Yet as I look back with thanks for twenty years well spent, I cannot begin to tell you how pumped I am about the next chapter that God is opening up. I am so looking forward to yet another opportunity to serve God in the building of a high impact prevailing church through the Alliance Church in Fort McMurray as well as the opportunity to impact the next generation of ministry leaders through Briercrest Seminary. Never have I been more excited to take a next step in the journey God has Jane and I on! While I’ve already shared on this blog why I’m so excited for the move to Fort McMurray, let me add a few more thoughts to the conversation. Perhaps three words best best summarize what has so grabbed me: beauty, community and opportunity. Let me unpack those thoughts in a few brief points:

Fort McMurray: Looking south from Thickwood

• Nothing short of the word, “breathtaking” can be used to describe the beauty of the city we are moving into. Soul stirring green-spaces are found throughout the city that give way to pure rugged wilderness beyond the urban landscape. Add to that the intensity of the Northern Lights! It simply jazzes my being as I’m confronted with God’s unmistakable signature all around.

• Quickly I encountered an unexpected friendliness within the culture of the city. As wild as traffic can be in a city that is growing faster than it’s infrastructure, people are simply understanding – why they even slow down and let you in! Folk who are total strangers are so often willing to pause what they’re doing, just to have a brief conversation with you. At first it catches you a bit off guard, but then you just love it!

• With so many people being from “away”, it’s just easier to enter into friendships and relationships. Whether church or unchurched, young or old, Canadian born or not, you find yourself quickly welcomed into various relational circles in a way I’ve rarely seen in the rest of the country. People are yearning for community and are willing to invest to make it happen.

• And quite simply opportunity abounds on every front. Opportunity for the average Canadian to find a good job in a city that is a wonderful place to raise a family. And the untold story of Fort McMurray is what a family friendly city this is with amazing sports and recreation facilities, facilities for the arts, parks, state of the art schools, and the list goes on. Who needs good shopping when you have everything else. ~ Okay that might be a male perspective!

• And then there’s the Fort McMurray Alliance Church family. They just have the right attitude; a wonderful combination of grace and faith that will allow them to have such a huge impact on this growing city that is expected to be over 230,000 people by the year 2030. There is a core DNA to this church family that is rare to find. They’ve got this wonderful foundation from which a prevailing church will continue to emerge, making  the love of Jesus visible and tangible to Fort McMurray and the world. Their grace and faith is simply awesome! It simply means opportunity abounds for this church family!

Sure many folk from outside of Fort McMurray are quick to tell me about the problems associated with a boom city, that a city with an inordinate number of young people with money and nothing to do simply spells drugs and prostitution and the like. And while there is some truth here, my short experience with Fort Mac leads me to believe that it’s not a whole lot different than the city I currently live in. Every city has its challenges. And the challenges in Fort McMurray simply strike me as opportunities to demonstrate the love and life of Jesus in a way that touches and transforms lives for now and eternity.From my limited perspective, if you know anyone with a bit of a work ethic, who is looking for a great place to live and find work and enjoy family, encourage them to consider For McMurray!! Fort McMurray may just be best kept secret in the country. So much of what the average Canadian is looking for in a city can be found here: good jobs, well planned neighbourhoods, easy access to the outdoors and diverse recreational opportunities, great facilities and schools for kids, as well as a great place to make new and life long friends. Fort Mac offers so much!

A perfect city? Not a chance! Does it have stuff to work through? Absolutely! But I’m pumped to get the opportunity to make Jesus visible in this family friendly city full of opportunity, community and beauty with a church family full of grace and faith.  Throw in what God wants to do on the Briercrest front with all that, and all I can say is “Wow, the next chapter of our lives is looking awesome!”

Oh and if you want to get a flavour for Fort Mac, here are two videos. The one immediately below plays on the typical stereotypes that are out there that pushes back on some of my glowing statements about For Mac. It’s fun to watch but a word of warning, it’s not 100% family friendly, and for that reason I’ll rename it: “Stuff Fort McMurrayites Don’t Say.” It’s put together by a young guy who grew up in the Fort McMurray Alliance Church along with a few of his friends. Yup, there’s a Matt Popowich in every church family and where would we be without them!  The next video is a promotional video that is already a bit dated but will give you a good overview of the Fort Mac/ Wood Buffalo area…

So do pray for Jane and I as we make the transition over the next several months. It’s a huge move for us; lead by our God who has huge plans for us as well as the church and the city he’s called us to!!

