Alastair & Julia Sterne
Apprenticing At: Pacific Church - Vancouver BC
The Sternes are the newest planters to join the CPBC team. They passed assessment in this spring (2011) and met with our leadership team at the end of June for final approval. Alastair & Julia will be attending the Redeemer Church Planters "Intensive" in NYC this fall and moving to Vancouver in January 2012. Listen to how Alastair describes this journey below:
Can you imagine the absurdity of several panicked women reporting to you that your dead friend had come back to life? For much of my life I responded as the disciples did to these women, I dismissed them. “They are telling idle-tales.” After all, dead stuff stays dead. Or at least it does most of the time. It wasn’t until my life had desperately unraveled that God gripped my heart and told me “even in the darkness I am with you.” I was divinely embraced by grace, which gave me faith to follow Jesus.
Believing that “Jesus is alive” should make you want to lose your mind. The more I contemplate it, the more I can’t help but feel deeply compelled to share it—just like the women in Luke’s gospel. If Jesus is alive, then nothing can stay the same because dead stuff comes back to life. Responding to the gospel has changed me in ways I never thought possible, has taken me to cities and places I never thought I would go, has led me to do things I never thought I would do, and has given me a profound hope that God will reconcile absolutely everything to himself.
Over the past four years, my wife Julia and I have prayed about what our shared faithfulness looks like to this message. God convinced us that forming churches that proclaim this historical Christian faith is his desire for us. Over the past two years, God has put one place on our hearts: Vancouver. This means uprooting our cozy lives from Orlando to move back to my homeland.
I love how the Gospel of John tells Peter's story. Twice we’re invited to remember Peter’s experience at two distinct firesides. At the first, he shamefully denies that he ever knew Jesus, as Jesus is sent to his execution. At the second, he is met by the resurrected Jesus. He is told, that even in his shame and denial he is loved, forgiven and still useful in God’s kingdom. By God’s grace he goes on to do seemingly unbelievable things. What propelled him? Jesus is alive.
Our own stories are much like Peter’s, whose story has inspired us to dream about planting a church called St. Peter’s Fireside. By God’s mercy it will be a community where broken people are transformed by the gospel of grace which will send them into the world as ambassadors of God’s reconciling love.
You can follow our journey from Orlando to Vancouver, from apprenticing to one day planting God’s church at www.stpetersfireside.org
Jesus is alive, pass it on.
