Messenger fall 2013

The Messenger Fall 2013

Make and Deepen Disciples

Mark your calendars: 2013 December 9 -CBC Legacy Scholarship Applications due 2014 Jan 27-Feb 30 –MidWinter, Chicago, IL May 1-4 - Annual General Meeting, Erickson, BC and Winnipeg, MB May 16-19 - Jr. High JAM, Strathmore, AB (tentative) Aug 5-12 - Adventures in Leadership, Covenant Bay Bible Camp

Contents: Mark Your Calendars Transitions From Jeff’s Desk Leadership Award Brings Deeper Discipleship

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By Marc Lantz

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An Update from Trellis Foundation

By Kirsten Waldschmidt

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Adventures in Leadership

By Chris Wiens and Jordie Barg

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Discipleship in the ECCC

By Julia Sandstrom

Recent Transition: Joel Braun to Kensington Road Covenant Church, Lead Pastor (Calgary, AB) Upcoming Transition: Ileana Garcia-Soto from Green Timbers Covenant Church

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From Jeff’s Desk Superintendent President “…speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” Ephesians 4:15 By the time this is read the Grey Cup/Coupe de Grey will be history. One of the anticipated story lines is “Who shows up, good Henry/Hank or bad Henry/Hank?” The Henry mentioned is Henry Burris the quarterback of the Hamilton Tiger Cats. In traveling through Saskatchewan days before the game this was one of the sports radio topics. It came up in the context of someone asking if the crowd noise would affect or bother Henry. The commentator who knows Burris well said, “He’s a professional, the noise won’t bother him but what I think does get to him is the Good Henry/Bad Henry label.”

I thought of how easy it is to label people. I think if we are honest we all do it to some degree or another.

Unfortunately, in the context of the faith community we know as our local church, it happens. Paul reminds us that our maturity is hindered when we act outside of loving truth-telling. When we label one another we fail to tell the truth in love because we’ve settled for a slogan more than declaring the whole truth about a person. When we allow others to speak in this way, we are not sharing the truth in love; this is not our calling as Christ-followers.

Part of the Vitality process is the development of a “Behavioural Covenant” that guides how a church in transition will act toward one another. A number of our congregations have now adopted these statements. It might be worth checking out http://www.covchurch.org/vitality/files/2011/02/Behavioral-CovenantSamples3.pdf for more information; if you don’t have time Ephesians 4 will point you in the right direction.

Maturity takes time for us as individuals, for local communities and for us as a community of faith communities. Would you join me on this journey? Would you risk putting this biblical mandate into practice?

Would you affirm those who lovingly while at the same time imperfectly seek to follow this pattern? Something far more significant than the CFL Championship is at stake, the expression of Jesus’ Kingdom values!

Leadership Award Brings Deeper Discipleship By: Marc Lantz

As many of us experience from time to time, God’s plans and timing don’t always fit into the tidy “boxes” that church ministry has developed. That was our experience with using the Neil Josephson Award (NJA) funds given to us in 2012. We postponed the event because of the timing of Albert Josephson’s sickness and passing. However, we were given time to pray, plan, and vision a weekend event that left the 50 plus attendees saying, “We should do stuff like this more often.”

Sharol Josephson, along with her husband Neil, shared their wisdom and facilitated some church-wide conversations regarding leadership development, something our church has struggled to do well over the years. We invited JB and Erin Crocker to lead worship so our people could listen to God’s voice. We spent times in silent prayer and discernment together. We spent some time telling stories about how God has worked in our personal lives and some of the fond memories of our times with the family of Faith Covenant Church.