Redwood at the Community Auditorium

As Easter weekend comes to a close, I’m hit with the realization that next Sunday will be my last Sunday in Thunder Bay! After a quick jaunt to Tennessee to recalibrate with Jane, I begin the Fort Mac adventure on May 1. As I do, I leave Thunder Bay with huge excitement for the future as well as a great sense of twenty years well spent. No doubt the ‘leaving part’ is bittersweet. Twenty years in one city while falling in love with the city and the people of the city, and then being a part of what God has done through Redwood over these years – yeah, there’s just no easy way to say “good-bye” to a city, a people, a church family that have become such a deep part of myself and my family.

But this Easter weekend really helped with all that. Sure it’s a bit strange to be sitting back as an observer in the church you’ve led for so long. But sitting back far from the front lines, provided me with an incredible vantage point to see the hand of God and what He has done over these last 20 years. It was an amazing experience, watching the Redwood teams at work, handling so well all that they did this past weekend. They’re good! They’re real good! The Holy Thursday/Good Friday services were so deep, so rich, so moving.  The service on Friday commemorating the all too short life of Scott Poulter was intense yet sensitive, and will not be quickly forgotten by all those who packed out the church to attend. And what can I say about Easter Sunday in the Community Auditorium? With close to 1,400 there, few concerts fill that place the way Redwood just did. It was simply an awesome worship experience to the glory of our risen Lord.

Perhaps the best way to get a feel for the weekend is to take the time to look at the video below and view Matt Popowich’s powerful video “Broken” set to the Coldplay song, “Fix You.” It was a highlight within Holy Thursday/Good Friday worship. So yeah, a truly amazing weekend where I was able to catch a glimpse of the privilege of having been part of something amazing that God has done in the building of a prevailing church with such impact on the city of Thunder Bay.

It’s gratifying to move on knowing that the work you’re moving on from is so vibrant and healthy, and has such a bright future. The staff, board and ministry volunteers are a spiritually passionate and incredibility gifted team. The church family as a whole, “gets it!” They get that they exist for the benefit of those who are not yet a part of God’s family, they get that their mission is simply to make Jesus real and visible to the people of Thunder Bay and the world. May God richly bless the next stage in your ministry, as He obviously is already doing!!

As I consider the history shattering events we are about the celebrate, the cross and resurrection of Jesus, there’s a phrase that I picked up from Australian Michael Frost that has been ringing loud for me, it’s the phrase “reprocessing anger into grace.” Frost in his book “The Road to Missional,” uses this phrase to describe the costly death of Jesus on the cross. God the Father is reprocessing his anger into grace. God takes on the punishment himself, atoning for the anger and hurt we caused Him by our wrong doing.

Consider the response of Jesus as he endured the excruciating pain of the cross, “Father forgive them for the do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34, NIV) What an incredible and counter cultural demonstration of love. On the cross God demonstrates his commitment to restore relationship with the very people who had rejected his love and care. Though the cross, God makes it possible for all of us to embrace and experience a restored relationship with our Creator.

Peace with God, relationship restored, all leading to a quality and depth of life that can be experienced no other way now, that goes on for eternity.

But it doesn’t stop there. As Frost aptly points out, not only does the cross create the means by which we with our broken relationships with God can find restoration that brings us peace with God, it reveals the framework for Christian mission. We Christ followers likewise must reprocess our anger into grace. We must reprocess our hurt and our disappointments with one-another and the world into grace. We of all people must radically demonstrate this vision of Jesus, that is of a kingdom of restored relationships, of grace, of peace.

How did Jesus teach us to pray? “Our Father … forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?” This comes in the midst of praying to see God’s “kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to demonstrate that kingdom by processing our anger and hurt into grace, just as the Father has for us.

Yet this commitment to demonstrate God’s kingdom by being a people who reprocess our anger and hurt into grace is not always how those outside of the church view us. The average Canadian sees Jesus in this way but not his followers. We have a bit of a reputation for being a people who easily hurt and get angry with one another, causing people to shy away from our communities. Further we are often known as a people who are marked by anger at those outside of our church communities who do not share our viewpoints. It’s one of the key issues why so many Canadians appear to like Jesus but not the church.

