Confidence in the Dark
It was snowing heavily that night. The road was slick and the centre markers visible only some of the time. Snow banks and telephone pole tops were the main markers on the twisting road. It was more than prudent to be driving well below the speed limit.

A couple of times the tops of telephone poles deceived as they crossed the road and concealed a sharp bend. So I approached this curve in the snow banks extra cautiously, all the time wishing that I could see what was around the bend.

My caution was justified. As I rounded the curve I saw a red flare and one of those emergency triangles—just in time to carefully apply the brakes. But my caution wasn’t enough. To avoid colliding with the road grader that was stuck in a drift in front of me, I had to bury my Volvo in the snow bank just short of the grader.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to see around the corners? Or to be able to see in the dark? Not likely in this life, but there is One who can do both.

F.B. Meyer tells of approaching a narrow harbour mouth in the dark as a passenger on a boat. Meyer became alarmed that the captain was not slowing down even though the harbour mouth was a rocky and dangerous. When he challenged the captain about his lack of caution, the captain pointed out three lights on shore. If he approached in a way that the three lights were lined up, he knew that he was heading into the harbour safely. He could proceed confidently and at speed.

Meyer, never one to miss an application, likened the captain’s wisdom to the wise Christian. There are three lights believers can use to guide them, even in the dark through dangerous passages. One of the lights is God’s Word. The second is the inward prompting of the Holy Spirit and the third is the wise counsel of trustworthy followers of Christ. Without all three lined up, it is not safe to proceed through the dark or dangerous passages of life—at any speed.

So what is the corner you can’t see around? Is it plans for a ministry initiative? Is it trusting someone to assume more responsibility? Is it financial uncertainty because of offering levels? Is it understanding what season your ministry is in? Perhaps it’s about a move, or family issues or whose counsel to take when the not everyone agrees.

As leaders, we need to be serious students of God’s Word and stay close to Him so that we can experience the guidance of the Counselor that Jesus promised in John’s gospel. We also need to surround ourselves with brothers and sisters who will tell us the truth and hold us accountable.

It may be a time to stay put, to reconfirm the lights or simply to wait for the lights to line up.

Whatever your situation, trust Him who can see around corners and in the dark.

Bruce Fournier is the Executive Pastor at Lincoln Road Chapel in Waterloo, Ontario and a founding VMC board member. His interest is helping people become all they can be in Christ. He and Beth, parents of five grown children, enjoy grand parenting and working together at Lincoln.

Accidental Idea Becomes Key Ministry Philosophy

Some of the greatest ideas happen by accident. Many great inventions that we take for granted, find their roots in a mistake or an accident or some kind of failure. I have also found this to be true in leading a community of faith.

One of the best things we are doing as a church, when it comes to organizational structure and staffing, happened completely by accident. We had recently hired a staff person to look after all of our Junior High Ministries. Just prior to that we had moved the person responsible for Junior High into a similar role for Senior High students. This is a traditional hiring practice in many churches.

It was obvious in the way the ministry was functioning and growing, that the leader of our Junior High ministry had strong gifts of leadership and teaching. The leader of our Senior High ministry was gifted in the area of the arts and technology and had a real “shepherding” gift. Parents and volunteers told me they wished that each of these very young leaders could have a piece of the other.

So we came up with an idea.

Why not take a gift-based, team approach to this ministry? Instead of each person overseeing a segment of the complete ministry why not let them lead the larger combined ministry together? This allowed them to use their gifts and natural abilities. We saw both Junior and Senior High ministries flourish and started having a greater impact on students from grade 6-12.

Then our college/university ministry began to grow. The traditional way of doing it would have been to hire a staff person to oversee that segment of our church community. But one morning while sitting in my office I got a Spirit-led idea. Why not add this responsibility to the two-person team that was already in place and add a third person to the team that brought gifts and abilities that were complementary to the team? So we did. We brought in a leader with administrative and organizational strengths that made the entire team stronger—again allowing each ministry to flourish and grow.

Like any great idea there are some drawbacks and challenges. For example, each of these leaders now is out at least an extra night per week than they were before. It means that I don’t just have one direct report but I meet with the “team” together. We have had to make one of the team members a “quarterback” while treating team members with equality.

There are some challenges but there are so many benefits that outweigh any of the challenges. The most important one is how these ministries have had a greater impact on the people they lead and serve. Second to that is that people now get to serve using their gifts and abilities which provides great passion and endurance and it makes doing ministry fun.

This has worked so well for us that we have now used it in other areas of our ministry. Once led by a solitary leader with some part-time support, our Children’s Ministry leadership team is made up of two people who have very different gifts and abilities but work well together. Our Care Team is made up of one full-time and one part-time person who work in a team environment. Our Technical and Visual Arts ministry which were once two separate ministries are now one ministry with two team members using their gifts and abilities in strategic ways.

We have also done this with some volunteer ministry team leaders. Our ALPHA Ministries are led by a team of people who each bring different gifts to the table. Again, we have seen a greater impact in this ministry since we have made this change.

