David and Diana Hood

What led you to plant/ replant/ revitalize your church?
In 2014, Diana and I were in itinerant pastoral ministry in Ottawa and living in the southeast end of the city, in a community called Alta Vista. Alta Vista has 47,000 residents and will be intensifying over the next ten years. It is a community with lots of seniors, young families, students, and immigrants. It is a mostly wealthy neighbourhood, but we also have several pockets of community housing with a lot of people suffering from poverty, trauma, mental illness, and addictions. We noticed that while there were several church buildings with small, ageing congregations in our community, there were not a lot of active, community-minded, outward-focused churches that were trying to serve and reach the diverse peoples of this place. We felt God calling us to do something about that. At the time, we didn’t know if that meant pastoring an established church towards mission, replanting or revitalizing a dying church, or starting something new. We eventually discerned that God wanted us to plant a new Kingdom outpost to saturate Alta Vista with the good news of Jesus for life transformation and cultural renewal. We were assessed by C2C in 2016, did a year long apprenticeship, and started a Bible study in our home with our core team in August 2017. We officially launched Southeast City Church on September 22, 2019.

How have you seen God working in your church?
We have, by God’s grace, been able to be very active in our community since day 1. While we want to reach everyone in our neighbourhood, God has been consistently opening doors with our neighbours in community housing. Before COVID, we were hosting monthly brunches and games nights at a low-income apartment complex and developed tons of relationships with the tenants there. Over COVID, we remained connected and present through wellness check-ins and Christmas outreaches, and we started a Food Bank on site. We have cultivated trusting, collaborative relationships with several social work agencies in the area who now call us to collaborate with them on a variety of initiatives in several different communities. We are seen as known actors and reliable partners. We have always wanted to be a church for the poor, the marginalized, and the exploited, and God is helping us realize that dream.

What is your connection to Northview Community Church?
Mark Burch was one of our assessors with C2C and has been a coach and champion from a distance. We are a sister MB church with like-minded theology and a heart for multiplication; to see more gospel-preaching missional churches and expressions started across our country to reach all of the different kinds of people. Northview has partnered with us financially through one-time gifts and recurring donations.

Church Mission and Vision.
We want to be a church that gathered or scattered is a family of servants on mission, with Jesus at centre.

Southeast Community Church: Ottawa (ON) David Hood