I for one want to renew my commitment to reprocess any anger and hurt I have into grace and attempt to be a demonstration of the kingdom reign of our God at work in my life. I pray that God will use me to be an instrument that brings a foretaste of the world to come. May I truly be a conduit of his peace and grace to the people he graciously brings into my life, both within and beyond my faith community.

And I pray for all of us that individually and the church communities we’re a part of would increasingly demonstrate the love, grace and peace that Christ feely gives us, to the world he’s sending us into. With resurrection power, may we love even as Jesus loved us through the cross. Happy Easter.

In the next few blog posts I am going to attempt to answer a few of the questions that some of you have been asking, some more privately than publicly. Questions like, “I still don’t get your excitement for Fort McMurray, are you sure that’s where you really want to go?,” or “Why did you choose to serve in a much smaller church than where you’ve been, when other doors were open?”

Today I just want to provide a bit more insight into what happened after I said “yes” to going to Fort McMurray Alliance Church, which meant saying “no” to being the Dean at Briercrest Seminary. What happened was totally unexpected. I put it in the “only God,” category, because only God would design a situation that is so in tune with my wiring, where I get to be the Lead Pastor of a compassionate missionally minded church in a city with explosive potential, while being able to be a significant influence in the training and mentoring of the next generation of men and women for vocational ministry through one of Canada’s leading seminaries.

To help you see the way God works, let me share with you an email that Dustin Resch, the Interim Dean of Briercrest Seminary sent to the students of the school on Saturday.

Greetings,

As you are aware, we have been involved in several faculty searches over the course of this year. I am excited to provide you with an update on one of those searches.

In February, we interviewed three candidates for the position of Dean of the Seminary and Master of Divinity Lead. Of those, we decided to bring two to visit our campus. There was overwhelming support from our search committee and students for one of those candidates—Doug Doyle, a long time pastoral veteran from Thunder Bay. We were excited about how Doug would add a significant perspective and unique gift-set to our Seminary faculty. However, like the good pastor he is, Doug was deeply drawn to ministry in the local church and heard God’s call to pursue pastoral work in Fort McMurray, Alberta. This means that Doug felt he should decline our offer to make him Dean of the Seminary.

However, we are thrilled to announce that Doug Doyle will still be able to play a significant role in our Seminary. We have offered, and he has accepted, an innovative new role to lead our Master of Divinity program from a distance. While residing in Fort McMurray, Doug will provide strategic and visionary leadership for our MDiv program, work to foster a network of mentorship for pastoral leaders, MDiv students and recent graduates, as well as to teach two courses per academic year in our seminary. We are ecstatic to have Doug join our team in this way.

The role of Dean of the Seminary continues to be in process. We hope to provide an update for you on that matter soon.

If you have any questions, please do contact me and I will be happy to help.

Peace,

Dustin

Dustin Resch, PhD (McMaster University)
Interim Dean of the Seminary
Assistant Professor of Theology
Briercrest College and Seminary

Dustin, thanks for those very kind words. I too am ecstatic at the opportunity to team with such a spiritually passionate and talented faculty as together we seek to train, mentor and equip men and women for vocational ministry in Canada and around the world. And while this will on top of a significant Lead Pastor role, I’m pumped by the opportunity as a front line ministry practitioner, to bring those front line realities into the formation of future pastors and ministry workers. Only God could come up with such a crazy combination of opportunities. Only God knows exactly how I’m wired and how to open doors to allow for that wiring to be fully engaged for sake of seeing “God’s kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Downtown Fort Mac looking north up the breathtaking Athabasca River

What a God!! What a ride!! The journey we’ve been on pursuing God with the dreams He’s planted in our hearts has led to my becoming the Lead Pastor of the Fort McMurray Alliance Church in the bustling Oil Sands community of Wood Buffalo, Alberta – the fastest growing municipality in Canada. I start May 1st. I can’t tell you how incredibly blessed we feel by what God has done on our behalf.

But it doesn’t end there. In addition to serving as the Lead Pastor of the Fort McMurray Alliance Church, God has opened up an amazing door for me to continue to pursue my passion to see men and women well prepared for service in local church and other kingdom ministries. Effective August 1, I become the MDiv (Master of Divinity) Program Coordinator as well as Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry at Briercrest College and Seminary.

