Based on a True Story » theStory

theStory Is On The Map For Sarnia First Fridays

Nathan Colquhoun — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:31:15 +0000

We’ve been trying to get on the map for First Friday’s for over a year now. Since we’ve been downtown Sarnia, we’ve been wanting to participate and help out with everything that is going on. The First Friday art walkabouts are one of the bigger things that happen down here. So every month, stores stay open late and display art, installations and music. We are now on the map and will be participating with the even every month. Needless to say, we are excited! Below is the map for the June First Friday. We are having Shari come down from Kingston to display her art for our first night!

The Values Experiment: Sarnia First Friday Event

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:34:35 +0000

theStory is starting to get involved in the First Friday cultural walkabouts. It’s basically a night once a month that all the downtown storefronts stay open late and have art exhibits, concerts and other fun things to do. For March we built something that we call a Values Experiment. You can read the write-up on theStory website here and see the results here. The basic idea is we hung questions out for people to answer that would cause them to think about money a little bit differently. Typically our culture reduces almost everything down to money. So what happens when we take it one step further and start putting dollar values on our values, religion and beliefs? It makes things a bit awkward but it certainly gets you thinking. There was a number of people who came through the installation and we got pretty good feedback all around. People would write their answers on a sticky note and put them into the money bags. The results were excellent and pretty funny, I’ll post them below. Thanks to Ryan for the photos.

Empty Spaces at theStory with Emily Brown and The O’Darling

Nathan Colquhoun — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:26:58 +0000

One of the things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time with our space here downtown is use it as a venue. This past weekend was our first show that we hosted. I got Kevin to open up and he did a swell job along side of Nic Swales. Now the next two bands I had never heard of, but I must say I was blown away. Both of them were amazing. It was an honour to have them play for our first show here. Troy has a bunch of pictures that he took from the night here, they are great! Too bad he left early and only got the opening acts. His loss.

The first was Miss Emily Brown. All of her songs seemed to have come from real places in her life. As she played through her set she explained where her songs came from and why she wrote them. Of course for me this helps make the music for me. She isn’t just singing about the night before but issues of culture and history. Her music was soft and lovely and she had a wide range of instruments that she played. Then she finished her set with her singing only accompanied by a music box. It was a really powerful show. Plus, she was just super nice and kind to be around. Check out her stuff on My Space.

Next up was the O’darling. This was a show that also was super impressive. They had three ladies leading the pack and they sang together great. What really brought them together was their band of musicians who knew how to accentuate the girls as opposed to drown them out. One was on a trumpet, one on guitar, one on stand-up bass and the other on drums. Their music was soothing, beautiful and always had me intrigued. They even sang one song in French. Props to these guys for having fun while they were playing too. These guys are definitely worth checking out.

The Bishop comes to Sarnia

Nathan Colquhoun — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:47:32 +0000

Bishop Keith Elford came to Sarnia this past Sunday to ordain Barb Peterson and also joined us for our Sunday morning gathering at theStory. He wrote about us in his latest bishop notes which was kinda cool. What is very different about planting a church with a denomination is that you are usually partaking on something very new and different than what the denomination has previously been doing for a long time. So you have this nagging at the back of your head that you might not fit (which drives a lot of new church planters away from planting with a denomination at all). We have never felt this with the Free Methodists, they have always been extremely encouraging and excited about new opportunities to try something different. Here is his letter that gets sent out to all the pastors in the denomination.

Yesterday morning, Donna and I worshipped in the healthy community atmosphere of theStory, a Free Methodist church plant in downtown Sarnia, ON. Now in its third year, this church plant led by Joe Manafo and Nathan Colquhoun, meets in a storefront location where it has high visibility in the arts and film section of the city. They regularly open their doors to community groups and provide space for bands to practice and work space for local artists. During the week, there is a lot of drop-in traffic (and conversations with) not only curious people passing by but also with neighboring storeowners. As they told stories about relationships that they have been developing, it was clear to me that this community of believers is being salt and light in their neighborhood.

