Who We Are
A Community on a Journey of Identity.
We’ve always wondered why church is the way it is – why we do what we do. Why we keep doing this ‘church’ thing in the midst of a world that is so busy. Why we keep showing up week after week when there are so many other things shouting for our time and attention. Or why we’d want to go back when we’ve been hurt by the church? Or why we’d start when church has never been part of our regular weekly practice?
Many of us know first hand the experience of faith deconstruction – we’ve travelled that path ourselves. Others of us have only recently started attending church – it was never in our background or upbringing, but there was a missing piece in our lives and we realized we wanted to explore whether that might be filled through spiritual connections with others, but its been hard to find a place where we could show up as ourselves. And some of us have been actively kicked out of churches because of our gender and sexuality, but deep down we know we are fully and completely loved by God and want to continue to find safe spaces to worship together with other people.
What If…
What if instead of the hurt, the baggage, the exclusion, and the confusion church could be about relationships and community and ultimately about God? If we could create a community in Barrie and online that was focused on pursuing the life that Jesus promised us? The life he taught us, showed us, and died and rose again to make possible?
We suspect that if we did this, we might focus on building a bigger table with enough space for everyone; no matter how messy or broken their lives felt, or how much of an outsider or insider they thought they were.
We might focus on learning to put into practice the ways that Jesus taught us, showed us, died and rose again to make possible in the very midst of our everyday lives through. We think we could do this in our time together each Sunday, yes. But we also think it should happen over meals with each other through the week, through one-on-one and group discussions or through regular socials in the pub, at the park or in each others’ homes.
And we might focus on making a difference in the world around us. Maybe by caring for refugees. Or working to improve affordable housing for vulnerable people in our community. Or perhaps simply by helping our friends when it was time to move.
What Could We Create?
Ultimately, I think if we did this that we might realize that church could be a place of safety and welcome and community that would allow us to heal and connect, grow and develop more and more into the people God made us to be.
So that’s what we want to invite you to: to join us on our journey to see what church could be. We’d love for you to be a part of our community. Join us!
Mission Statement.
The idea of a mission statement can sometimes feel a little corporate, and cold. That definitely isn’t the kind of place that Vox is, but we still wanted to make sure we had an anchor that would help keep us grounded in who we feel God has called us to be as a church family.Vox’s Mission Statement.
“Vox Community Church is about inviting others to join us as we live out our faith; to journey with us as we gather as a church after Jesus, seeking to be involved where he is, in our community.”
If you would like to watch a more detailed breakdown on our mission statement you can watch this video of Nathan teaching on it at a Sunday gathering of Vox.
Vox is also on a journey with The Good Table, a new network of fully affirming churches in Canada that are actively asking questions about what it means to decolonize our faith. For more information check out their website here.
No explanation of who a church is ever quite cuts it, so ultimately we hope you’ll visit us to discover who we are for yourself!
