Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 12
June 12, 2006
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Mennonite Church Canada
Mennonite Church British Columbia
Mennonite Church Alberta
Mennonite Church Saskatchewan
Mennonite Church Manitoba
Mennonite Church Eastern Canada
From our leaders
Mennonite Church Canada
Prayer, praise requests
Please pray for:
• The Living Water Church in Borabur, Thailand, that is thankful that the purchase of a property has been approved. The church members are excited that they will soon be able to start constructing their own church building. Pray also that the building of this structure would strengthen the witness of the church.
• The church on Siksika Nation in southern Alberta, which asks for prayer as it reaches out to the people around it. Bullying and other social challenges are serious problems in the local schools. Church ministry includes the distribution of Bibles to students as a means of addressing spiritual hunger.
• Zipporah Ratau, a member of the committee that Witness workers Glyn and Susan Allison Jones work closely with in their Bible teaching and leadership development work. Her 30-year-old daughter, Linda, travelled to a wedding in Johannesburg in January, but never arrived at her destination and has not been heard from since. Please pray that, if she is still alive, God will surround her and protect her, and bring her home soon. Please also pray for the family as they live in this time of uncertainty and that somehow closure would come for them.
Thank God:
• Five out of six expected International Mennonite Pastors Coming Together (IMPaCT) participants have been granted visas to come to Manitoba. Continue to pray for the Colombian pastor who is still waiting for visa clearance. Also pray for all that God might want to accomplish through IMPaCT.
Mennonite Church British Columbia
Pastoral updates
• Paul Schmidt of Winnipeg is the summer intern pastor at Langley Mennonite Fellowship, serving on a half-time basis until Aug. 9. He has completed three years of study at Canadian Mennonite University.
• Mark Janzen is serving as summer intern at Sherbrooke Mennonite of Vancouver until the end of August. He will be assisting youth pastor Russ Klassen, working with neighbourhood children and youths, and helping with the summer Vacation Bible School program.
• After more than a year without pastoral leadership, First Mennonite Church of Burns Lake now has an interim pastor. Roland Cataford, a member of the congregation who, until recently, was manager at a local supermarket, has answered the call to serve in a new capacity as pastor until the end of this year. Dave Friesen of Abbotsford, who is filling in as MC B.C. conference minister, and who has helped First Mennonite as a guest pastor this past year, will be present at Cataford’s installation service.
Greendale youths to serve in California
Youths from First Mennonite of Greendale are planning to serve at Gleanings for the Hungry of Sultana, Calif., from July 15 to 20. They recently raised $2,000 at a garage sale to help finance their trip. Gleanings for the Hungry prepares soup mixes for shipment to needy persons overseas.
Drama workshops this summer at Eben-Ezer
Gallery 7 Theatre and Performing Arts Society is completing 15 years at the Eben-Ezer Mennonite Church drama centre this summer. The Abbotsford-based theatre group, which promotes a Christian worldview through several drama productions each year, has called the church location home since its inception in 1991. Following the performance of the comedy Beau Jest this month, Gallery 7 will move to the MEI auditorium in Clearbrook for future productions.
Mennonite Church Alberta
Valaqua gears up for summer season
Camp Valaqua is gearing up for summer and excitement is building among campers as acceptance forms arrive in home mailboxes.
Camp director Jon Olfert is excited about the quality of staff and volunteers who have already signed up to help this year. In the past few weeks, some counsellors from the previous year have indicated they will return for the summer, adding experience to the leadership group, which will benefit Olfert as he navigates his first summer and gets to know the people who make up Mennonite Church Alberta.
While feeling a strong staff is already in place, he says, “We still need a few chaplains and volunteers to sign up. We are especially looking for a few more adult volunteers for kitchen and maintenance duties.” Those interested should call the camp at 403-637-2510.
Looking to the fall, Olfert is developing a pilot project to encourage school groups to use Camp Valaqua for outdoor programs. His two years of experience as program coordinator with a joint City of Edmonton/Edmonton Catholic School Board outdoor education initiative provide a particularly good background for the venture. Olfert’s wife, Nicole, a school teacher, is working to develop curriculum for the pilot project.
Camp board chair Paul Neufeldt says the May 13 workday to prepare the facility for the summer season was a success: “There was a pretty good turnout, and we got a lot of work done.” Jobs tackled included: cleaning up the riverfront area of last year’s flood debris, repairing riverside trails, climbing wall maintenance, wood splitting, and a variety of cleaning and general maintenance tasks. Approximately 15 youths attended a youth event and stayed the night at camp before participating in the workday.
Mennonite Church Saskatchewan
VBS troupe hitting the road this summer
A group of six teenagers (Carissa Feick, Michael Bueckert, Lenora Epp, Joel Bueckert, Wendy Luitjens and Ashley Wiebe), together with adult staff, will be seeing a lot of Saskatchewan this summer.
The teens are working as a Vacation Bible School (VBS) troupe to help churches carry out VBS programs over the summer. They are going to congregations that need assistance in setting up a program.
The conference in Edmonton will be the first stop for the troupe, after which it will visit a total of nine MC Saskatchewan churches, including towns as far south as Emmaus, as far north as Prince Albert, and as far west as Wymark. The remainder of the congregations are situated in and around Saskatoon.
Fiske Mennonite will be hosting the teen troupe in August.
