WE ARE CONNECTED TOGETHER THROUGH THE LOVE OF ONE SAVIOUR WE SERVE OTHERS BETTER BY WORKING TOGETHER

In these challenging and intriguing times, the church in Canada is blessed with a variety of resourcing communities and conversation platforms. Our Common Calling networks these learning communities. Working with our national partners, we foster cross-pollination between various groups, encouraging collaboration and incubating innovation.

We host a broad gathering of voices on our platform, celebrating our diversity as followers of Jesus. We are intentionally intergenerational, intercultural and interdenominational. We emphasize male/female balance and actively encourage cross-sector participation among leaders in church/denominational settings, ministry organizations, educational institutions and business/professional environment—the “four A’s”: Assembly, Agency, Academy and Agora.

We stress the importance of listening, learning and discerning postures, seeking to discern together God’s presence and leading in these challenging times.

We ask how we can better understand and support one another in our common calling to follow Jesus in the world.

Our inter-network platform is supported by Lausanne Canada, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Canadian Centre for Christian Charities and Christian Higher Education Canada.

For more information, please contact us at info@ourcommoncalling.ca.

OCC VALUES

1. OCC is rooted in scripture, affirming the transforming presence of Christ in all of life. The Lausanne Cape Town Commitment[1] reflects our convictions in theology and practice.

2. OCC is welcoming, celebrating the diversity of the Kingdom of God across gender, generation, culture and denomination while respecting each other as sisters and brothers in Christ.  

3. OCC seeks to be generous and collaborative, characterized by the release of expertise and resources by God’s people who are confident of His supply.

4. OCC practices a posture of listening, a commitment to discern God’s ways together, faithfully exegeting both scripture and culture.[2]  

5. OCC is intentionally integrative[3], recognizing that God has interwoven different communities in the Canadian context, and all have a strategic role in his purposes.

6. OCC fosters practical expressions of embodied mission, gathering God’s people together as reflective practitioners. 

7. We recognize the diversity and richness in Canada around the meaning of “mission” and embrace this as an opportunity for further conversation, in line with David Bosch’s reminder that we may never “arrogate it to ourselves to delineate mission too sharply and too self-confidently.”[4]

[1] “The Cape Town Commitment,” Lausanne Movement (blog), January 25, 2011, https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment

[2] John Stott, The Contemporary Christian: An Urgent Plea for Double Listening (Leicester, UK: InterVarsity Press, 1992).

[3] including but not limited to the Assembly (church), the Agency (parachurch communities), the Academy (schools and training) and the Agora (marketplace and business)

[4] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 2000) Kindle Location 567

OCC HISTORY

In 2016 The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada sponsored the “Canadian Evangelical Mission Engagement Survey,” inviting 1400 pastors to provide their definition of “mission.” The result was responses that were passionate but also confusingly diverse. To explore this outcome, the EFC convened a one-day consultation entitled, “Our Common Calling and the Language of Mission,” to explore potential common language.

In June 2018 leaders from across Canada gathered at the “Future Fit Consultation” to discuss the changing context for global missions work originating in Canada. Many participants expressed the desire for ongoing conversation that would continue to draw on all four sectors (the “four A’s”) represented at the Consultation: Agency, Assembly (local church and denomination), Academy and Agora (workplace). They recognized also that local and global mission efforts must come together as we consider our response to God at work in Canada and around the world.

Two Future Fit related events were held in 2019 and 2020:

• a Church Mission Leaders Roundtable in June 2019 and

• a one-day consultation on Unity in Mission in January 2020.

A number of online forums were held in 2020, 2021 and 2022 using the Green to encourage national conversations.

In November 2022 leaders gathered in Toronto and Vancouver to consider collaboration for global mission engagement, with a particular focus on hearing the voices of the diaspora community.