~Re:direction~
In many ways, this assignment seems for me to have been ordained by God in time and place. On Monday, February 5, 2007, just three days after writing all this, my family crammed into our suitcase-and-box-filled-mini-van to drive across the Canadian Rockies. Our destination was a new mission, a new calling of ministry alongside a passionate gathering of Christians in Calgary, Alberta. My new role, as a pastor with Brentview Baptist Church, is to facilitate the structure and identity of ministry and fellowship among the young adults of the church and of the surrounding community. Those in the young adult category in Brentview are numerous, but they are a fragmented group. They have tended in the last few years to segment into cells and many of them have not invested heavily into the larger church body. While some small fellowship groups have provided opportunities for spiritual formation for some, many young adults have become unintentionally isolated, lost or forgotten along the way. It is to this group that I am to serve as a ministry leader, developing a Sunday evening service targeting this group and launching effective ministry projects in the hopes of reaching the University of Calgary across the street and the thousands of talented and educated young adults in the city.
But even more than developing targeted services, events and projects, however, I believe that God aims for me to come alongside people, individually and corporately, in order to develop ever-deepening followers of Jesus. My premise, as I begin in Calgary, is that ministry leadership is the exercise of serving and equipping people within a community in such a way that those people live for Jesus, love others and catalyze a movement of Jesus followers in this world.
As a primary ministry leader, therefore, I plan to serve and equip the community of young adults within the sphere of Brentview Baptist in order to do God’s work and build up the church, Christ’s body. And that mission will not be completed until, as Paul says, we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.[1] The plan for serving and equipping the young adults of Calgary will most likely consist of a blended approach highlighting the deepening of community and of an identity that must inevitably include Communion as an integral part of how the identity of this young adult community will be shaped into humble, joyful followers of Jesus that re:tell the story of re:demption.
[1] Ephesians 4:12-13