I’m humbled by God’s goodness. I get to lead a local church that already has a passion to make the invisible Jesus visible to their city and world by being a grace filled community that is welcoming and sensitive to those who are net yet in a life transforming relationship with Christ while figuring out what it means to do ministry both within and beyond the walls of the church. I get to do this in a high growth region that is one of the primary economic drivers of our county. It has a permanent population of 64,000 but a total population of over 104,000 when non-permanent residents are included. The municipality is expected to double in a decade and the permanent population is projected to reach 230,000 by 2030. Simply explosive.

Furthermore, I get to do this in a city where the average age is around 31 – making it one of the most challenging and unchurched demographics in Canada, a city that occasionally takes on a bit of a frat house feel. This means I get to do this in a city full of young adults and young families who are just starting to figure out how they want to see their lives and the lives of their children unfold. It’s also an amazingly diverse city attracting people from the world over. A growing First Nations community is also found throughout the municipality. Youth and diversity simply spells opportunity!

Let’s keep going! I get to do this in a city with incredible outdoor sports and recreation opportunities (just a forewarning to the moose and walleye) as well as with some of the most amazing indoor sports and recreation facilities for a city it’s size. I could keep going!! One way you can describe Fort Mac is that it is Thunder Bay on steroids. Okay the shopping sucks, but online changes a lot of that!

Briercrest College & Seminary
Caronport, Saskatchewan

I also get to invest in the lives of young men and women and some not so young men and woman who have heard God’s call to vocational ministry. I’ll be teaching two modular courses a year at Briercrest College & Seminary while helping to shape the future of ministry preparation in Canada by providing strategic and visionary leadership to Briercrest’s MDiv program from my home base in Fort McMurray. This is an incredibly bold and innovative move on the part of Briercrest that simply speaks of their willingness to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that the next generation of ministry leaders are well prepared to serve effectively in our ever evolving contemporary Canadian culture, as well as our vastly changing world.

And while God’s been at work responding to the dreams and aspirations he has planted in the hearts of Jane and myself, we see His hand at work in our family as well. As I head to Fort McMurray, our son Graeme heads to the Vancouver Film School chasing after a dream God has planted in his heart. He recently received news that he had been awarded a $10,000 scholarship, the largest the school has ever given! Many of you know that our daughter Meagan, having graduated from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, is pursuing her dream that currently involves her serving and learning as a pediatric resident at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary. Susan and Chris are now taking steps to pursue their dream a living for a year or two in New Zealand before settling down and having a family, perhaps in Fort McMurray.

And while this might sound a bit materialistic, it does speak of the goodness of God who cares for the practical, physical details of our living. On June 15th we take possession of an incredibly beautiful 1,588 square foot bi-level with over 3,000 square feet of sweetly finished living space, adjacent to some of the most picturesque urban trails in the country. With 5 bedrooms we still have room for boarders or family, however things all unfold! And if any of you have any idea about the difference in housing prices between Thunder Bay and Fort McMurray, you’ll understand that this is nothing less than a miraculous provision on the part of our great God!

As we entered this journey, it was with the words of Proverbs 3:5-6 in mind: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (NIV11) With that verse and a little encouragement from reading Mark Batterson’s, “The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears,” I prayerfully and humbly laid my heart aspirations before God, and watched as He answered prayer beyond what I could ever ask for or imagine! (Ephesians 3:20) We are so pumped to be moving to Fort McMurray with the opportunity to impact the next generation both in Fort Mac and the rest of the country and through them the world. To God be the glory!

Okay I am using the word “worship” in the narrow sense of what happens during a church worship service, and yes I do know that worship is far broader than that. My point being, it’s what happens when the church gathers, that can tell you a lot about how the church views and practices its mission.

What I’ve discovered as I’ve travelled the country is that while we have a growing number of churches who are taking a more “contemporary” approach to worship, there’s a strong set of boundaries on what that looks like. The ultimate goal seems to be to allow younger Christians more and more influence on worship styles while not overly offending the older saints. It’s an attempt to be all things to all Christians, tipping the balance slightly in favour of the younger generation.

These churches are strong on promoting intergenerational harmony, but are not always thinking about how their worship service might impact those who are not yet Christ followers. The big giveaway is not as much the style of music (although it can include the style of music), as much as it is the vocabulary of the worship leader. Twenty years in one church setting and I had forgotten how we evangelicals have a very unique vocabulary that is only appreciated by those of us within the movement, or maybe not even appreciated by everyone in the movement, but simply tolerated because it just is. I leave the examples to your imagination. I don’t really want to create specific offence to any of the worship leaders I’ve been with recently, who sincerely have done their best for the glory of God.

