REGINA, SK-Church is not about what’s inside the walls.

So believes senior pastor David Wells and the congregation of Regina’s Harvest City Church, a thriving congregation known for its community outreach and relational style of leadership.

The North American church "is still trapped 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, thinking we’ll have a revival meeting and [community members] will come to us," says Wells. "We should have figured out by now they’re not coming. That’s not what Jesus told us to do anyways; He told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

"You have to go into the world, you can’t sit outside the world."

Harvest City puts the concept into practice. One of its largest annual outreach events, the Shine Conference for women, is putting the church on the map.

The event was a tried and true staple for the church, but focused mainly on its own church members. That changed about five years ago when a new women’s leadership team decided to make the conference into a community outreach event.

Now hundreds are attend, some from as far away as Calgary, and other churches are sending members to learn how to host similar conferences elsewhere.

"It’s really catching on. They sign people up a year in advance," says Wells of the conference that features everything from makeovers to short ministry sessions covering a variety of topics from dealing with divorce to becoming a Christian.

"The whole focus of the conference is outward rather than inward. It all started with one woman saying ‘We’re not putting a conference on just for ourselves anymore; we’re doing it for the community.’"

Wells points to the annual church picnic as another example.

"For years we used to go out of town and have a picnic that was just for us," he says. Last year, the church partnered with the local community association to host a community-wide event, helping with the funds and manpower.

"It was a huge success," says Wells. "They had 800 kids show up. They were totally pumped. Then they invited one of our staff to join the executive at the community association.

"We’re aligning ourselves with the community, to get involved with community projects. We have the manpower, and money as well in some cases, to build relationships with the community in various ways. Then when we do programs, Alpha for instance, we have a relationship [to build on]."

While Harvest City is an independent church, it is also a member of Life Links, an international, relationally based group of more than 60 churches and ministries (www.lifelinks.org).

"Our connection is based on relationship rather than around a set of doctrines," says Wells, who helped found Life Links in 1987. "We have a very basic doctrinal statement so there’s a lot of room there for different doctrinal emphasis. True accountability flows on a relational lines, not doctrinal lines."

Life Links is one of several other similar networks that form Interlink, which meets once a year for three days. "We strategize to do missions, discipleship, cross pollination between the five networks. It’s fantastic," says Wells, who calls it a new paradigm of leadership.

"It’s very alive; it’s very aggressive. I believe that in time these networks are going to become the driving force of what you’re seeing in the body of Christ. It’s a lot less encumbered. It’s freewheeling and dynamic.

"The body of Christ has a lot to offer our communities and our nations," he says. "Our trouble is that we have this fortress mentality. We lob grenades at them; they lob grenades at us. We’ve totally missed the point.

"If we take just a few steps towards serving our communities and serving people, it’s amazing how fast those walls are going to come down."

The concept applies to the local congregation as well.

"About three or four years ago, we turned a corner where we began to see a dynamic take place in our church which we had wanted to see for some time," says Wells, who estimates that now more than 100 of the approximately 800-member church are involved with leadership at some level.

"We’re seeing new ministries explode forth from our congregation and they’re not being initiated by our eldership team. They’re being initiated by different people in the congregation.

"If we can empower the congregation, the more the church will grow and develop and go forward. That’s really the key," says Wells. "That’s the difference between churches that continue to grow, and churches that don’t grow.

"How many members of your congregation can you get on the playing field, versus sitting in the bleachers?"

For more information about Harvest City, visit www.harvestcity.sk.ca