Pastor/Spouse Retreat

It has been a long time since I have put something up on my blog.  Thank you, to all of you who stop by to check every once in awhile, for your patience.

We had a wonderful Mennonite Church BC Pastor/Spouse Retreat on October 6th to 8th.  We were at the Cedar Springs Christian Retreat just across the border from Abbotsford into Washington State.  It is beautifully snuggled into the base of a small mountain.  Take a look at the centre from the viewpoint on the mountain.

We had two special features this year.  One was that the speakers were our own brothers - two pastors from our MCBC congregations.   They spoke about important practices in their spiritual lives.  Tim Kuepfer, pastor at Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond, encouraged us to use The Daily Office for our devotional life - we practiced it in his sessions.  He also talked about his (together with his wife Sandra and their boys) discipline of Scripture memory.  Rob Brown, pastor at Eden Mennonite Church in Chilliwack was the other speaker.  He spoke on the importance of spiritual disciplines and some of his recent experiences.

The second thing that was special about this year's Pastor/Spouse Retreat was having our Pastoral Care Reps with us.  In the new structure of MCBC, the Executive Minister (that's me) gives attention to all the ministries of the conference.  This includes: the Faith and Life Committee, Evangelism and Church Development, Finances, Church Health and Camp Squeah.  Notice that I said "gives attention."  This means that every one of these ministries has its own leadership and a chairperson that sits on the MCBC Leadership Board, yet I attend most of their meetings in order to seek to hold it all together.  So, given this larger mandate, the Executive Minister can't be a pastor to the pastors as the former Conference Minister was.  The Conference Minister served, in essence, as a staff person for the Church Health committee.  Since I give attention to the whole, we need help in caring for the pastors - this is where the Pastoral Care Reps (PCRs) come in.  They are respected people in our conference who can take up no more than six of our pastors and care for them.  They are responsible to the Executive Minister.  Anyway, there were some good relationship building times for the PCRs and the pastors to whom they relate.

This is probably the last time we will cross the border for this event.  Hopefully the new retreat facilities will be ready by next fall - we are already booked for that weekend.