Beyond the worship and testimonies, we explored the spiritual pathways exercise the Josephson’s have developed and used for many of their ministries. This was a helpful exercise in discovering the diversity that exists in how we worship and hear from God. We also used the Leadership Stool from ECC’s Dave Olson in discovering how each of us are shaped to lead. These two tools helped direct some great conversations and offer clarity to our successes and our struggles as a church in serving God’s mission. It’s helpful to realize that not all leaders are pressed from the same mold, and to discover that God has designed us all differently yet commands us to work together. 1 Corinthians 12:12 comes to mind: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” (NIV) The weekend concluded with moments of giving some vision to where we might be headed over the next few years and asking, “Who are the leaders God is preparing to carry that work?” It was truly just the beginning of many conversations where we come together and seek what God is doing now and in the future mission of Faith Covenant. Visioning and developing leaders seem like issues a church should be addressing regularly, but sometimes the legwork of the ministry stirs up enough dust that we aren’t always certain where we are going and who’s joining us on the journey. I would encourage all churches to set time and resources aside to develop their leaders in a way that mimics the biblical examples before us. Seek out the wisdom of those who have a heart and passion for this ministry. Don’t wait for a scholarship award, but faithfully invest whatever God gives you and pray for what is yet to come!

Praise and thanks to the partnership of the ECCC and NJA committee in making discipleship a priority.

We look forward to sharing more of the fruit that comes from this investment!

Neil Josephson Award The Neil Josephson Award is named for a long time servant of the Covenant Church in Canada. Every year the ECCC grants $2,500 to a church for leadership development. In 2013 that award went to Green Timbers Covenant Church. In 2014, that award might go to your church. The application process requires forethought regarding what you will do with the funds. Applications are made available in February. Please contact the conference office with any questions and apply in February!

Trellis Foundation Update

By Kirsten Waldschmidt, Board Chair “A trellis is a tool that enables a grapevine to get off the ground and grow upward, becoming more fruitful and productive” (Peter Scezzaro, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality). Our desire is that this Foundation, in the legacy of Covenant Bible College, would support growth in God’s kingdom in amazingly fruitful ways. Sometimes all that is needed is getting an idea ‘off the ground’. We believe this is what we are to be about.

The funds coming out of the closure of CBC (in a truly miraculous way) equals about $1.8 million.

We have entered into a partnership with another longstanding denominational foundation (Canadian Baptists of Western Canada Foundation) who is assisting us in investment. The funds are currently being transferred to an asset management firm with a very strong track record. We have received legal permission to change our status from charitable organization to charitable foundation and this will take place in full June 1, 2014. We are also in the process of our legal name change and submission of governance documents. In the mean time we are cleared to move forward in our preparation to make grants. With some of these crucial details falling into place, we are able to look ahead to the work of being a trellis on which the Spirit-led growth of Canadian discipleship can flourish.

Our vision is to be a catalyst of biblical, intentional and innovative discipleship in the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada.

Stay tuned for the launching of our website in the next couple of months. It will include detailed application guidelines and deadlines. Our timeline is that we would be operating in full force in time for the ECCC Annual General Meeting, May 1-4, 2014.

Trellis Foundation is about stewarding, supporting and seeing discipleship to Jesus Christ flourish across Canada. Thank you for remembering us in prayer as we together seek to grow and blossom in His name!

Trellis Board: Kirsten Waldschmidt, Arden Gustafson, Audra Reinhardt, David Johnson, and Larry Peterson

Adventures in Leadership By: Chris Wiens When high school students say, “I never knew I had it in me to lead,” or “I can’t wait to get home and change things,” or “I really experienced God this week,” you know something good is happening! Adventures in Leadership (AIL) came to Canada for the first time this year. It is a program designed to help students not only learn how to be a leader, but to experience it first hand. Our Canadian Conference saw the need to be more intentional about developing leaders of our youth, so in August ten students from around the country, along with three youth Pastors and a camp director, spent a week in the Alberta Rockies to do the first ever Canadian AIL. We spent the first day and a half at Covenant Bay Bible Camp getting to know each other and laying the foundations for leadership and our upcoming adventure together. The next five days were spent backpacking in the mountains. We covered 40 kilometers, two mountain peeks, alpine lakes, and a grueling 1,000 metre descent back to civilization. Some students had never seen a mountain before (Saskatchewan inhabitants), let alone hiked one. Others lived in the mountains and were well equipped for the journey. Some showed up with heavy-duty boots, others brought their running shoes. The diversity of the group proved to be both a considerable challenge but also very rewarding opportunity to journey together as a team by leading one another through care and encouragement.

