. The home is fully furnished and ideal for our family and for beginning the work of ministry—and there’s more good news!

On the night before we left for Squamish, we were able to reach an accepted offer on our house in Langley. It is an amazing story which I will have to write about at length, possibly here as soon as we catch our breaths.

It is a tremendous confirmation and encouragement to us that once we made the step of faith in early January to go to Squamish on a short-term rental basis, the Lord first gave us the perfect place, at the right price, and now he has brought a buyer for our home.

There are two more hurdles before it is a done deal so please be in prayer on Monday February 16th when the building inspection takes place and then on Wednesday the 18th when all the subjects are to be removed. If all goes accordingly, we will complete the sale March 31st and be on the hunt for our new home in Squamish! Praise God for answered prayers!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

It is just a few days before Christmas and we are with our family, tucked in at my sister’s beautiful forested home on Salt Spring Island. Tucked in is putting it nicely. We are quite literally snowed in and unable to get our car up the long driveway due to the recent deluge.

Despite this, we have all that we need and have even enjoyed the power outage that left us without power for most of the day yesterday. This provided the perfect opportunity to play outside in the snow and to challenge each other to a few boards games inside.

We want to wish all of you, family, friends and our faithful prayer partners a wonderful and joyous Christmas. May the peace of the Lord, his perfect gift and loving sacrifice for us, be the focal point of all that we say, think and do this Christmas season.

Thank you for your involvement in the ministry that the Lord has called us to and for your continued prayers in the New Year. We are expecting great things as we boldly cast all of our cares and needs upon him and follow his leading to Squamish in 2009.

Merry Christmas and Love in Christ,

Glenn, Janice, Matthew & Jonathan Davies

Last weekend, December 6 & 7, 2008, we had the opportunity to visit Seattle and attend a tremendous conference at Mars Hill Church, Ballard Campus, in Seattle. It was billed as a day with Dr. Don. That would be Dr. D. A. Carson, author and theologian.

Saturday was a full day broken into four sessions. Session #1 “The Center of the Whole Bible” Romans 3:21-26,  Session #2 “The Strange Triumph of a Slaughtered Lamb” Revelation 12:, Session #3 “A Miracle Full of Surprises” John 11:1-43, and Session #4 “Why Doubt the Resurrection of Jesus” John 20:24-31.

It has been a very long time since our last Prayer Partner Update and an explanation is definitely in order. As most of you will remember, we have been prayerfully waiting for the sale of our home in Langley so that we can move to Squamish and begin the work of planting our new church. You are also probably aware that this is a very difficult time to be trying to sell your home. Needless to say it has been a very challenging time for us. As of today our home has not sold but we are not discouraged, nor deterred.

We had hoped that we would have some good news a few weeks ago as there was an offer (a rather low one unfortunately) on our house that we had hoped would work out, but it just didn’t pan out. There was however another reason for our delay in providing you with an update.

We had been asked in early November to consider another ministry opportunity to lead an existing church and felt we needed the time to prayerfully consider what God was saying to us and others that we trust as our oversight in this ministry. This opportunity would have been potentially related to planting in Squamish further down the road, but not guaranteed.

Over the past several weeks we have had meetings with our Squamish ‘task force’ and leadership from within our denomination, and today was the day where we indicated to that board that we feel that God has clearly called us to Squamish and that, despite the challenges of the real estate market, we believe we need to faithfully follow that call.

The decision of the board was unanimous and I am therefore letting you know that you should expect a few more email updates over the next few weeks as we press into the Lord and ask him to sell our home and provide an affordable home in the right area of Squamish for our family to begin our ministry.

I realize that at this time of year you will have a number of thing on your mind, however I would ask you to please stand with us over the next few weeks in prayer. Pray that the Lord will move in a miraculous way by helping us to make our way to Squamish early in the New Year!

Thank you for standing with us!

Blessings in Christ,

Glenn Davies

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

ACTS 4:31

Over the past two weeks we have seen the Lord doing some wonderful things, preparing the way for us to Squamish. We are still praying that God will bring a buyer for our home in Langley. The current market conditions have resulted in showings of our home dropping to almost zero and as a result it could be a little discouraging since, as a family, we are excited and ready to go.

On the other hand, God’s timing is perfect and we are daily being encouraged as he is bringing people to us who are praying about going with us to Squamish and others who have lived in Squamish who we are talking and meeting with us to give their insight into the spiritual ground in this small town.

I had another opportunity yesterday to meet with some of the other pastors in Squamish over lunch and this time our son Matt attended with me. We had a good time of fellowship and some good discussions on how we could best serve the community.