As we move forward we will continue to look for ways that more and more ministries can be led in a team approach. This idea that happened by chance has now become a key philosophy in the way we organize and operate our ministries. We believe that this allows people to love what they do because they get to serve according to gifts and strengths and we believe it will have a greater impact than the traditional way of hiring and staffing and raising up key volunteers.

Dave Ralph is the Lead Pastor at Lakeside Church in Guelph, Ontario. Leading and teaching are his spiritual gifts and personal passions. Before entering full-time ministry, Dave was a funeral director for 10 years and VP for a financial institution. He has been ministering at Lakeside since 1999.

Rainbow-Spotting

“My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.” — William Wordsworth

If life were all rainbows and righteousness, pastors would be virtually redundant. But life is never storm-free or sin-free. Shards of the great flood continue to assault our world and devastate our lives. Personal failures, natural disasters, chronic pain, earthquakes and disappointments of every kind seep in or flood over us and change our world forever.

But God is a master of new beginnings. And Artist that he is, God uses a full palette to paint Hope in a way that we can both see and feel.

In the summer of 2005 I was guest aboard a family yacht in British Columbia’s scenic Desolation Sound. My wife had died seven months earlier and despite the majestic beauty of the scenery, the name ‘Desolation Sound’ echoed the recent deluge of loss in my life. It had been raining all night and I sympathized with Noah’s travail.

As I raised the deck hatch the next morning I stared up at a magnificent double rainbow arched across the sky above the shrouds and mast of our boat. Nothing graces the landscape like a rainbow, especially after the gray-sky of storm, and my heart leapt as those rainbows silently eloquently proclaimed promise and hope to my soul.

The ancient story of Noah is crowned with such a rainbow. By sheer mercy and grace the ark and its inhabitants survived the devastating flood. And by sheer mercy God does this over and over again in our lives. But people often need help noticing these signs of grace and recognizing and interpreting them as the hand of God. That’s the role of pastors and elders, of Bible teachers and friends.

The rainbow is not just a pretty ribbon; it is a God-sign. As Noah emerged from the ark God interpreted the rainbow as a personal promise, a covenant with the earth that no matter how vile or violent human society may become, God will forever be Earth’s protector and defender.

The bow is a warrior’s weapon – and yet here was God, unilaterally disarming, pre-figuring the day when swords everywhere will be beaten into plough-shares. The rainbow gives a glimpse of Yahweh’s character of self-restraint and boundless love, just as we see in the life of Jesus the full spectrum of God’s invisible heart.

But people in grief or confusion often cannot read the signs for themselves, at least not right away. It took me months and the patience of friends to discern God’s rainbow for me and to feel its joy. Pastors and elders have the task and privilege of walking with people through their storms and helping them to spot rainbows. We can’t make their heart leap, but we can pray with them, drawing on our own experience of God’s grace in storm and on the richness of the Word. And we can help them discern the ways our Artistic God is revealing himself and offering hope in the unfolding and over-whelming circumstances around them.

David serves on the Board of VMC and as a pastor at Lincoln Road Chapel in Waterloo. He has three grown children and 6 grandkids. After 20 years in Montreal with IVCF and then as a pastor, David returned to Southern Ontario and married Tiffany Svensson, an environmental consultant. This led to his discovery of the pervasive theme of water in the Bible and to his blog “The Wonder of Water” and a book Downstream from Eden to be published in Spring 2012.

Service of Thanksgiving, Wednesday, January 4th 2012.

Visitation – Robert Ruggle Funeral Home, 617 King Street N. Waterloo

Monday evening from 7 – 9 p.m.

Tuesday afternoon from 2 – 4  and evening from 7 – 9

For times see www.robertrugglefuneralhome.com

9:00 a.m. Burial at Parkview Cemetery, 335 University Avenue E. Waterloo – anyone who wishes to come is welcome.

10:30 Service of Thanksgiving, Creekside Church,  660 Conservation Drive, Waterloo

12:15 Light Lunch served at Creekside

Dave McClurkin in critical condition – Gord Martin

Good morning,

Yesterday morning (Wednesday, December 28th) Dave McClurkin went for a walk in the nearby conservation area with his wife Gladys. At around 10:00 a.m. Dave slipped on some ice and had a hard fall, striking his head on the ground. He got up and seemed ok; they continued their walk, had lunch and were planning to have their neighbours over later in the afternoon.

Around 4:30 he was unable to speak clearly and was rushed to hospital. A CT Scan showed that there was massive bleeding from within the brain. He has not regained consciousness and the doctors told us there is nothing they can do. They said that even if he regained consciousness he would never be able to speak or function normally again. The respirator has been removed, though he is still on oxygen. His breathing is stable.

Gladys and their son Dan are with him. Their son David in Greece and their daughter Debora in Australia have been notified.

Please pray for Dave. It would require a major miracle for him to recover. And pray for Gladys and the family too. It’s a huge shock for them as well as for us here at VMC and also at Cambridge Community Church where Dave has been the teaching pastor for the past 12 years.

It’s hard for us to imagine life without him!

His “annual life verse” which he was prepared to present at Cambridge on Sunday January 1st is Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

We are before the Lord in prayer – and in shock, Gord