Stay'n with the cousins

Well, after a few weeks of it I think we can let one cat out of the bag. One of the new things that has been going on with us is that Angel and I are, and will be til the new year, spending some time at Harvest Vineyard, our old church. Before Angel & I came to Calvary Baptist we were involved in the Vineyard movement way back when it came to Edmonton in the early '90s. We were at Harvest for its first ever church service and the then pastor, Mark Wallenburg, performed our wedding ceremony. Our 2 years there was a time of transition for us, as we had left the church we first met at and started our own life as a married couple. For me Harvest was a place where I was introduced to teaching on God's unconditional love, and the Fatherhood of God - stuff I had never heard before in the few years since I had become a follower of Christ. It was a time of healing and planting of Kingdom seeds in my life, but Angel & I sensed that Harvest was not home for us. As good a place it was to be, we felt we were supposed to be elsewhere. That's how we ended up at Calvary in '92, and has been our home for the past 16 years.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge in that time; we've seen changes in the church and changes in our own lives, and yet in all those years there was one thing that remained constant for us, that Calvary was our home. We always thought it would be our home, and while the prospect of pastoring in a church somewhere out there was exciting we knew we would miss our home church. As I had mentioned before, the prospects of me going into vocational ministry had dried up and the last six months has been a time of laying everything down before God. Where do you want us? What do you want us to do? Where are you at work so we can join you in that work? As those questions were batted around in our minds and prayers we began talking about Harvest. You see, when we moved into our neighborhood two years ago we found out that our old church had moved into a school just a few blocks away from our home. Now we know that God placed us in our community very intentionally, and we want be a blessing to our neighbors. So then maybe Harvest fit in the picture too, but we don't know for sure.

So, after touching base with Harvest to see what their involvement in the community was like, talking with the Calvary leadership and lots of prayer, we have made the switch to Harvest. The people we've talked with at Calvary have been very supportive, even if they feel sad that we're leaving. But I need to clarify something here, and that is we aren't sure if we are supposed to be there permanently. In fact we're not sure of much these days... But we do feel that we're supposed to be at Harvest for the time being, so we're giving it three to four months and hopefully by January we will have a good idea of the direction God wants us to go. In the meantime we're getting settled into a Kinship (small group), met with Pastors Don & Ruth Rousu and have started making connections with the people there. There are some people that we knew from Harvest started way back in the day, but the vast majority are strangers to us. So it's kinda weird to feel at home in a place that's so unfamiliar; maybe it's because they do church pretty much like Calvary does. But most likely it's simply because Jesus is there. As well there's a connection between Calvary and Harvest in that Calvary has several ex-Harvest folk, and vica versa. So really we haven't left home so much as we're spending time with extended church family - the cousins if you will. And only time will tell before we know if we move in permanently with them or head back to the place we've loved to call home.