To that end, we would really appreciate your prayers over the next few days as we are hosting a youth group from Eagle Ridge Bible Fellowship (Coquitlam), in Squamish. Matthew will be leading the teaching time with these young men and women on intercessory prayer and, along with their youth leader Tyler Hagan will be leading them on several prayer walks throughout Squamish.

Please pray for the weather on Saturday that the skies will clear and stay dry for their prayer time and that the Lord will keep them safe and bless their time of prayer over this town. They will be praying over specific areas of town that we have mapped out as possible strongholds and places of darkness. Your prayers in concert with theirs, in the power of the Spirit, are those that will shake this place and give us boldness to proclaim Christ to those he is calling in Squamish.

Finally, we want to thank the Squamish Baptist Church, Pastor’s Doug and Jonathan, for partnering with us for this weekend by opening their youth room and church for our young people and this ministry.

The past two weeks have been very busy for us as we have been preparing to go to Squamish. A couple of key events have transpired over this time that we wanted you to know about. For our Prayer Partners, you can also go to our current prayer needs by clicking here.

Vintage 242 Church Commissioning

On Sunday September 28th we were back at Vintage 242 Church in Abbotsford where I have been interning since last January. Part of the BCMB’s plan for new church planters is to have us work with an existing church plant for a period to learn from their experience. Our time at Vintage and with Pastor Johnny Thiessen was a tremendous blessing! This was a bit of an emotional day for all of us as it was the official commissioning of our family to leave Vintage and move on toward Squamish. We were tremendously blessed by this young and vibrant church and feel we have made friends in Christ for life with so many of them. We are moving on to Squamish viewing our relationship as a sister church plant and hoping that the Lord will bless them in return for what they have done for us.

North Langley Community Church

This past Sunday, October 12th, we were back at a church where we have been in fellowship in the past. North Langley Community Church in the Walnut Grove neighbourhood of Langley has sure grown since we first began going to the church when it was at James Kennedy Elementary School and then moved to its new facility on 96th Avenue.

What a tremendous blessing to see so many old friends, to worship with them and to hear Pastor Rob Thiessen preaching on the mission and vision God has given this church. Only a few weeks earlier we were at North Langley for the MB Conference’s Church Planting fundraising banquet and saw first hand how this church not only serves the whole body, but how much they give of their treasure as well. 

I was given the opportunity to speak briefly at both morning services and present our call and vision for Squamish to the church. We were overwhelmed afterwards by the encouragement and affirmation that we received. We had 32 people sign up to join our Prayer Partner team and several others share their experiences living in Squamish or telling us about unsaved friends and family who live in Squamish today. We also had a few young couples express interest in learning more about our vision for Squamish and how they would prayerfully consider God’s call on their lives at this time. That is exciting!

If you haven’t already joined our Prayer Partner Team then please click here to add your email to our mailing list and receive updates on our prayer needs and our work as we go to Squamish.

Thank you for standing with us and praying for us as we serve Him!

Last Sunday we spent the morning at Eagle Ridge Bible Fellowship in Coquitlam, BC. Tyler Hagan is the Youth Pastor at the church and he is a good friend from a year or so ago when we were in fellowship together at a church in Walnut Grove or North Langley. He had invited us to share our vision for Squamish with Eagle Ridge.

Pastor Doug is the Sr. Pastor of the church and he graciously gave up about 15 minutes of the service for me to share what the Lord has put on our hearts for Squamish. It was such a blessing to share with this diverse and clearly engaged congregation. They were very interested in our presentation that included a little Squamish history, what things are like today in Squamish, both culturally and spiritually and the vision God has placed on hearts for reaching this community.

Our main goal or request for the members of Eagle Ridge was to ask that they consider joining with us a covenant prayer partners and that they also heed God’s call on their personal lives to serve with all their hearts either locally (in Coquitlam and through Eagle Ridge) or to join with us or any one of the over 30 church planters in BC to reach lost and dying people for Christ.

Interestingly, the Pastor’s message series has been on prayer and this Sunday he continued to focus on the subject of prayer as it related to the mission statement and mission of Eagle Ridge. Once Pastor Doug ended his message we were led in a corporate and open time of prayer. The congregation, men and women raised their voices in prayer for their church, their community, the world and one member prayed specifically for us and Squamish. This was tremendously encouraging to us and after the service we had several members sign up to be prayer partners with us as we prepare to go to Squamish.

Thank you to everyone at Eagle Ridge for your prayers and your warm fellowship in Christ last Sunday. We are thankful for you all.