As the “seeker church movement” is now going out of vogue, as the concept of “attractional church,” is seen by so many as a negative, as the word “missional” seems to be used by so many to only mean what happens outside of the church gathered, there seems to be a new push to make the weekend worship experience a much more exclusive deal for committed believers.

This leads to worship that is more about placating various factions within a church in the name of harmony including the use of insider vocabulary, that at times is not just weird for outsiders, it’s just weird, period. (With apologies to Craig Groeschel whose book “Weird” deals with something quite different!) We seem to be moving back into worship as “time warp,” now that we’re being told that the “seeker sensitive” model doesn’t work. In many cases what we end up with is neither contemporary worship nor historic worship, just the nineties and early 2000’s revisited.

But then there are a few churches out there that seem to understand that missional is what happens both when the church is gathered and scattered, and that the church had better be attractional, making the beauty of Jesus visible both when gathered and scattered. Worship in these churches is not about trying to keep all the Christians happy. More it’s just about authentically using the diverse breadth of styles and rhythms found on a typical radio dial, concert hall or move theatre as well as weaving some ancient and historic tunes and rhythms into the mix, and using this worship tapestry to lift up the name of Jesus. The desire of these churches is that this experience of worship would draw believers into the tangible presence of Christ as humble worshippers, while inviting those who are not yet believers to keep going in their journey towards Christ.

It has nothing to do with dumbing down the Gospel and everything to do with lifting up Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures, using the tunes and rhythms that are capable of stirring the hearts of the believer and unbeliever alike, using words that communicate effectively with believer and seeker alike.

I’d like to use the phrase “missional worship” to describe this. It’s what you see in the teaching and worship of the early church, where gatherings of believers for worship and teaching were generally inclusive and sensitive to those who were not yet a part of the Christian community. After all, we the church are the one gathering, the one institution that exists for the benefit of those who are not yet a part of our community.

Take a look at 1 Corinthians 14 when you get a chance. As you wade through the issues in that passage, one thing comes out loud and clear: Paul instructs the congregation there to adapt its worship because of the presence of unbelievers. (With thanks to Tim Keller for this thought) Paul wants local church worship to be sensitive and inclusive of those who are not yet regenerated Christ followers. That’s both/and. It’s what I would call “missional worship.”

Could I humbly encourage us to be churches of the both/and, churches who practice “missional worship” where in the midst of leading believers into a powerful worship encounter with God, we make worship comprehensible and engaging to the unbeliever. Let’s design our worship experiences to be inclusive and welcoming of both believers and unbelievers, leading both into a dangerous life-transforming encounter with the living God.

Stepping out of a vibrant high impact ministry as has developed at Redwood creates this instant sense of an enormous void. Rest and transition and waiting on God for what’s next “seems” to pale in comparison to the everyday excitement that comes from life on what one “supposes” are the frontlines of kingdom advance.

What I’ve discovered in this time of sabbatical and transition is that I have tendency to stake too much value in “living for God,” rather than simply “living with God.” That sometimes I forget that God’s greatest work is simply what he’s doing with me and in me. It’s not that “living for God,” is wrong, it’s just that I have tended to err by making mission the irreducible centre of the Christian life and not God himself. I always imagine that God is the centre, but it’s in times like I’m in right now where I’m able to step back and see a bit more clearly.

It was reading Skye Jethani’s, “With: Reimagining The Way You Relate To God,” that I was confronted anew with the tendency I have to turn mission into an idol. As Jethani notes, it’s not that I don’t “long to see more Christians engaged in the good work God has called us to,” but a “life spent for God,” is not the ultimate goal. No, the ultimate goal is “God Himself.” A life spent for God, must take a backseat to a live lived with God. Hence the title of Jethani’s book, “With.”

Passionate activist leaders like myself who love to live life on the frontlines of missional advance need to be careful not to put “the good mission of God into the place God alone should occupy.” In contrast Jethani gives this observation about the Apostle Paul, “He understood that his calling (to be a messenger to the Gentiles) was not the be the same as his treasure (to be united with Christ.) His communion with Christ rooted and preceded his work for him.”