Yesterday morning’s worship experience was beautiful in its creativity and simplicity. While Pastor Joe spoke about the tables where Jesus sat and met all kinds of different people, a communion table made out of a door creatively drew us into the reality that the bread and wine is a doorway into intimacy with Christ. He reminded us with stories from the New Testament about how regularly Jesus went out and often met with undesirable people bringing the good news of grace and forgiveness to them. You’ll see a picture of this table in the Photo Gallery along with pictures of the group as they eat together – something that happens weekly.

Next door, there was a healthy group of lively children meeting in an attractive space that has been developed for them on Sunday mornings, but is used, like the meeting area, in many other ways by the community during the week. With deep appreciation, Pastor Joe talked about the ways that the New Horizons FMC just a few blocks away has been a source of encouragement and financial and practical help. They are already beginning to dream about planting another church in another neighborhood in Sarnia.

New theStory Website

Nathan Colquhoun — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:27:25 +0000

We have a new website for theStory. This one is a lot more functional and user friendly. The website will now manage our library that we are trying to start that will host everyone’s books and not just books in a central spot. The site will also manage all the ATIC things we are trying. We also have started to incorporate forums for our lead team. I’m pretty excited about this one and hopefully will help us do what we are trying to do down here.

The New Space

Nathan Colquhoun — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:49:32 +0000

Nov 1 we signed the papers and got a new space for theStory. We got it right downtown where we wanted to be. It’s been completely renovated from floors to ceilings to fire code and we couldn’t be happier. It’s two storefronts side by side. You can see the picture below. We have a sign on order and should be up before Christmas and that will go on the big grey wall there.

The space on the left is where we hold our main Sunday gatherings. It’s 3200 square feet. Right now it’s full of freshly gathered thrift store couches and a small sound system for our gatherings. I also do all my office work out of the front of this space for Storyboard Solutions too. This way it guarentees that someone is always around and gives us a face with the building downtown. We have a lot of ideas for this space, they are currently being developed. The back area is going to be turned into a massive kitchen for our potlucks and parties. We’re hoping to set up a wall to block off the office space and make it a little more secure. Our hope for this side is to give it as much of a living room feel as possible. Making people feel like at home, so they can use it like their home is a big priority for us.

The left side is where the children meet on Sunday mornings. It’s 2200 square feet with a nice long strip of carpet down the middle. We are holding our first local concert here on December 14th so we are excited to get into that scene also. We are still debating what to do with this side. Part of us wants to make it the more commercial side of theStory where it would stay a profit venture so we could sublet/rent it out to bands, yoga instructors, artists, recording studios and whoever else to use at any times.

We pay $1375 a month for both space plus GST, tax and utilities which equals about $2000 a month. It’s a great space to have and will really serve us well in this community to connect with this side of Sarnia. Joe and I are already loving being able to be here during the day as people walk by and we get to just strike up conversations with people we never would have met if we weren’t here. So here is our space, and we are excited and feel blessed beyond anything to be here.

Settlers of Catan and theStory

Nathan Colquhoun — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 06:40:00 +0000

I was trying to withhold this post for quite a while now. I didn’t think it would ever get to the point. But we are here, and I’m happy we are.

Last October, a few friends of mine from FRWY taught me this game. We played it one time and it was a lot of fun. It sat there at the back of my mind for a number of months and then I decided along with Rachel that we just had to play it again. So we decided that for my birthday, on Oct 06, we would ask for it. So an entire year later, we played it for the second time. Since that day, October 6, 2006, life has been very different for many people here in Sarnia. Settlers of Catan Board Game it is called, and it is building community all by itself. It started with Rachel’s family. We played and played and played, sometimes four games a night (these can run up to two hours a game). We had the expansion pack, so we could get up to six players at once playing.

Then I brought it to the boys at the apartment. I’ve learned a lesson in my life: if I want a trend to catch on, get Darryl hooked. He is so obsessive about everything that people start to follow him in his obsessions. So with him beside me, we started to take over Sarnia. Within a week, we found a few of our friends coming over till sometimes 4am to play this game a few nights a week. Dave, who has played before, our friend Tim myself and Darryl would redefine what it meant to do shift work.