“We have about 25 kids coming out,” explained co-pastor Claire Ewert Fisher, adding that Fiske’s education department had asked the VBS troupe to come because the small church no longer has enough teenagers to help with the leadership aspects of the program.
Mennonite Church Manitoba
Collaboration brings VBS to Matheson Isl.
The children of Matheson Island will enjoy a week of Vacation Bible School (VBS) this summer from July 10 to 14.
The senior youths from Springfield Heights Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, Camps with Meaning, Evangelism and Service Ministries, and the church at Matheson Island are all working together on this project. Kyle and Ashley Penner of Springfield Heights are organizing and planning the program with 18 youths who were looking for a service opportunity.
Although Matheson Island has had VBS programs in the past, this one has a different twist. Thirty-five children aged six to 12 will participate. While the six- to eight-year-olds will return to their homes after each day, the nine- to 12-year-olds will remain with the youths at the camp for the entire week.
Children from Pine Dock have also been invited to participate.
This is a shared project, with the youth group bringing the camp program and the community providing the meals, maintenance, assistance with registering, and some of the needed supplies.
Matheson Island is a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of Winnipeg plus a short ferry ride.
Mennonite Church Eastern Canada
Singing our theology
Charlene Nafziger wasn’t paying attention to the worship committee’s sending prayer that night! In the quietness of the moment, a new text and melody began to form. In this grace-filled, creative movement of the Spirit, she received a song of hope and assurance, one that Hillcrest Mennonite Church in New Hamburg, where she attends, learned and sang often during a time of significant discernment.
As preparations for this year’s Mennonite Church Eastern Canada spring conference began, the Leadership Team wondered if there would be anyone who might give life to the recently adopted Statement of Identity and Purpose through music. Nafziger readily accepted the challenge to write a song based on the words, “Extending the peace of Jesus Christ.”
Jeff Steckley, Congregational Ministries minister, and MC Eastern Canada executive minister David Martin collaborated with Nafziger on a suitable text. Meanwhile, Nafziger tweaked the melody, added a descant line and rewrote the refrain to include four parts.
A small group reflected on the words and music, to ensure that they reflected the theological meaning in the statement. The group sensed that the conference participants would be stretched if they really sought to live out the picture the song describes.
“Extending the Peace of Christ” was first shared at the spring conference, introduced to the delegates by the Niagara United Mennonite Church choir during worship on Friday evening.
Nafziger, a music educator and pianist, hopes “the text will inspire folks in the churches to be a discerning and courageous people, attending to the directions and future that God would have for us….”
A packet to introduce the song to congregations includes a singer’s version, piano accompaniment version and transparency master. Included are guitar chords and instructions for variations. Permission has been given for MC Eastern Canada churches to make copies for congregational use.
From Our Leaders
Exploring effective ministry
What makes an effective pastor? This was the question posed to 16 MC Eastern Canada pastors who gathered at Conrad Grebel University College in early April. Motivated by the literature that suggests pastoral ministry is more difficult than 40 or 50 years ago, that pastors are less healthy than the general population, and that an increasing number of pastors are leaving ministry altogether, I was curious how these pastors would reflect on their own experience of effectiveness in ministry. The group included 12 men and four women, who had been in ministry between 18 and 44 years.
The pastors talked about their “call” to ministry. These ranged from receiving a clear call at age nine, to serving on a pastoral search committee that, unable to find a suitable candidate, looked to the person and said, “Will you be our pastor?” Several women, noting the absence of external affirmation, pursued their own inner call.
The pastors agreed on three things essential for effectiveness in ministry. The first had to do with their inner self.
“To be effective means digging inside and finding out what is going on there,” said one, adding, “Seeking out psychotherapy is helpful.”
Key to effectiveness, these pastors agreed, was not just the capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection, but also taking the initiative to seek out colleagues and professionals to assist them with their personal work.
A second ingredient for effectiveness in ministry had to do with a “passion for the gospel” and for “helping people grow in faith.”
“The theological challenges of ministry in a multi-faith world and global community create new demands on pastors,” said one. “We must be able to help people think through their faith in new ways.”
The pastors’ third criterion for effectiveness focused on tending their own soul.
“Read more novels and history than theology,” one pastor suggested.
“I remind myself that it is God’s church, and I am one of the workers,” said another.
Perhaps overall effectiveness in ministry was best summed up by the 15 year-old daughter of one of the pastors, who gave him this advice at the breakfast table, “Keep your prayers short, use a breathe mint after every sermon, and have a supportive spouse!”
What did we learn from this gathering that can help us as we, at MC Eastern Canada and Conrad Grebel University College, seek to call, train and equip pastors and church leaders?
1. Solid grounding in the core disciplines (Bible, theology, worship, church history, mission, ethics) of pastoral education is still the essential foundation for effective pastoral ministry.
2. The church must provide ongoing encouragement and opportunities for skills development beyond the core disciplines.
3. Emotional intelligence and a solid sense of one’s personal identity are defining characteristics of effective ministry.
4. Commitment to soul care must be integrated into every aspect of the pastor’s personal and professional life. Without it, as the Psalmist says, “We are like chaff which the wind blows away.”
Unless otherwise credited, the articles in TheChurches pages were written by Canadian Mennonite’s regional correspondents.