A city will take 6-8 years of planning to host an Olympic games. It is not uncommon for couples to need over a full year to plan a wedding, businesses have 3, 5 or even 7 year plans, and expectant parents take months to make preparations for the arrival of their baby.
Anything big and important needs proper planning. A good carpenter never begins to build/renovate a house without a plan or a draft. Anything worth building is worth planning first, a good draft is paramount.
Currently at Toronto City Mission, we are going through some major changes. As a carpenter drafts and builds a house, we find ourselves very much in rebuild mode. Every stable building requires a solid foundation and strong framework.
As the board and staff embark on rebuilding our beloved mission, please kindly keep us in your prayers.
The foundation of our draft should be rooted in our faith. We need to live out the faith that we proudly proclaim. In other words, we need to continue to exist as God has called us to; “Established in 1879, Toronto City Mission is Toronto’s oldest and longest running outreach to people impacted by poverty. Toronto City Mission is a non-profit organization that, through God’s transformational power, builds loving relationships to bring hope to children and families impacted by poverty. We desire that each child and their families will find hope through Jesus Christ. We believe in training, teaching and mentoring whole families to become leaders in their own communities.”
Further, we need to diligently and strictly adhere to our core values:
Compassion – We seek to stand with those who are suffering from the effects of poverty.
Relationships – We value personal relationships with all our participants, partners and personnel.
Dignity – We value the unique purpose and worth of every individual and seek to help them use their God-given abilities to give back to their communities.
Integrity – We seek to be open and honest in all of our thoughts, words and actions
It is imperative that the foundation of our rebuild be our Christian faith, and our established mission statement and core values.
Further, the framework of our rebuild is the need to maintain and add strong vibrant staff. For TCM to understand the importance of taking care of our staff is at the heart of creating a healthy and creative work space where people are appreciated, valued, engaged, productive and thriving. Our desire is that our staff demonstrate character of the heart, confidence in our vision/mission, possess compassion for the people we serve, and are committed to the ministry ahead of us.
In its simplest definition, discernment is nothing more than the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. In other words, the ability to think with discernment is synonymous with an ability to think biblically (John MacArthur).
As Toronto City Mission embarks on creating a wise draft for its rebuild, please pray that we will seek to take time for proper discernment.
May God continue to bless the ministry of Toronto City Mission!