Mary Woodward’s Ministry Connecting with Grace Church Vision
Guelph Prays, the ministry I’m involved with in Guelph, Ontario (Canada) has a similar vision to Grace Church’s vision: “Connecting with people through Christ to serve the spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of the community and the world around them.”
The foundation of Guelph Prays is prayer. Though it must start with each individual having a vibrant prayer life, Scripture, especially the book of Acts, gives us a vision of what happens when people pray together. Thus, we both promote and practice prayer among like-minded individuals, churches, and parachurch ministries in Guelph and the surrounding area.
Guelph Prays addresses the spiritual needs of the city through its own weekly prayer groups (which pray for the spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of their city and beyond) and through participating in other prayer groups in the city. We also come alongside other prayer initiatives, creating a network of prayer champions across this Ontario city—all for the goal of community transformation.
Prayer has led us to partner with and encourage the ministries that are meeting the spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of the community. Here are three examples of how this ministry addresses the needs of the whole individual.
- MoveIn is a ministry to immigrants and other marginal groups: Our MoveIn partners live in a mostly immigrant apartment block. They’ve helped one of their neighbors in the immigration process of inviting relatives to Canada and have hosted kids’ camps in the local park. Guelph Prays team members, including myself, have helped by being a quasi-extended family for these kids whose extended family remains largely in their countries of origin. Through these interactions there are opportunities to pray with and share the hope that is found in Christ.
- Celebrate Recovery (CR) is a Christ-centered 12-step ministry that journeys with people working through hurts, hang-ups, and habits. Guelph Prays, collaborating with a local church began a CR group in the Hope House ministry center Guelph’s Downtown. This ministry has evangelistic, discipleship, and holistic impact. People come to Christ through CR and Christians find healing in areas of life not yet yielded to God. In this process, individuals grow in areas of relationship, self-discipline, service to others, leadership development, and stewardship.
- A new Missional Living Group continues to develop in a section of Guelph that has a high number of immigrants and people prone to generational poverty.* The group was formed as a result of Jacob and Karen praying with the MoveIn team. We meet weekly to pray, praise, engage with God’s Word, and consider ways we can holistically serve people who need the Gospel. Our prayer and discussion led us to serving as noted above in the MoveIn section, as well as joining in local pick-up sports, participating in a community gardening program, and even helping new Canadians (recent immigrants) launch business enterprises. Again, as we pray, God leads us to people who we can serve. As we love and serve, we engage in spiritual conversations, pointing others to Jesus. We firmly believe that our missional focus will result in people coming to Christ. We also believe that those we seek to serve and share Christ with will likely never enter the doors of an established Canadian church.
*Generational Poverty: the parents were poor, their kids are now poor and their grandkids kids will grow up poor.