Each student had the unique chance to lead the rest of the group and then receive feedback from their peers. As a leader, the student had to consider the needs of the whole group, navigate us by map and compass, keep everyone on track, get everyone fed, and lead a devotional to either begin, or end the day together. It was amazing to see how each student stepped up to the challenge! They got to see in themselves things they hadn’t yet realized and hear positive feedback from their peers and leaders.

During the hiking days, the four adult leaders took turns leading conversations about what makes a good leader, covering spiritual and practical skills. We talked about the disciplines of prayer, silence, community, and pursuit of God as essential for godly, spirit filled leadership. The practical skills included vision, communication, conflict management, and listening well. Over all, our goal was to integrate Christian character with specific leadership skills.

The students responded well. They led devotionals, journaled, dialogued with one another, and were forced to put into practice some of the skills that are necessary for good leadership. In addition to personally practicing leadership, each student got to spend half a day with one of the adult leaders to reflect on their own life’s situation and personal goals of leadership when they returned home.

Some students had a passion to work closer with their youth pastors to help effect positive change in their ministries. Others were inspired to step up their influence at home and in their schools. We are so encouraged to see how these students are putting into practice the things they learned about themselves, and their faith.

We are planning AIL 2014 and are hopeful that this program is here to stay!

Adventures in Leadership 2014 August 5-12 Applications available early spring 2014

What I Learned at AIL By: Jordie Barg

Adventures in leadership has shown me the real aspects of being a leader, it has shown me how everyone contributes and lives as community, they are a unified group.

From this program I have learned to take charge, when to let the group have fun, to encourage, and to delegate. I have also learned that everyone has different characteristics in their leadership that are strong points; everyone’s different strong points benefit the group differently. People experience AIL not only to better their leadership skills, but to grow their faith and be challenged into realizing who they are as a leader so that they can benefit their church and community.

The outdoor wilderness aspect of AIL not only causes the group to experience challenges, but causes the developing leaders to learn how to handle them and use these tools in real life leadership scenarios. One of the things that stuck out for me on this trip was the sense of servanthood a leader must have, a person must be willing to put others first and give up their own comforts. If one person was in pain or needed help, the group worked together to lighten their load and make the trip easier for them. In a sense AIL is taking Jesus's example as a leader and challenging teenagers like me to live and love more like Him.

The Potter & The Clay Making and Deepening Disciples in the ECCC By: Julia Sandstrom

In high school I took ceramics and learned all about building figures and creating a mug from a slab of clay. My favorite part of ceramics though was the wheel. Watching the clay move up and down with the pressure of my hands was mesmerizing. The cover photo shows how the potter has to keep one hand inside and one outside. The hands have to exert equal pressure in order to move the clay properly. Too much pressure on the inside and the pot goes flop. Too much pressure on the outside and, well, the pot goes flop. Unfortunately, I was never great at the first and arguably most important step of pottery: centering. Centering the clay on the wheel is important because it guarantees that as the wheel turns the same pressure will be exerted at the same level all around the pot. If the clay is off centre, it just won’t work.

The image of potter and clay comes to us in the Bible. Isaiah 64:8 reads “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” When it comes to making and deepening disciples, this image serves us well. First, it reminds us that the work is the potter’s work, God’s work. Second, it reminds us that we are the clay; our job is to be amenable to God’s work on our life.

God’s work. God works on us, his clay, in many ways. He uses the things we would expect and the things we wouldn’t expect for his purposes. The potter most often uses his hands to push and pull the clay into position, but the potter also uses tools to create the pot. He can use a flat piece of wood shaped like a kidney bean to get the right curve. The potter might use a sponge to wet the clay to keep it from drying out. God uses certain tools too. We can easily name some of these: prayer, church, the Bible, etc.

