State of the Union Address

We are looking forward to a wonderful time of celebrating the work of God's kingdom among us as we gather on the afternoon of May 24th to worship, fellowship and eat together.  I encourage your congregation to consider closing your regular worship service and making this the one to focus on.  We are also asking each congregation to either share a few words, send a video, or photos, showing some missional activity that you are involved with.  Let's  make it a blessed time.

This is a sneak preview of the state of the union address that I will give at the Mennonite Church BC annual meeting on Saturday, February 21st.  It's kind of like when someone's speech gets leaked to the media and snippits from it end up in the newspaper before it is given.  I thought I would pre-empt all the reporters that are lurking at my office door and pre-disclose it myself.

Our theme for our leadership conference (LEAD) and for the annual sessions is "Old Coat New Cloth: Fashioning the Future for MCBC" from Matthew 9:16.  May we be the new cloth that God wants to work with, especially new cloth that is fashioned from an old coat.

First Mennonite  Church Burns Lake has signed the Covenant.  Now they are seeking to know what covenant-living is really like.  Because of some tough years in the last decade, this congregation has lost many members, but they are now a unified, smaller congregation seeking the partnership that a covenanted people should provide.  May we come alongside  of them in faithfulness.

Abbotsford Mennonite Fellowship has also signed the covenant.  Let us find meaningful partnership with them too.

We are now 31 covenanted congregations.  May it be a healthy union of congregations that are definitely not all alike, but hold together in a covenant relationship.

Karen Martens is the new Denominational Minister and Director of Leadership Development for Mennonite Church Canada.  You will get to meet her this weekend at both the LEAD Conference and the annual meetings.  She and her husband Terry co-pastored the Grace Mennonite Church in Regina, Saskatchewan for around 15 years.  She began in this position in the fall of 2008.

 

We are going to be our Identity, Purpose and Vision statements as the statement of who we are. But out of who we are comes our commitments as to what we are going to do.  Just go back to the MCBC Home Page and and click on Our Vision Statement to see all this (or come to the annual meeting on Saturday, February 21st!)

 

We are going to celebrate the beginning of Level Ground Mennonite Church, yet at the same time to give recognition to the good ministry of its predecesors - West Abbotsford Mennonite Church and Wellspring Christian Fellowship.  I think we should commission someone to write a new history of Mennonite Church BC, especially since we are newly covenanted together.  The update would be from 1990 until now.

 

Columbia Bible College is seeking the wisdom of the Mennonite Church BC and BC Mennonite Brethren churches (the two bodies that own the school) by drawing me and my MB counterpart into a Leadership Development Task Force with the president and academic dean.  This is to help the school develop students whose competencies that align what the churches are looking for.  I think we are in a great place of strengthening the role of CBC as our school for our students, whether we are training up lay people in our church ministries or people for staff positions.  

An interesting conversation that we are having with CBC is regarding bursaries.  There is a sense among the MB leaders that the subsidy given by the conference should be developed into bursaries for students rather than general giving to the school's budget.  As MCBC leaders, we are okay with continuing to give to the general budget, but think it might be a good idea for the congregations to develop their own bursaries to give to their students.  Now, one radical step further would be for MCBC congregations with a bursary who don't have students in a certain year, to make their bursary available for students from other congregations that may not have sufficient bursary funds.  I think this would be a great expression of covenanting together.

Please pray for Mennonite Japanese Christian Fellowship in Surrey and their pastor, Gerald Neufeld.  Any time I have worshiped there, I have truly experienced blessed worship, but they struggle to keep up their support for their pastor.   Pray for God's wisdom and creativity.

A Sip of Scripture

Here's a little ad for any of you who are still wondering what you might do for your devotions this year. If you got this far into the MCBC website, then you will have passed by a tab on the homepage called Links. If you click on Links there's lots of good stuff, but go right to the bottom and you will find A Sip of Scripture. This is a daily Scripture reading. This year the Sip of Scripture is going through the book pictured above. If you are not familiar with this book, it is a collection of the primary Scripture texts that the early Anabaptists leaned on most heavily. You can buy the book from Pandora Press. But, you can also be challenged and blessed by going to the MCBC website every day and making this your daily Scripture reading. If you go to the source of this webpage, you will be at Thirdway Cafe. At Thirdway there is lots of good stuff about Anabaptists, but at Thirdway you can also get this daily devotional sent to your email address and have it pop up for you every morning! You can even go back to January 1st and get the full-meal-deal from the beginning of the book.  

And, a bonus - this is not just a Scripture reading, but a devotional. When you scroll down you will find a daily blog called A Simple Desire. Every day one of a number of people will write a reflection on the Scripture passage.  

One surprise - the early Anabaptists included the Apocrypha in their Scriptures, so you will find the occasional text that is not from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible that we carry. Blessings.