And that’s what makes this period of sabbatical and transition such a precious blessing, that I have the gift of time to recalibrate and make sure that I fully lay hold of this treasure, what it means to live with Christst. It’s a time to see that my calling to serve as an instrument of missional advance flows from and takes a backseat to that “with Christ” relationship.

As we read the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was pretty clear about this priority of living with God. Paul calls myself and all of us, “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that (we) might be filled with the fullness of God,” (see Ephesians 3:14-19). He challenges us to understand what it means to “have Christ in (us), the hope of glory,” (see Colossians 1:27).

AB Simpson was the founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, the church family I’ve served with for well over 30 years. That means I’m old enough remember some of his hymns that are now relics of past worship eras. It seems to me that Simpson as a passionate activist leader also struggled with finding self worth in what he did “for God,” and not always in living “with God.” Let me quote just a few random lines in the middle of one of his better-known hymns called “Himself.”

Once ‘twas painful trying, Now ‘tis perfect trust …
Once ‘twas busy planning, Now ‘tis trustful prayer;
Once ‘twas anxious caring, Now He has the care …
Once ‘twas what I wanted, Now what Jesus says’
Once ‘twas constant asking, Now ‘tis ceaseless praise.
Once it was my working, His it hence shall be;
Once I tried to use Him, Now He uses me.
Once the power I wanted, Now the Mighty One;
Once for self I labored, Now for Him alone.

Yes in the end, it really is all about Himself! It’s all about living with the God who lives in us! It about allowing His love to fill and transform who we are from the inside out so that whatever we do is secondary to what He is doing with and in us. It starts and ends with “Christ in you the hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27)

Jethani also explores a few other idols we Christian gets caught up in – idols like living under God, or living over God, or living from God rather than living with God. In each case the situation is similar: we allow some good motives which in and of themselves are not wrong, to usurp the priority of simply living with God Himself. And when we do that, we rob ourselves of the ultimate treasure God has for us, and that is “God with us, Immanuel.” How quickly we forget what the real gift of the Christmas we just celebrated is, “Immanuel.” (see Matthew 1:23)

As I look to 2012, I am eagerly looking forward to what God has next for my family and myself. And I do that with the resolve of keeping “Himself” as my treasure, knowing that “life with God” means that having a healthy soul and successful ministry do not have to be mutually exclusive.

The past 20 years have been an amazing ride for the entire Doyle family, as we have watched our kids grow up here at the Thunder Bay site, as we have watched a church truly embrace what it means to be an outward focused community who love God with all their hearts, souls, minds and strength, and from that love for God have really embraced loving their neighbour locally and globally as themselves. Redwood is truly a unique church family with a heart full of love and grace for people who are far from God. Beyond Thunder Bay it’s been our privilege to develop a satellite campus in Barrie and have impact around the world. Incredible when you start to think of all that’s happened. I look back over the years and can only say, “Wow, only God!! Only God could have accomplish what we’ve seen happen here in Thunder Bay, Barrie and beyond through the Redwood Park Church family.” What’s happened at Redwood is unmistakably divine. I’m just so thankful that I got to be a part of what God wanted to do through this church family.

About a year or so ago Brian Houston, from Hillsong Church in Australia made this statement at a pastors’ conference: “The end of an era is not the completion of a destiny.” That statement has been so powerful to me, as Jane and I step out and trust God for what’s next in our lives, and as the Redwood community does the same for their future. Exciting and scary days for all of us. But then that’s all part of “Life, Passion and Adventure!”

So let’s pray for each other, that as one era ends and a new one opens up, that we will truly hear the voice of God and trust him to lead us and make our paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6). Know that I will be praying that God will continue to advance His kingdom powerfully through the ministry of the Redwood family.

Hey, thanks for all the loving words and stories that you shared with Jane and myself at that party. We treasure them all. But perhaps the most unique words were those that came from our friends John and Joy Cutts in Papua, Indonesia who wrote:

Dear Doug and Jane

Thanks for taking a walk on the wild side! It has been great working with you and your teams who have come alongside our Papuan brothers and sisters and blessed them in so many ways.

I will never forget your first trip and how you wanted me to explain how huge this moose was you were hunting, and this to villagers who’s biggest animal is a wild pig!! In light of that, I am DHL’ing the biggest gourd I can find on the island for the biggest story teller I know with also the biggest heart for Papuans!!

Blessings as you tame some new jungles for God. . . . .