As I was thinking about the tools God has used in my life I started a list of tools God has used for my discipleship in the last year: Listening to sermons

Suffering loss

Attending Leadership summit

Preparing sermons

Viewing artwork

Celebrating church holy days

Participation in a church plant

Faithfulness

Obedience

Trip to Israel/Palestine

Worship services

Being prayed for

Reading books

Attending Pastor’s Conference Forgiving someone

Being forgiven

Being married

Caring for my dogs

Conversations with friends

Giving money away

Small group

It is easy for us to think that discipleship is about what we do. I go to church or I read my Bible and those are my ways of doing discipleship. The truth is that God uses those things, the external things, but he does an equal work inside us. The pressure to form a piece of pottery comes from both the outside and the inside. This is a work God does on us externally and internally by the Holy Spirit.

Our job. We can think of the clay as being rather passive in this image. The potter does all the molding and shaping. However, clay has to be amenable to the work of the potter. If the clay is too dry or too wet, the potter will have a very hard time making much out of it. So if the potter is the one who shapes the clay and the clay needs to be in the right condition, what is our job as clay disciples? The answer comes in that all important step of centering. The clay needs to be in the right position on the wheel before the potter can do anything else. As the clay our job is to be ready and willing to be centered. To go where God would have us go, do what he would have us do, love who he would have us love, and so forth. Our job is to respond to the work that the potter is doing in, on, through, within our lives.

In the ECCC: As Director of Ministry Support for the ECCC, I get to help plan and participate in a lot of the discipleship experiences around the conference. We include these programs, events, and experiences in our calendar, budget, and overall ministry vision because we believe that the potter wants to mold his clay into new and ever deepening discipleship. There are many opportunities for you to be molded by God in your own life, at your local church, and through some of these conference wide initiatives.

Jr. High JAM: Plans for JAM 2014 are well under way! We are excited to host the event in Strathmore, AB. Our theme this year is SALT and we are looking forward to hearing from Tom Dierenfeld over the weekend. We are busy lining up excursions, games, and other creative ideas for the students to participate in.

Adventures in Leadership: You can read more about AIL in this edition of The Messenger. This one week long discipleship/leadership challenge take high school students through the Rocky Mountains to find who they are as leaders.

Bursaries: The ECCC supports students who are doing discipleship schooling or programs through the CBC legacy scholarship fund. Those applications can be found on our website and are due December 9.

Refresh: Churches have hosted Refresh throughout the conference. This is a weekend event for young adults (18-35) to grown in their faith.

ALIVE: This year 80 adults gathered in Canmore, Alberta to hear about how God works as the potter throughout our lives even when we are too old for camp and Bible college.

Global Initiatives: Our global initiatives provide ways that we can live out the call to be generous disciples. One way God shapes us is through our giving of what he has given us. We also go and see what our brothers and sisters are facing in other parts of the world. Trips to Ecuador and Israel/Palestine are part of our discipleship experiences in the ECCC. Church Planting: God has called the ECCC to plant churches. Considering how you can help or be part of a church plant is one way that God may be disciplining you.

These are some of the many ways we believe God is shaping His disciples in the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada. More of those opportunities will come through the newly formed Trellis Foundation.

I encourage you to read more about on page five.

PO BOX 34025 RPO FORT RICHMOND WINNIPEG, MB R3T 5T5 Ph: 204-269-3437 Fx: 204-269-3584 CanadaECC@gmail.com www.canadacovenantchurch.org

The Messenger is a publication of the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada.

Editor: Julia Sandstrom Staff: Jeff Anderson, Superintendent/President Julia Sandstrom, Director of Ministry Support Gerald Froese, Director of Congregational Vitality Glenn Peterson, Director of Church Planting Margaret Aikenhead, Bookkeeper