Minister’s Message

Welcome!

What a delight to offer this virtual snapshot of our life together to you.

In July of 2004, God called me into a pastoral relationship with this congregation.  I have enjoyed my ministry with such an exciting, growing and vibrant church family.

This website is an example of how our congregation seeks to transform itself as we move into the 21st century.  We’ve planted our virtual stake, on our own little virtual plot of ground.

I wonder, if websites existed 100 years ago, what would someone in my position write here in 1906?

What a world of difference compared with the present. I’m certain that he—yes, he!—looked at the future with promise for the church.  Undoubtedly the church played a central role in his community.

At that time, my turn-of-the-century colleague would be well aware of the discussion of three Canadian churches to form The United Church of Canada.  Indeed, Canada was very much a “Christian” country in the best and worst sense of that word.

At that time, Canada was a land of remarkable opportunity in the eyes of farmers from Europe, Eastern Canada, and the American mid-west.  Within the 20th century, the landscape and culture of Canada would be transformed in ways unthinkable or imaginable to the First Nations, and, perhaps surprisingly, to those original immigrants and their descendants.

And for the past 50 years, part of that large change included the increasingly secular nature of Canadian culture.  In 1970, the names of married couples in the church’s annual general report filled a page in three columns.  In the 2005 report, I note a total of three couples.

That was then, this is now.  And, to quote Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “we aren’t in Kansas, anymore.”

In this coming century, the church will become smaller than at any time in the past 1,500 years.  Increasingly, the secularism of our culture pushes religion to the fringes.  Today one can journey through life with little need for organized religion (a misunderstood idea itself), let alone worrying about one’s belief in God and the church.

Belonging to a church will not bring you financial riches, or improve your circle of influential friends, or provide you with a written guarantee to be successful in every venture of life.  You need no church for your charity: pick any number of social agencies to help you give.  You don’t need Christian faith to simply make you a more polite, and necessarily moral person.  There are plenty of self-help books for this.

And so if this is what being the church meant for so many, for so long…well, draw your own conclusions.

And, for this I am thankful.  For it begs the question: what, then, do you need to be the church for?  What does it mean to be Christian today?  I suppose such questions would make my predecessor sit up and take note!

The path of Christian faith will not be for everyone.  And that’s okay.  One look at the gospels and you sense that following Christ wasn’t half as easy as many popular Christian churches make it appear today.

Like the disciples, I think we shall find ourselves called to follow, not knowing with clarity or certainty, just where God’s Spirit leads us.

Secularism shall have it’s due.  It remains to be seen what will be truly fruitful and fruitless in this somewhat new worldview of Western culture.  I’m confident that this secularism shall dominate the culture well into this century and perhaps beyond.  I’m curious to see what God will make of it all.

And, in the church, we will increasingly need to look seriously at the reasons for why we believe what we believe.  Slogans such as “the Bible tells me so”, and “Jesus saves” and so on shall increasingly fall on tired and deaf ears.  And sadly, what passes as Christianity in mostly American and some Canadian circles becomes increasingly embarrassing to any thinking person.  What shall God do with us?

The 21st century brings us into a remarkable space for genuine thought, reflection and soul-searching.  I’m quite excited—believe it or not—that I’m living in a time when so much is uncertain.

Such a time of uncertainty opens room for…can you guess?…faith!

At the beginning of this 21st century, in a culture so topsy-turvy, I also look out with a great deal of hope.  I’m am so very curious to see what God shall make of it all, and where we shall play our part.

Blessings!

Rev. Kent Horsman

March 2006