Update from King's Cross
King's Cross is one of our more recent church plants. It was planted by a team coming out of St. John’s Vancouver and launched in May 2023 at the border between Vancouver and its nearest suburb, Burnaby. They meet at Collingwood Neighbourhood House on Sunday mornings and enjoy life together in neighbourhoods all over the cities throughout the week. Their mission is to joyfully love and serve Jesus Christ and share him with their neighbours.
We had a chance to connect with Rev. Jeremy Graham recently to ask him a few quick questions about how the church planting is going. Along with Rev. Joel Strecker and their core team, Jeremy is planting King's Cross Church after serving on staff at St. John's Vancouver for ten years. He's married to Kim and has three teenagers who “make him feel old”. He loves cross-cultural experiences and the ethnic and cultural diversity of Vancouver, along with hiking, movies, board games and asking “why.”
Jeremy, what are one or two specific stories from your church that’s been an encouragement to you recently?
King's Cross hosted a neighbourhood Easter egg hunt after church in the courtyard outside our building. It was a beautiful spring day and we had 14 kids from the neighbourhood come and join our community as we searched for 250 eggs! We did our after service hospitality outside and offered food and drinks to our guests.
King's Cross had a first last month. Our first visitor who reported that they'd heard about our church from visiting a local community gathering. When they expressed interest in finding a church, another person (not a member of King's Cross!) told them they should check out the church that meets in the Neighbourhood House. Now they're part of our community. Small steps!
What are your hopes/goals for the next few months?
We are discerning a further partnership with the neighbourhood house that would allow us to do deeper community engagement through hosting cooking classes and free meals and could open doors for sharing the gospel.
We would like to run an Alpha course or similar evangelistic, relational program in someone's home to begin having spiritual conversations with those who regularly attend King's Cross but are not yet followers of Jesus.
What are your biggest challenges and needs right now? So people can pray and support.
We are trying to hire a part time Music Worship leader and have not found anyone yet.
Our core leadership team remains small even as we're growing and meeting newcomers with deep needs for evangelism and discipleship. We need time and attention to disciple and develop a larger team of lay leaders to support our core team.