Long Term Dreams

1. It is the dream of building a God glorifying, biblically functioning community of fully alive Christ followers – loving, learning, laughing, labouring and living in harmony together.

2. It is the dream of sharing the truth and relevancy of the Good News of Jesus Christ with all the residents and students of the Thunder Bay and Barrie areas.

3. It is the dream of a place where average person in our cities including the hurting, depressed, the frustrated and confused can find love, acceptance, help, hope, forgiveness, guidance, encouragement and healing – a church where grace is in place.

4. In Thunder Bay, it is the dream of a city wide church, that will grow to include two percent of the population of or over 2,000 people, the majority of whom come from unbelieving backgrounds. The dream includes multiple sites involving multiple worship and/or program venues with a coordinated infrastructure that together have high impact on the city of Thunder Bay, as well as multiple satellite campuses throughout the province of Ontario. The dream includes expanded facilities at our Redwood Avenue site that will better serve the needs of a growing congregation meeting in multiple services in our Redwood Avenue Auditorium. For our Barrie Campus, the dream initially is to grow a vibrant church family of well over 200 in regular worship attendance.

5. It is the dream of developing fully alive Christ followers who are transformed by the power of God, as they encounter Christ through community (i.e. mid-sized groups, life groups, mentoring relationships, spiritual friendships), Bible studies, seminars, retreats, and so forth. It is the dream of developing a church family full of missional believers who want to pour out their lives for the glory of God.

6. It is the dream of empowering every believer for missional involvement in the work of the kingdom. This includes enabling believers to discover, develop and deploy the gifts, talents, passions and resources that God has given them.

7. It is the dream of being a leadership development center for the raising up of volunteer as well as professional workers who will impact Thunder Bay, the rest of Canada and the world with the truth and relevancy of the Gospel through our pastoral internship and apprenticeship and other programs. This includes partnering with Bible Colleges and Seminaries like the Ambrose University College and Briercrest Distance Learning in preparing and training Christian workers for full time, part time or volunteer service.

8. It is the dream of developing our Opportunities Centre as a ministry that continues to express the love of Christ by ministering to the practical needs of the disadvantaged in our immediate Northwood community as well as to the rest of our city. This includes developing programs and services that break the cycle of poverty that so many get caught in.

9. It is the dream of sending our people on short term missions projects to our city, province, country and world as a way being directly, hands on involved in the world wide work of God as well as mobilizing support for missions to our region and world. It is the dream of establishing longer term missions projects in Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario and the area that we are calling the Asian Spice region.

10. It is the dream of generously providing funds not only for the local ministry of Redwood but for a variety of Canadian and world wide missions projects, especially those of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.