Love Ottawa Timeline

Local pastors were moved to begin meeting together for prayer, relationship-building, and missional outreach to the city. This was in large part catalyzed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's efforts to bring their mission to Ottawa. Unity was recognized as an integral part of reaching the city. The Servant Leadership Team was formed, made up of a dozen pastors and leaders of various denominations.

After several years of prayer and relationship-building, this group of pastors and leaders developed a strong and united missional calling. The group became known as Mission Ottawa/Outaoais, to reflect their intent that unity for unity's sake was not the point. Their desire was to bring the Truth and Grace of Christ to the city through the church in unity.

God spoke to their hearts about the need to love our neighbour. At the same time, in order to catalyze missional efforts throughout the city, they decided to commission a smaller Executive Team to focus on networking, consultation, and collaboration with teams who had specific callings and dreams for the city. To reflect this change, the new team was called Love Ottawa.

Within two years, over 100 pastors and individuals were involved in over a dozen cross-denominational teams blessing the city in a wide variety of ways. Love Ottawa partnered with missional teams focused on prayer events, a neighbourhood study, outreach to international students, and regional pastors' prayer groups. It was during this time that Pray Ottawa began to take shape and build momentum.

The Love Ottawa core team continues to prayerfully network pastors and workplace leaders, encourage missional efforts, and support collaborative, consultative teams working where they are passionate to reach out to our city.