Running Back to Saskatoon: The Journey is underway

Flat?  Maybe,  but the skies were alive. God was speaking.

 I wasn’t quite sure what He was saying, but He was certainly speaking…

Actually, it was a show. 

The Skies were alive in 360 degrees

Yup... God rays..

It was a show...

The gently undulating topography of the prairie is certainly more subtle than that of other areas but nonetheless beautiful.  Because you can see so much further, the far away changes in vegetation and elevation almost beckon you … it does something inside of me...

I arrived in Saskatoon and met with John Drisner and his intern Drew Chapman. Drew was a grad of U of Guelph and formerly a C4C worker at the U of S. Presently the student president of Horizon College.

John and Drew

John is the Superintendent of the Saskatchewan District,  and in the unusual position of being  both the DS and the lead pastor of his church. I was at the conference where he was upfront ( see May blog), when he let his name stand for the DS elections.  He affirmed that he and his church leadership had prayed about it and that he would run with the clear understanding that he would still maintain (although adapt)  his lead pastoral role at Lawson Heights . At the time, although I was a visitor, it was clear to me that John was going to be ‘the guy’.  I had the opportunity to shake hands with him as the conference came to an end and then chatting with him over a meal, last month,  at our national Mission Canada conference.

He is a strong leader and a solid communicator. In beginning a series on FaceBook Theology, he intersected with various theological discussions occurring online. Affirmative of the fact that people are actually discussing theology over Facebook, he provided the caution that most do not have grids or filters through which to evaluate people’s comments or arguments. He  then made an effort to lay out a primer on postmodernism and how it affects the way people perceive and process the world around them. What could have been a dry academic exercise was made relevant by describing how different generations “think” or “feel” about truth. Moderns  demand logic and sense. Postmoderns want it to “feel right”. While this is no doubt a generalization, it is one that has some connection to reality.

Lawson Heights Pentecostal Assembly is well situated in relation to the University of Saskatchewan. It is less than a ten minute drive, just across the river on the North and West of the city. Further, it has a user friendly feel to it that would appeal to a broad cross section of students. However, the idea behind what we do is not to try to attract students to church but to bring church to students. It is incarnational rather than attractional. One should not have to choose, but the point is: we need to go to where they are.