Finding Pastors in Your Backyard

Finding a good fit in a pastor is not an easy thing. Meeting a congregation’s present reality and the hopes for the future is a daunting task for a search committee – given that we task ordinary people, doing ordinary jobs with the job. Granted, they love the church and are deeply committed to the life and health of the future church, plus they have the ever present young person on the search committee who represents the future (but doesn’t have a clue as to why he or she said yes when asked.)

Thankfully there are lots of places to advertise, and each Area Church Minister has access to a list of people who have said they would like to pastor somewhere within half an hour of Winnipeg. Okay, lots of these potential candidates are more open than that. But have we looked in our backyard lately?

It was only a couple of generations ago when we expected that our pastors would be raised up from within the fellowship of our congregation. And, back then, the bonus was that we would just call them, they would keep their day job, and we would find ways to say thank you throughout the year.

In the last few years in Mennonite Church BC we have found ways to call people from our backyard and pay them too! Some are fulltime, while others are in varying measures of part-time. In each case, full effort was given to looking in all the available places, but in the process, God began to reveal a candidate right near at hand, who ultimately became the one to fulfill the calling.

If February of this year, First Mennonite Church in Kelowna called Kevin Barkowsky to be their lead pastor. I introduced him to the chair of the congregation more than a year ago as a friend in Kelowna who had previously pastored, gone back to his former employment, but was open to re-engaging pastoral ministry. They courted each other for that year. It was one of the most serious discernment processes I have seen – ending with a joyous commitment to the marriage.

The road to Granisle - May 1st, 2011

On May 1st, Rob Wiebe was installed as pastor of Church of the Way in Granisle. Rob attempted pastoral ministry just out of Bible School, years ago, and it did not go well. He has had many years of volunteering and developing his ministry gifts in his home church, First Mennonite Church Burns Lake (which is an hour down the road from Granisle). The Church of the Way people love him and he loves them, so after an eight month courtship, they too made the marriage official. They went the full route of a proper search, but soon it became clear that this was Rob’s time to re-enter the pastoral ministry. It was time for Church of the Way to extend the call.

Look hard – far and wide – but keep your eyes open to your backyard.
(Look for this article in an upcoming Canadian Mennonite under "From our Leaders")

Rhythm/Balance in a Smartphone Age

I made a note to myself to blog about rhythm/balance in a Smartphone age. When I sat down to do it, it occured to me that I thought I had already written about rhythm. I checked back, and sure enough, a year ago, almost to the day, this was my topic. Check it out in the sidebar. I won't re-write it, but I will expand on it.



You can get an App for almost anything on a Smartphone. This includes: a fitness counter, diet monitor, time and travel tracker, and of course, keeping your finger on all of your favourite sports teams instantaneously. There are so many more Apps in which I have not taken any interest, but may be just for you! Many of them are free, too. Surely our lives should be fully under control by now.

Yet, how easy it is for the rhythm and balance in our lives to be totally out of control. Do we admit it? Of course not, because there must be just one more App to finally fix it all! I must admit that it is kind of handy to have almost my whole world saved into my phone, safely tucked away in the pouch on my belt or in my pocket.

The trick is to turn parts of it off in certain settings. If I am engaged in a meaningful conversation with someone and the smartphone rings, there is a wonderful button to hit called "Ignore." It sounds rude, but I think it is more rude to answer it. How can that person in the phone be more important than the person I am with? After all, they can leave a message.

Another button that is well worth it, and is never more than two clicks away, is the "All Alerts Off" button. It is so simple. When I am in a meeting, the people in the meeting have my full attention. When I am in church, I can still check my Bible on the phone, but never interrupt my worship experience (or that of my neighbour's) with a vibration, buzz, or - heaven forbid - a full-on ring! Sorry if I have ignored your call, email or text for more that a 1/2 day - it's because the "All Alerts Off" feature has been directing you to leave me messages.

Then there is the option of turning it completely off - what a concept. It sure makes for a good night's rest. And, you know what, the smartphone actually likes a rest too. Seriously, it works better after it has been given a rest!

Blessings in finding the rhythm and balance in your multi-sensory life.

Water Under the Bridge

There has been a lot of water that has passed under the bridge since I last contributed a blog entry! The river of life keeps moving on, even if we don't pause to talk about it every once-in-awhile.

While the water keeps flowing, we need to make sure we give attention to most important things. I think we often have distractions that allow us to avoid the important things. For some it may be Facebook. For me, it is just simply email. I think there are many of us who would say that if we gave a careful response to every email that comes our way, we could actually spend our whole day - every day - on email. Given that Facebook and email are both communciation tools that help us keep in touch with people, as well as accomplish things, we have to figure out how to manage them as tools to use rather than the master that rules us.

This season of Spring is a time, for many places in Canada, where the rivers that have stopped flowing for the winter because of the ice on them begin to melt and break up. It is amazing to see (and hear) the power of the spring break up of river ice. But, for today's thoughts, I am led to the possibility of the river stopping its flow and taking a rest.

It may look like I took a winter break from blogging because I let the constant flow of water under the bridge freeze up and stop. But reality, as you might well imagine, is that the real water of work, life, and technical support has been flowing so hard and fast that I have not found the time to stop and write.

While I haven't yet figured out the function, value and usefulness of Facebook, I've been thinking about Twitter. It seems like saying things is smaller soundbites, and saying things more often might be the ticket. But then, maybe just figuring out Facebook makes more sense. What do you think?

By-the-way, what are you doing for Lent? I have taken a cue from one of my colleagues to write every day about "Where have I seen God's hand today?" It's great to just pause to think about big and little things that appear to have been touched by the guiding hand of God. Yesterday I wrote, "I see God's hand in the beauty of another rainless day to allow me riding pleasure. In the sacrifice of a certain individual (name removed) in rearranging her schedule to make the Sunday meeting work - it is the amazing nature of God's people to be unselfish."

Dutch Blitz - Family Style

It would have been great to get a photo of our family's - after Christmas dinner - Dutch Blitz game. Picture this - eight adults around the dining room table playing with eight decks of cards. That's right, 8 decks of Dutch Blitz cards at once. Fortunately there was a new deck and an well-worn deck of rags. We still marked the rags to make it easier to sort after each round.

Yes, Christmas dinner was settled. We had taken time to sing carols, read the Christmas Story, open gifts, go for a walk around town to look at Christmas lights, and clear the table.

With that many decks and people it made for a whole lot of piles out there at once. Those with faster hands and minds prevailed. A lot of blitzes happened with the winner having only 11 or 12 cards out there. Those of us who aren't known to be super fast never got the experience of a positive score. I'll just say that my son-in-law and I ended up tied at minus 45.

If you don't know how this game works, google it at www.dutchblitz.com and learn all about it. I'll include a picture of it below.


This was on Boxing Day, and we did it all again 3 days later upon returning home from Diane's birthday dinner at a favourite local restaurant. Actually this time we only went with four decks, dividing the responsibilities for each deck between two people. It was still a riot!

Oh, by-the-way, did I tell you about this year's new Christmas Tradition. It is our married kids dividing up the leftovers to take home. Actually it started as a Thanksgiving Tradition, and will carry on as an Easter Tradition as well!