The Free Methodist Church in Canada August 2004 - Volume 1 Issue 6
COVER I dare you to move by Rev. Scott Williams
Reflecting the diversity of ministry expression within the Free Methodist family
I dare you to
by Scott Williams
PAGE 2 Editor’s Desk Student Ministries God being our helper
PAGE 3 Life is good and getting better! By Bishop Keith Elford
PAGE 4/5 Passages World Relief Canada Laurie Cook interviewed about The Free Methodist Church in Canada’s role by Donna Elford
PAGE 6 One Hundred Years Young! Thornbury celebrates a century of ministry Picton Youth Ministry Goes Public with Skate Park Project by Andrew MacKay
PAGE 7 Adventures In Doing The Ridiculous, Helping Pigs Fly… or Planting A Church by Joseph Moreau
PAGE 8 Renewed Energy for Urban Ministry in Manila by Dan Sheffield Missionary update Linda Stryker, Lois Meredith Frankford signs agreement with Cuba FM leaders #40008369.
MOSAIC 4315 Village Centre Court Mississauga, Ontario L4Z 1S2 Tel: 905-848-2600 Fax: 905-848-2603 www.fmc-canada.org For submissions: howdenl@fmc-canada.org Dan Sheffield, Editor-in-Chief Lisa Howden, Managing Editor and Production Mailed under Publication agreement #40008369. Return postage guaranteed.
“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (MSG)
few summers ago, in the spirit of the family vacation, we all got in the car and headed out to the farm in Saskatchewan. We were nearing a small town in rural Alberta called Redcliff when the fuel pump on the truck died. We coasted into the first little dive we could find and took a room at the local 5 star hotel. We knew it was a five star hotel because the stars were painted on the doors. There were four of us in a room that was, I kid you not, twelve feet by eight feet… for two days. We soon learned all the wonderful benefits of a rural garage. They did not have any of our needed parts in stock. Jed, the mechanic with one good tooth in his head (and he wasn’t even taking very good care of that one!), explained to us the benefits of rural pricing and so we spent at least two hundreds dollars more than we would have had we had the repair done in a city. Finally, after more than two days of watching the wheat grow and chasing unknown arachnids around our hot hotel room, we begrudgingly paid our bill and were thankful to get on our way. We had done nothing but sit and stare and complain for what seemed like an eternity. No car, no entertainment, three channels on the television and Esso food for the first third of our vacation. We no sooner cruised out of the garage and had gone only about 70 metres when we started down a steep hill... right into Medicine Hat. Travelodge’s, Canadian Tire Store, numerous full-service garages… the works. They had a Silver City Theatre, malls, pools... you can imagine it. Without a word of exaggeration, Redcliff is right on the outskirts of Medicine Hat. We looked at each other and just started to laugh... I often think of that experience and realize that it has several life lessons for me. The first and most obvious one is — bring a map! Only slightly less obvious than that lesson is the growing realization that many of us, myself included, often live on the edge of tomorrow and do not understand what is waiting for us just over the hill. We settle for a life that we do not love and pine for a fresh start, but we do not actually get out of the hovel and start down the road into a fresh beginning. We are painfully aware that something is not right though we are unwilling to let go of the land we know and look forward to a shore we cannot see. President Harry Truman used to tell the story of a
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man who was hit on the head and fell into a deep coma. He stayed there for along time. People thought he was dead so they sent him to a funeral home and stuck him in a coffin. At 2:00 a.m. all alone in this dimly lit room, he sat up and looked around. “Good night!” he said. “What’s going on? If I’m alive, why am I in a casket? And, if I’m dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?” That story makes me laugh and it makes me think. How many times have I been unable or unwilling to understand what is going on? I have often become despondent because I have not understood God’s bigger plan for my life and feel shackled by the events of the past. Understanding that we can start fresh and be forgiven is a fact that many of us have a hard time ingesting. We constantly We often live play the tapes of our past failures and on the edge convince ourselves that we are terminal. We lay in the casket and of tomorrow wonder if we can ever be truly alive again. and do not For many of us this is not just a understand platitude or a hypothetical problem. Like many of you, I live in a reality what is that I did not choose, and I’m regularly tempted to feel sorry for waiting for myself, blame someone else, or us just over simply give up. The need for forgiveness and the belief for new the hill. beginnings gives many of us hope and help in a world that tends to condemn and pronounce judgment on us all the time. Many years ago, as a white-water canoeing guide, I was often called upon to take groups across an infamous northern Saskatchewan lake called Nipew Lake. We always tried to get across Nipew Lake early in the morning before the waves got up. It’s a big lake and nasty from about nine in the morning until six at night every day. It’s a long paddle. I’ve been stranded on the lake several times, taking refuge on islands or inlets. We try to get on the lake by about six am. Usually that is evilly early but I have learned that if I sleep in, the price is too high. It is usually foggy on the lake and we are headed for a tiny inlet eleven kilometres away. I could not afford to make mistakes. I have learned how to read
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continued on page 3 - I dare you to move