John and Joy Cutts
Village Heartbeat
Sentani, Papua, Indonesia
www.villageheartbeat.org

Do pray for us as we seek God about those new jungles as we move beyond Thunder Bay!! Thunder Bay has been a wonderful city to live in and the Redwood Park family have made and will continue to make Thunder Bay, Barrie, the Papua Highlands and on and on, even sweeter places to live. And again thanks so much for being a part of our lives these past 20 years. To God be the glory great things He has done!! Oh … and I can’t wait to get that gourd from John and add it to my collection!!

And hey, check out the videos below to get a bit of a flavour of our past ministry and the cities and places we served in. The first video is our 2011 Missions trip to Papua, Indonesia and the second video was prepared for Redwood’s 65th anniversary. Enjoy!!…

According to Bibbey’s research, several encouraging signs are emerging on the horizon of Canadian culture: (1) what we call the secularization of our country has pretty well bottomed out; (2) the decline in participation in organized religion is no longer a fact and could potentially turn around; (3) significant numbers of Canadians raised in homes without faith, are over time embracing some sort of faith, discovering that they have needs that can only be answered by “the gods,” whoever they may be.

Bibbey sees two groups in Canada who are best positioned to work with this growing yearning in the next generation for answers that only faith can provide, namely the Evangelical and Roman Catholic faith communities.

Bibbey then shared what for me was an amazing statistic. He claims that 50% of adults and 40% of teens who do not regularly participate in any faith community, would engage with a faith community, if they perceived doing so would be more worthwhile.

And what would make a faith community more worthwhile? Bibbey gave two initial statements followed up by a third. So firstly that the faith community would actually address deep felt spiritual needs. What that might mean is all over the map, but what is clear is that there is a deep desire to connect with spiritual side of who we are on the part of Canadians.

Secondly, Canadians are looking for a faith community that can touch deep personal needs. We’re talking communities that can address hurt; communities that can help us figure out how to live our lives in a way that makes sense. Thirdly, and Bibbey saw this particularly among youth in Canada, if a faith community actually demonstrated love. If love was tangible in how we related to one another, as well as with people who are different than us. The thrust of the session included a call for us to demonstrate love to the marginalized, those with differing values, or those of varying ethnicities.

And it struck me as Bibbey was talking, that what he was saying is that there are three things that Canadians are yearning to get from a church family, those three things being FAITH, HOPE and LOVE. I was reminded of the words of the Apostle Paul, “Three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13, NLT).

FAITH that addresses the deep issues of spiritual yearning that is found at the core, the heart of every Canadian. HOPE that emerges from the ache that comes from living with so much brokenness and hurt in our world. And LOVE, crazy, forgiving, I’ll put your needs over my needs kind of love; love that embraces people far different than myself.

Faith, hope and love – that’s what Canadians are looking for. And if they can find it in our church community they say they’re willing to give it a try. So let’s rise to the challenge and allow Jesus to form us into communities of Faith, Hope and Love. All that Canadians are really asking of us, is that we be what we’re supposed to be! Imagine that!

Since it began in the summer of 1995, I have attended every Leadership Summit but one. You’d think they would eventually get stale and boring!! But for me, what is now called the Global Leadership Summit has proven to be a much needed annual reminder to stay focused on the basics of spiritual leadership, while always providing me with a number of profound new insights that aid in thrusting my leadership journey forward. I guess I’m a slow learner who needs a good annual refresher course while being challenged with a few new ideas at the same time.

I came to the Summit this year after a year of seeing the big ship Redwood slowly begin to move in a direction where we are catching a bit more of the wind of the Spirit. Once again we are beginning to move forward with a little more ease. This comes after a couple of years in which from a leadership perspective we’ve experienced a bit of the doldrums. Nothing hugely disastrous, just not enough movement forward for a variety of reasons including my own leadership inadequacies.

For Redwood the years 1995 through to 2006 were pure adrenaline. The charts kept pointing up and to the right – increased attendance, increased giving, increased involvement, yada, yada, and the ride was pure exhilaration. It led to our moving into a new facility and establishing a ministry to the poor and disenfranchised in our city through the Opportunities Centre in our old facility. Life could not be sweeter.

