Vision: Healthy churches, reaching out, or both?

On Saturday, Nov. 23, the Ontario MB Conference tried something new. For the last several years, it has had an Extended Leadership Council meeting in November and an annual convention in February. The purpose of the November meeting, attended by pastors, moderators and treasurers from the local churches, was to prepare for the annual convention. This year, the Conference decided to turn the November meeting into a mini-business convention. Most of the board reporting was moved to the November meeting (so that the outline of Conference direction would be clear before local churches make their financial plans for the year). While the February convention will still make the formal decisions, the hope was to achieve an informal consensus at this meeting, so that the February meeting can focus on celebration.

About 100 delegates attended the session, held from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Evergreen Heights MB Church in Simcoe.

While most of the preaching is supposed to take place in February, assistant moderator Vic Thiessen launched the November meeting with a challenging message. He noted that several years ago he had moved from Kitchener MB Church to the Glencairn MB Church church plant in order to transform himself from an inactive layman to someone who was passionately involved in church. Just as the rebuilding of the temple had stalled in Haggai 1, so the work of the Ontario Conference has stalled; its churches are no longer strong and dynamic and if it had to start its many existing programs now, it could not do it, even though its resources are much greater than in the past. He said that the Conference will have to repent of past sins before it is able to resume building again. He said, “We don’t deserve to succeed. . . . We need to ask God to change our hearts, put Him first and be willing to risk it all for Him. . . . Imagine what God could do if we allowed God access to our lives.”

Convention participants

Vision

Mark Johnson

Most of the morning was devoted to discussing vision. Two years ago, the Conference set up a task force to examine the role of the Conference. Out of this came a 13-page strategic plan written by consultant Scott Ferguson, summarized in two pages for this meeting by Ontario Conference minister Mark Johnson. The strategic plan attempts to work within the Canadian MB Conference mission (“Healthy growing churches reaching their worlds”), establishes 11 priorities, and highlights one area on which the Ontario Conference needs to place more emphasis: evangelism and church planting.

The strategic plan was outlined, and executive director Dave Wiebe and evangelism director Ewald Unruh from the Canadian Conference laid out the larger context, launching delegates into a wide-ranging discussion.

One prominent theme in the discussion was church planting. Unruh reported that Mission Calgary (the first Canadian Conference Key City Initiative) had rejuvenated the Alberta Conference and suggested Love Toronto (the second Key City Initiative) could do the same for Ontario. Herman Plett, who had pastored in Alberta and is now pastoring in Ontario, noted that a key element in the Alberta renewal was a prayer and fasting retreat for pastors. (An Ontario prayer and fasting retreat is planned for June 2–4.)

A second theme was raised by pastor Roger Thiessen. Noting that half of the Ontario MB churches had experienced significant conflict in the past five years, he argued that helping unhealthy existing churches needed to be a priority for the Conference.

Clinton Bell

It is significant that these two emphases are two of the three issues that the Canadian Conference wishes to focus on in its vision statement: “Healthy churches . . . reaching their worlds”. There was considerable discussion of how accurately the strategic plan expressed the actual or desired vision for the Ontario Conference, but a “straw poll” showed overwhelming support for the document in principle.

The twin issues emerged again when the Board of Faith and Life presented a “Protocol for Emerging Churches”. This document offers guidelines on how churches can plant daughter churches in healthy ways rather than in unhealthy ways (that is, through a church split).

Gerry Dyck (BOCE chair)

Ewald Unruh and Ontario Conference church extension director Clinton Bell passionately laid out the vision for Love Toronto, pointing out that there is a great need for more churches in Canada and that church plants tend to win considerably more people to Christ than established churches. They outlined the progress of various church plants across Canada and Ontario. There was some discussion of how many Ontario churches were healthy enough to plant daughter churches.

The Board of Church Extension budget is scheduled to increase from $134,000 to $184,000 but BOCE chair Gerry Dyck suggested that that is only a maintenance budget since the Board needs to hire a full-time director (Clinton Bell is only part-time) and it would also be helpful to hire a coach or coaches for the church plants.

Spending the surplus

The Ontario Conference spent $231,387 in 2001, resulting in a $43,491 surplus, bringing the Conference’s accumulated surplus to $277,858. However, the 2002 budget was increased by over $100,000 due to the hiring of a full-time Conference minister and an expansion in the church extension budget, so that the Conference is expecting a deficit of up to $60,000 in 2002. That still leaves an accumulated surplus of over $200,000, and considerable debate followed on how the Conference should spend this surplus – which brought the discussion back to the question of priorities. No concrete proposals were made, but the 2003 budget already projects increasing spending to $359,673. Unless the churches decide to increase their contributions to the Conference (there were no suggestions that that seemed likely), there would be a deficit of up to $120,000 in 2003, using up half of the accumulated surplus.

The mini-convention also heard reports from several other Conference agencies, all of which generated wide-ranging and constructive discussions.

• Camp Crossroads is continuing to grow and to upgrade its facilities. The Camp board presented figures showing that Crossroads’s camper fees are among the lowest when compared to fees at similar camps.
• Eden High School, which is a Christian alternative school within the public school system, saw enrollment jump by 125 to 600 students this year. There was some discussion on how to maintain the school’s Christian character as it grows, and some concern over whom the school board would choose to be the next principal whenever current principal Ray Smith retires.
• Tabor, which has operated a seniors’ complex in St. Catharines, has added the Pleasant Manor complex in Virgil and is planning a new complex in Kitchener–Waterloo.
• The Youth Leadership Retreat this year attracted 141 sponsors and youth. This report generated a discussion on the need for a province-wide MB event for all youth (not just the leaders), on how to get youth more involved in Conference and on how to give youth more responsibility.

In an emotional and unscheduled concluding comment, delegate Jim London reminded delegates “how good God has been to us”. He noted how in the 1980s there had been tensions in the Conference as the Board of Church extension was desperately in need of funds, Camp Crossroads was struggling to finance its expansion and much of the Conference budget was going to support Eden. Now, all of the Conference ministries are flourishing, there are finally significant amounts of money being available for church planting and the Conference is working together in unity.

—jc