Then we brought in the families. I think I play this game at least 4 nights a week, and I play it with almost everyone. There has been four families that I know of now who have purchased the game, and if I ever need a fix, I know one of them will be playing. I’ve seen mom’s abandon children, husbands sacrifice sex and a community grow out of this that I never thought possible.

Who would have thought that theStory would be partially built on the back of a board game. We even clear the tables after church on Sunday to play a few games. It’s interesting what brings people together. Friendly competition, awesome guacamole dip and 4-6 players at a time could slowly bring a community of people together that I never thought possible. We were worried for a bit about how we were going to build community and get people to know each other, well I think we have found our answer.

Building Price Drops $80,000

Nathan Colquhoun — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 08:53:08 +0000

For the record. The building I talked about here, that would make a beautiful addition to the mission of theStory has just dropped in price. It was listed at $240,000 and now is listed at $180,000 and the real estate agent just called us and said that if we could make an offer around $150,000 or $160,000 than it would most likely be ours. This building is absolutely beautiful. I must admit, I went again today and just walked throughout the building and around it, and dreamed a bit more. It’s gotta be the size of 5 houses for the price of half a house (or 1/5 of a house in a big city). Honestly, if you are reading this blog and you want to invest $150,000 into the Kingdom or heck, even yourself, this building is an investment. My e-mail is nathan@thestory.ca, my phone number is 519.491.9013, don’t hesitate because if you call in the next 48 hours with a donation of $100,000 or more I will send you my left arm.

Buildings and Dreams

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 01:49:11 +0000

Along with church planting is dealing with shattered dreams and ideals. Whether they are dreams of a few days or dreams of a few years, they all don’t, if any go as planned. Since we have started thinking about planting theStory we have tossed around the idea of having a storefront in downtown Sarnia as a safe place/gathering place/office place/hang out place for the community to express itself. There is lots of available space downtown Sarnia and we looked at it all. This one place that we looked at was two, one floor storefronts, about 4500 square feet total. One of them was recently renovated and looked great; the other was a trash hole with not much hope for renewal. It was in a great location and fit the bill physically wise. However it was $250,000 to purchase and $2100 a month to rent. It was a little steep for our liking.

Around 7 months ago now Joe, Darryl and I walked downtown and we went into a well-known Sarnia furniture store. It’s been in its spot for 70+ years and is a Sarnia landmark. We walked around the first floor a bit in awe about how sweet the building looked and the possibilities of it. We left and didn’t really think much more of it. Two weeks ago, we found ourselves downtown again and we found ourselves back in this building, and this time I was asking questions. I was asking the lady about the history of the building and we were looking at the disaster pictures of when a tornado went through the area 50 years ago. Then I made some off-hand comment about how much I love the building and I wish I could buy it. Then she said words that I think sent my mind racing so hard that I didn’t really listen to anything else she had to say: “Well, it’s for sale, so you could buy it.”

Let me give you some details of it. It is 21,000 sqaure feet. Three floors, second floor is a balcony around the first and the third floor is one massive space probably about the size of two-three medium sized gyms. There is tons of office space, unlimited storage space and even more space that you will find when you least expect it. There is a basement also, the same size as the rest of the floors that about half of it is being used right now. Also included, of course there is more good news, is the property next door which is a corner store front on the busiest street downtown that used to be an old bank and is now converted into an office for some land surveyors. The roof was redone about five years ago and the physical nature of the inside of the building is absolute mint. The building was beautiful.

Guess how much this property was? 17, 000 square feet more than the first one I mentioned, and thirty thousands dollars cheaper. This whole piece of property was only $220,000. Now you all are wishing you lived in Sarnia aren’t you? You’ll never find anything like that so beautiful and large for such a price. They are pretty much giving it away.

