March, 2004 rev 1

Life on the Streets:   An Ekklesia Inner City Ministries Update - Andy Coats

To all my dear family, friends and support partners, many of you have heard of the recent changes in my career, but I know it's important to provide you with a clearer picture of how God has been working in my life the past year - and what He has in store for the future. Since the late 1990's I have felt a call to missions. I was encouraged by the wonderful example set by the strong mission support emphasized by the leadership and members of Mississauga Chinese Baptist Church, (MCBC, my home church). It was in 2000 that I first had an opportunity to assist Pastor Paula Chan lead a team of young teens on a short term mission to serve the poor in the inner city of Toronto with the Center for Student Missions (CSM) We lead another team in 2002, again serving the homeless and needy in Toronto at CSM. It was at this time that I began volunteering with one of the outreaches assisted by the CSM teams - Ekklesia Inner City Ministries, performing "sandwich runs", delivering bag lunches to street people.

Then in 2003 I was fortunate enough to assist a university team from MCBC on a short term mission to Grenada with International Teams Canada. Although this mission was overseas, there was still an emphasis on delivering the gospel to those in need in a poor village called La Mode. During this mission God really changed me and spoke to my heart. He showed me that the love of Jesus Christ can change anyone: even me. The YWAM (Youth with a Mission) Director in Grenada, Shamus James, challenged all of us to listen to God's calling to missions and his encouragement was confirmed on my return to Canada.

As I returned to work last August and the volunteer work of sandwich runs, I began to explore God's calling with the pastoral team at MCBC and Rev. Joe Elkerton, Executive Director of Ekklesia to confirm the leading of the Holy Spirit, to ensure that God could use me to further His Kingdom and where that might lead me. Well, as many of you know that has lead over the last several months to an opportunity to enter full time ministry as a missionary with Ekklesia Inner City Ministries - primarily working on the streets of Toronto with their ministries to the homeless street people.

Ekklesia Inner City Ministries Update

Ekklesia Inner City Ministries is a Canadian Christian mission organization with an emphasis on reaching out and serving the disadvantaged, primarily in the urban areas. Ekklesia currently has operations in Brampton, Mississauga, Toronto and Vancouver, ministering to the poor and homeless as well as several missionaries commissioned overseas in Asia. The foundation of Ekklesia is to be incarnational, ie. striving to be the presence of Christ in the lives of the lost.

Statement of Faith: Ekklesia affirms the historic Christian faith as expressed in the Apostles Creed, and in particular - We believe that all humanity is created in the image of God. We believe in the redemptive and reconciliatory work of Jesus Christ. We believe Christians are to be agents of reconciliation, both individually and socially.

Current Ekklesia ministries include:

• Project 417, the Nehemiah Effect - Brampton Community Development Outreach
  
• House Church Ministry, Brampton and Mississauga
  
• Toronto Sandwich Run Street Outreach
  
• Out of the Cold support at Knox Presbyterian - for Street Youth 25 and under
  
• Vancouver Coffee House drop-in - Common Ground
  
• Vancouver Saturday Breakfast Club
  
• Native Ministries -BC Region (Teen Camps, Summer Camps) and urban Toronto GTA
  
• The Ekklesia eStore - in support of street people(in development)

There are four ways you can be a support partner with me at Ekklesia:

• Prayer - Please lift up the needs of Ekklesia and the ongoing issues I communicate to you in your times of prayer.
  
• Volunteer - Many of the Ekklesia programs could not operate without dedicated volunteers who are the hands and feet of Christ in our community.
  
• Advocacy - Be a friend of Ekklesia and tell many people you meet on an daily basis about our work and how the hopeless are being given life and new hope.
  
• Financial Support - My missionary position at Ekklesia is 100 % faith based. That is there is no current salary. But you may donate funds to my budget through Ekklesia, a registered Canadian charitable organization, to support my annual needs.

Urgent Requests - By far the most pressing needs of Ekklesia are currently financial, to meet the reasonably budgeted incomes of the leadership and missionaries. Ekklesia in Toronto has very low overhead, with no debt, commercial rented space or capital buildings. All support goes entirely to operating programs for the poor, purchasing food and supplies for those same people and income and expenses for those of us who run the programs. No staff in the GTA receive a salary, all rely upon the faith based missionary funding method. Ekklesia is already a testimony to faith based Christian community development in the GTA. But it is in a crisis currently to continue providing services due to funding shortfalls. Without new financial partners this quarter, Ekklesia will be forced to cut back full time operations. It will be hard to gauage the impact this would have on the street people who have come to depend on our regular presence in their lives. Shelters are overflowing, and in themselves are only emergency, stop-gap measures. Ekklesia seeks to model how the body of Christ can effect real change in the community. Change that brings healing, salvation and breaks free of the self perpetuating cycle of the secular welfare system. Pray that God would bless our current financial partners and raise up many new partners who may in turn bless Ekklesia out of the abundance of God’s merciful providence. May He expand our mission horizons and make us be a light shining in the GTA.