By about 2008 the city of Thunder Bay was working through a massive economic downturn including significant population loss while I had hit a lid in terms of my own leadership capabilities. That deadly combination created a great deal of stress for myself personally that while not felt throughout the church, was certainly felt by the leadership core. God chose to work in those years through the Global Leadership Summit in particular to give me both the tools and the passion I needed to work through the issues, so that I myself and Redwood would be in a better position to catch the life giving wind of the Spirit.

I came to the Summit this year with a sense that we are just on the cusp of catching something a bit more robust than just the gentle breeze of the Spirit that we have begun to be more recently blessed with. At the same time I remain very much aware that we continue to live in uncertain times for the North American church as a whole. And while Thunder Bay is doing better economically, a sense of uncertainty is still very much here. So all this and more contributes to a bit of uncertainty still lingering in the air at Redwood. The question is: “Will this slight breeze of the Spirit, sweet though it is, yet again become the gust we so long for?” This twinge of uncertainty left me wondering what role the Summit would play in the life of myself as well as those attending the Summit with me that would impact the future of Redwood.

Quickly the Spirit ambushed me through the speaking of inspiring leaders from both within and beyond the Christian community. Let me touch on just a few of the multiple highlights and God moments for me.

Perhaps some of the most helpful teaching from this GLS targeting what I’ve been wrestling with came from LEN SCHLESINGER, current president of Babson College, who has 20 years of teaching experience at Harvard, as well as hands on executive experience in companies including Limited Brands. He pointed out the half-life of a Fortune 25 Company is a mere 10 years!! The problem from his perspective is that we were taught in school to learn and base our strategies on cause and effect, thinking that the future can be extrapolated from the past. His point was passionate and strong, “the future is not a linear extrapolation of the past.” And his plea was equally strong, “If you can’t predict the future, create it!”

For those issues that we are passionate about, and we in the church certainly are passionate about a few issues, Schlesinger calls us to simply launch into action without over-thinking!! Just take action with whatever financial and human resources you have in hand and take a small smart step toward your goal and see what happens! Then evaluate what you learn and if you like the results, take another step. His mantra: ACT. LEARN. REPEAT. Wow, talk about counter-intuitive!!

BRENDA SALTER-MCNEIL and STEVE FUTRICK continued this theme with a call to interpret these catalytic times we find ourselves in through the eyes of faith and then act. Popular blogger SETH GODIN drove it home with a plea that “if it’s worth doing, do it!” What I heard from many of these speakers was a strong bias towards action. Act now in the direction of your goals. Next evaluate whether it works or not. Then take a next step, act again. And for the Christ follower, do so in tune with the leading of the Spirit.

BILL HYBELS AND HENRY CLOUD both gave some very practical tools on how to work with our teams and key leaders for the accomplishment of these goals that we need to act on. Cloud divides the world into wise people, foolish people and evil people and gives a very different strategy on how to work with each group, reminding us that we are all fools sometimes. Very helpful thoughts here, especially his loving but firm approach to “fools,” which includes all of us from time to time.

And then as we launch into action with this audacious faith, it only happens effectively as we lead with humility and vulnerability. Australian rector JOHN DICKSON as well as business consultant PATRICK LENCIONI simply restated the obvious that leaders like myself need to be called back to time and again. Like I said, I’m a slow learner, and I just need this basic stuff over and over again.

I could keep going, so much good thinking packed into a couple of days, but let me wrap up with two other thoughts. Kudos to Bill Hybels who demonstrated godly leadership in his gracious response to Starbuck’s CEO Harold Schulz’s withdrawal from the Summit because of pressure from the Gay community. Check it out by clicking here. This was not only a great leadership moment, it was for me a proud moment to be called evangelical.

And the ultimate highlight for me? Hands down it was just the chance to spend a few days with the team from Redwood. Ten of us in total, 8 from the staff team, one board member and my son Graeme. It was just sweet to hang out with this dedicated group of leaders, who love God, love each other and are passionate about the mission Redwood is on. It was great to talk leadership and dream about the future!! It was also not too shabby getting to a Cubs game at the historic Wrigley Field after some classic Chicago deep dish pizza at Giordano’s.

A great few days with an awesome team!! I’m really looking forward to what God does with it!!

And to the folk at the Willow Creek Association, both in the US and Canada, thanks for all you do to feed and inspire guys like our Redwood team and myself.

But I’d better stop writing and start doing!! Now is the time to ACT, LEARN and REPEAT, seeking the gusts of the Holy Spirit to lead us.

The Redwood GLS Team with Tim Taking the Picture