So we talked to the real estate guy, went on tours of the building and brought along people who could inspect the place. Everything was perfect, it was a once in a lifetime deal. The only problem is that we don’t have $220, 000. We don’t have a deposit to get a mortgage. We thought about asking rich people that we knew. We thought about buying it and keep renting it to the people that are in there now to keep some sort of income. We prayed about it. We dreamed like we’ve never dreamed before.

As it stands now, we aren’t going to go for it. A building that size, for a community as small as us with as budget as small as ours would be committing suicide to jump into something like that right now. The last thing we want to do is start a church only to throw everyone in a building and that building be the point of our existence. We need time to grow together, learn together and dream together. We need time to build community before we give a place for community to thrive. So even though in my eyes this building is perfect beyond comparison to everything we would need to be a strong support to our city, there is a good chance that its probably best for us to just wait. I hate waiting.

Of course, if you know anyone who wants to give us some money to buy it and maintain it for a little while, my guess is we’d probably be all for it. I just don’t want to be that church that has to have the pastor stand in front of the congregation week after week rallying for more money for the building project. Our goal at theStory is not to raise money for a building project so we have a building. Instead its our goal to use everything that God gives us, which is everything we have, whether it be time, money or a building to be put to use for kingdom causes.

theStory Inside the City

Nathan Colquhoun — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 04:00:06 +0000

It is odd, encouraging and a bit scary to me that more people all over the world that read occasionally on the internet have a better idea of what’s going on with our church plant (theStory) than my neighbour does. In fact, I don’t think my neighbour knows that I’ve started a church. There are people in Sarnia who are interested in the church plant but know less than most people on the internet because they aren’t avid internet users.

This is odd because this is a church plant for God for Sarnia. So if people from all over the world can be encouraged and inspired by what we are doing in Sarnia then praise God. We are trying desperately to put on our true face on the web, but I think it’s easy for us all to say that we want to look better than we really are (whatever better really means). It’s odd because I’m worried that I’m more concerned about what we look like on the internet than I am in real life. I am a internet junkie. This is my age group. All my friends are obsessed with community building websites like MySpace. This is part of who I am. However, I can’t allow an internet identity to interfere with my real identity here in Sarnia. So yes we are a new church plant. Some may call us emerging. We are tied with all kinds of web-based organizations like Resonate, Epiphaneia, The Daily Scribe, Thinker Labs and other great ideas and organizations. So with that comes some sort of weird fame in these circles. It’s a fame that is strictly within the circle. But its there. All of sudden you start seeing your church or your name linked on big blogs and you get a bit happier. You check your web stats more and you want to be successful in this little internet world.

This is encouraging because it means that we have support coming from all over the world. This is support that we never would have had a few years ago. Connecting with Resonate and the Free Methodists put us in contact with church planters all over North America that have been encouraging us and walking us through the initial steps. These relationships are essential to moving forward as a church plant. We are one of many that God is using to spread his kingdom.

This is a bit scary because I’ve always used the internet to promote things that I’m doing. We advertised The Evolving Church with Epiphaneia 90% through the internet and sold out our tickets a month before it started. We advertised Cultivate on the internet and hit our target. My blog is something I’ve been keeping up for two years now on the internet and its becoming something I’m comfortable with and can use as a tool to get he word out about something new. theStory though is an entire different world. I can’t and don’t want to advertise theStory on the internet. I don’t want to use all my graphic design and web design techniques to make the biggest impact. It’s just not the way you start a church.

So here I am on my first project in 4 years where the internet really isn’t that useful. In fact my graphic/web design skills have sort of just been pushed to the side. Honestly, who really cares if our calendars look good or not? We aren’t drawing people in with them; we are sending people that show up home with them. We kept our website as simple as possible and we are hoping to make it a useful tool to bring the community together by having the user-updated calendar, a book library and a blog. We are trying to be transparent. After all, as of now we are just twenty people that sit in a living room and talk about what it means to be a community that follows Jesus. Hopefully we can use the web as a tool for our community not a tool to highlight or put us on a pedestal