A few weeks ago, an event called “Heaven’s Rehearsal” was held in one of our local major league sports arenas. The concept was to try and have a worship service that somehow incorporates people from every possible nationality. It was to display that despite our obvious differences in worship styles, skin colour, politics, and lifestyles, we are all brothers and sisters united together by the saviour of the world, Jesus Christ.
More than 20,000 people showed up for the event and it was a spectacular show of unity in the body. I honestly believe the idea for this event came from a very pure place and I do think it was kind of a neat gathering of people for sure.
However, it cost an enormous amount of money to pay the rental fees, and to pay for all of the musicians and performers and the bells and whistles to make it work. As a result, everyone who attended had to pay $25 for admission.
A few days later, we had a chapel service here at Gateway. In attendance were the president of a local insurance company, a medicated retro funk Jamaican guitarist, a Korean man who doesn’t speak English so whistles along with the songs, two Catholic seminarians, a Life Coach executive, an ex-Satan’s choice biker gang leader with a portable IV unit, a recovering crack addict/crane operator, a schizophrenic Iranian from the local park, a widowed millionaire who winters in Malibu, a dozen or so homeless men who live at our shelter, a newly converted ex-alcoholic auto mechanic from Ireland, and an Arabic Christian woman from Egypt whose Coptic priest husband has been beating her. This rag-tag bunch of misfits all came to listen to the preaching of our chaplain: a skinny white guy from northern Canada.
This, in my opinion, was a better version of Heaven’s Rehearsal.
And it didn’t cost $25 to get in.
Dion Oxford, along with his wife, Erinn, and daughter, Cate, live in Toronto and are committed to journeying alongside people in the margins of society. Dion and Erinn have spent a combined 30 years working amongst folks who are living on the streets of Toronto. Dion is the director of Gateway, a Salvation Army shelter for men experiencing homelessness. He and his wife see the solution to homelessness as the church taking seriously the two great commandments of loving God and loving our neighbours. He likes to read, write, fly kites, cycle long distances, watch TV, play in his band and hang out with his friends.