Preparing for the future
ABBOTSFORD, B.C.
Twice a year, pastors and church leaders in the B.C. MB Conference gather for a day of renewal and business. The most recent such day was held Feb. 25 at Columbia Bible College.
Preparing for the Millennium
The day usually begins with an afternoon for pastor and spouses. In this case, the main focus was a message from Jim Cantelon, senior pastor of Broadway Church in Vancouver. Looking at Matthew 11:1-19, he noted that John the Baptist, who had preached in the wilderness, began to doubt Jesus because He was ministering in the city. Cantelon said, "We need to resist the temptation to put God in a box. Jesus was a friend to the city. We will be in trouble if we refuse to be a friend to the culture around us." In passing, he noted verses 18-19, saying, "You’re never going to please everyone. Every time you lead, you polarize people. We should focus on building the church, not seeking consensus."
Cantelon then noted that Canada is now a postmodern society, where experience has replaced reason, subjectivism has replaced objective truth and people have faith in nothing. The result is disillusionment, brokenness, fragmentation and alienation.
Cantelon then described how the church might look in the near future:
There will be no-name, nondenominational churches, and church loyalty will decline, with people attending several churches just as they go to several restaurants. (There are good and bad aspects to this development.)
Partnering between churches will be more important, even across denominational lines. (He noted that it was a new thing for him as a Pentecostal to be speaking to Mennonite Brethren.)
Sharing resources between churches will also be crucial.
Local churches, as they get larger, will develop more comprehensive ministries. For instance, they will send out missionaries themselves rather than through denominational or nondenominational mission agencies. Such an approach is good for those who want to be short-term missionaries, but not for the national churches overseas. On the other hand, the cross-pollination of short-term missionaries moving in both directions (with overseas Christians serving here) could be very beneficial. Cantelon noted that after World War II, parachurch agencies blossomed as they carried out many kinds of necessary ministries; however, these are now being done by large local churches, and "Parachurch agencies that don’t rediscover the local church will disappear."
Churches will be increasingly justice seeking and mercy giving. They will return to the "social gospel", thinking globally and acting locally.
Churches will be more culturally engaged. There will be new, inward rather than outward definitions of what is worldly, such as holding a GenX rave on Saturday night in a church building in order to get youth to come back next morning for church. (This is being done in England.)
Churches will be more graceful; they will be culturally relevant based on grace but not compromise. The churches will be inundated by broken and dysfunctional people, and while God sometimes delivers instantly, 40 years of dysfunction often will not be resolved overnight: "We have to get used to the fact that some people are 10-year projects." For instance, the church cannot condone sexual immorality, but when a man is separated but not divorced from his wife, has three children with a new common-law partner, and then becomes a Christian, it will take time to sort out his life.
The afternoon also featured special music by Jeanette Petkau of North Langley Community Church; a worship time led by Columbia Bible College instructor Nelson Boschman; a sharing time; and a presentation on the Y2K computer problem by Chris Douglas, senior pastor of Central Heights MB Church.
Looking ahead
After supper, pastors’ wives had a separate fellowship meeting. The pastors were joined by local church moderators (or other church council members) for a look at B.C. Conference business, in preparation for the upcoming B.C. Conference convention. Reports were heard from the Boards, and a few items of business were transacted.
The Executive Council reported on negotiations to have the MB Biblical Seminary Centre become part of the Associated Canadian Theological Schools consortium. This meeting approved in principle B.C. Conference support for this venture. The B.C. Conference will continue to give $25,000 a year to the Centre, and will also give $25,000 in 1999 toward required renovations to the ACTS building.
The Executive Council also reported that, like the Canadian Conference Executive Board, it had passed a motion to in future "disallow churches to have associate/dual membership in other denominations". Moderator Bob Friesen explained that while the Conference will continue to cooperate with other denominations, the "covenant relationship" between congregations and their conference needs to be clear.
The Board of Pastoral Ministries reported that it had so far evaluated and licensed 23 pastors since the last convention, and expects to evaluate another seven before the next convention in May. The Board is aiming to have every senior and associate pastor in the province licensed and is working its way through a backlog. The Board expressed joy at the giftedness and fervency of the new pastors.
The Board of Church Extension announced a new strategy to shift its focus from BOCE-initiated church plants to daughter church plants. It wants to have all 100 MB churches in the province participating in church planting in some way (praying, participating, partnering or planting). The Board received approval to raise an extra $15,000 to research this new strategy. JC
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