New Year's Day

The U2 song New Year's Day has been one of my favourites.  It probably has been a real frustration for those who want to start afresh and make all kinds of resolutions to live a better life.  Here are the words of the first verse and the chorus, 

"All is quiet on New Year's Day.  

A world in white gets underway.  

I want to be with you, be with you night and day.  

Nothing changes on New Year's Day.  

On New Year's Day. 

and then the chorus 

I... will be with you again."

This song has always struck me as encouraging.  Bono often intertwines the story of his relation with his wife, with God and the world.  It is heartening to know that we will spend another year together - through the good and the bad, the celebrations and the frustrations.  To celebrate that the first day of the new year is not miraculously different that the last day of the year before is encouraging.  God is with us and we will find him when we seek him.  

May 2009 be filled with the hope of the God who was, and is, and is to come.

Life in the Fast Lane

There have been a few people who have suggested that breaking my leg just before Christmas might be just what I needed to cause me to stop working and be with my family at Christmas. Some have suggested that it may have even been God's intervention.  I do not disagree.  I did cancel one speaking engagement due to my injury.  I also missed the celebration at Camp Squeah of Dan Friesen's 20 years of service there. Certainly, being unable to drive a car kept me at home much more.  I did slow down.  While it has caused me to reorganise my schedule to travel less and work more from my home, it has also been very frustrating.  But, it has caused much reflection on what life is like for those who do not have full mobility and for those who must rely on the assistance of others for some very basic activities. Trying to bring down the swelling in the lower leg and ankle has resulted in the possibility photos like the one above.  

I have deeply appreciated the assistance offered by my family and so many others.  I have also appreciated the privilege of being able to laugh at myself as others laugh at me.  I am thankful that my travel schedule took a break at this time.  I am thankful for every time that God speaks to me about having too much on my plate.  This has probably been the most obvious one.  But there have been others, such as physical signs of stress.  The one I like the most is when someone cancels an assignment to which I have said yes, and I have known all along that I should not have taken it on.  If I have ever felt freed up, it has been when one of these happens.  

I would welcome any of your stories about what God has done in your lives to help you to slow down or to show you a better pathway.

Blessings.

A White Vancouver Christmas

Okay, so we live in Ladner, but I just thought I would show you a photo of our picnic table on Boxing Day 2008.  It is apparently the most snow that Metro Vancouver has ever had at Christmas!  The snow is changing to rain, so please pray that our neighbourhoods would be spared serious flooding.  

It's Broken

I broke my leg playing hockey on Monday, December 15th.  That sounds pretty bad.  The fibula is the thinner bone in the lower leg.  It broke a couple of inches above the angle.  It didn't go out of place, so I just have one of these big plastic boots to walk around in.  My doctor said that the boot is not needed to hold it in place, but to protect it and allow me to get around without hurting myself.  I told my doctor that "God is good," because God gives us pain.  I'm telling you, if I accidentally put any weight on it (such as when a crutch slips on the smooth, polished floor in a mall - not because the floor has water on it, but because the crutch is still a little wet on the bottom from trudging through the snow outside), the shock of pain I get is an instant message of protection!  It's too bad its the right leg, because that keeps me from driving.  Yeah, I could use my left foot, but in our car, I can't get my right leg out of the way to do that.  

On the second day of my injury, I was walking the short distance from our townhouse to my doctor's office, which is in the mall just across the street.  I stopped six times to rest and catch my breath.  I was amazed that, not only at every stop, but as I was walking, almost everybody had a well-meaning comment.  I was just thinking, "Why?"  Why does everybody feel the impluse to talk with an able-bodied person who is temporarily disabled?  I wonder if people do that with a person who is obviously permanently disabled?  I wonder if it is because when a person is injured, yet otherwise healthy, that they are less intimidating?  This person is now no competition, even though normally they would be.   I don't know.  It is nice getting all the friendly, sympathetic conversation from people.

A few people have suggested that the broken leg might be a gift from God to slow me down a bit during the Christmas season.  I agree.  In my efforts at trying to worship with every congregation in Mennonite Church BC in my first year on the job, I ended up taking on preaching assignments on 3 of 4 Sundays in December.  The injury has caused me to cancel preaching at Vancouver Chinese Mennonite Church on December 28th.   This has actually been just the right break to let me settle into the celebration of the season!  

One commitment I did keep was to preach at Sherbrooke Mennonite Church this past Sunday, December 21st.  Along with preaching, I also had opportunity to do my last set of baptisms before Sherbrooke's new senior pastor starts on January 1st.  The couple that I baptised were attending Sherbrooke most of the years I was pastoring there, and committed their lives to following Jesus during this time.  They just arrived at the decision to go public with their faith in baptism during this past year.  

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

Garry and Diane Janzen

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.