Canadian Evangelism

Just an update to let you know I am on holidays until about July 7. My holidays consist of travelling to Grande Prairie, helping my daughter and son-in-law move, and drywalling a room in their new basement for my grandson's bedroom. He himself is 12, so I hope to have him help me and train in the art of hanging board. I only recently learned this myself, my wife and I having finished a room in the basement of our house in Edson, and taking about 3 weeks to do what a skilled drywaller could have done in a day or two. It was perfect though, and I'm convinced helped sell the house. More on Alpha stuff later, but not much is new, other than, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am planning another luncheon event in the Lacombe area and have already had some response, including from the pastor I had hoped I could ask to provide the venue, and he volunteered without even being asked. He probably read my secret strategy and issued a pre-emptive strike. Take Care, John

I posted recently about the lunch I held for pastors and Alpha leaders from Red Deer area churches . However, for various reasons, there were a number of pastors that couldn't make it. So I plan another one for the  City of Lacombe , a few km north of Red Deer (date and venue yet to be announced). I have already heard back from a couple of pastors, so I feel I can now publish this post. I am about to reveal one of my secret strategies, but first this... Last year at the Leadership Summit at Holy Trinity Brompton, Bill Hybels began his talk with this anecdote: "Nicky Gumbel called me at home in the US and asked me if I believed in free speech. I said, 'Well I'm an American, fairly conservative, of course I believe in free speech.' So Nicky said, 'Then how would you like to come over to England and give one.'" So... I am about to reveal a secret. When I am planning one of these area lunches, I pick a church and give the pastor a call. The conversation us...

Just in case anyone is in the neighbourhood, I will be giving the message at Christ the King Edmonton this Sunday. The readings I have chosen are from Isaiah 44, Acts 17 and Luke 14, and I hope to tie them all together into a commercial for Alpha. Blessings, John UPDATE: Went well, apparently.

I always wondered exactly how Red Deer got its name, but until I watched this video I didn't realize that the elk was also known as the, "red deer." As part of my challenge to reach and meet personally as many of the over 300 churches in Alberta who ran Alpha last year, I have been hosting lunches in various areas of the Province. Today's was in Red Deer, at Balmoral Bible Chapel. Pastors, elders and Alpha coordinators came not only from the city itself, but from a number of towns in the vicinity. A good number of the churches represented in attendance gave encouraging reports about their experiences with Alpha. One church reported their success in running the Youth Film Series in their local high school. Another was surprised at the number of people who were beginning to come through their doors from outside the church. A third saw their Alpha numbers jump from their usual 30 to 40, to 119 on last fall's course, the result of the Senior Pastor delegating comple...

My friend and brother in Christ Josh Canning (even though I've never met him face-to-face)  is our National Coordinator of Alpha for Catholics. Here...  is a talk he gave recently. I think it is brilliant. An extremely effective analogy he gives is this, speaking of the difference between witness and evangelization: I think that our witness of life is the envelope that the message (the Gospel) goes in. An envelope helps to deliver a message somewhere. But if you don’t open up an envelope, how can you expect someone to understand the message inside it? How much good is a sealed envelope, no matter how pretty it is?   Wish I'd thought of it first. Blessings, John

Last night was our first Alpha back after our weekend away. This Alpha retreat was one of the best in my memory, comparatively speaking. In addition to the leaders' team of four, there were six guests on the weekend. Every one except one came for private prayer to be filled with the Spirit. (The one who didn't was my wife, and she wanted to, but every time she came there was someone else in the room.) Two guests received the gift of tongues and one prayed the prayer giving her life to Christ. Our plan had been to run the first morning session, "How Can I be Filled With The Spirit?" ending at 10:30, then be available for half an hour for prayer. Our prayer time ended up lasting until after noon. Last night's talk was on the reality of evil, and healing. There is a reason why Satan and the powers of evil are addressed immediately following the weekend retreat. That is because, if there is a wonderful Spiritual experience on the weekend, there is often an attack righ...

I was invited to the Kiwanis Place Lodge, seniors' housing complex yesterday afternoon to make a brief presentation on Alpha for their afternoon church service. There were about 20 people there and they plan to run an Alpha for their building. The pastor at this service for the last two and a half years has been Ray Baillie of the Edmonton Family Worship Centre . My wife and I both went after our regular service at Christ the King and both enjoyed the experience. First of all, let me say that I love seniors (after all, I am one) and think they are just as cute as children. First we had several songs out of their songbook (with very large print). The woman playing the organ was very enthusiastic, if not always spot on in rhythm or tone. She had parked her walker right beside the electric organ, which I just thought made an interesting picture. Pastor Ray then walked around the room holding the portable mic while four people read passages of Scripture, some of the...

Getting ready for our Alpha Weekend Away, which starts tonight and lasts until about 3:00 tomorrow afternoon. The focus, of curse, is on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and guests often experience God in new and wonderful ways on these weekends. For some, they come to truly know Him for the first time. I always expect God to do great things on these retreats, although there are some who don't like to use the term, "retreat," because we are not retreating; we are moving forward. In any case, God always shows up. The prayers of the saints would be a great help and be much appreciated. I hope to have an update, and, Lord willing, an encouraging one, in a couple of days. Blessings, John UPDATE: Home now. Wonderful weekend away. The verse God has given me to take home for this retreat is Philippians 1:6 - being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. I will not at the moment give details, b...

I will reiterate that this is a diary, so I will claim the right merely to express whatever is on my mind - sometimes in a rather rambling way. So... a confession. You've heard the expression, "Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach" (Apologies to my son-in-law, a high school English teacher, who can both do and teach.) I feel I can relate to that old axiom. I feel quite confident in doing both, or either, but unfortunately not always at the same time. I have been involved in Alpha courses for over twenty years. I sometimes think I could start and run an Alpha course blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back, to use an old schoolyard expression. That is both good and bad; a blessing and a curse. What I mean is that while I feel I could step in and facilitate an Alpha course on very short notice, this can be seen as flippancy, even off-handedness, by some who are not so experienced. I have the unfortunate tendency to just do things myself in a proj...

I spent an interesting 4 days in Calgary last week. Some of it I have already written about, but just a couple more thoughts. Traffic-wise, Calgary is the Jekyll and Hyde of cities. Mid-day, when there is no traffic, it can be the most efficient place to drive. It's system of, "trails," basically freeways, can get you around the city in practically no time at all. But let there be traffic, or let there be an accident, these trails can become parking lots. As I travelled, sometimes across town, for appointments with various churches, I had to plan accordingly. What might take 20 minutes at 2:00 in the afternoon might take 90 at 5:00. Having said that, among my several meetings with Church leaders, one sticks out, looking back at it. It was with the Associate Pastor of a Pentecostal Church. When we first sat down, he proceeded to tell me how little they were doing with Alpha. But then he said that in fact they did run the Youth Film Series, and it was very successful, brin...

The next thing I want to examine, and I think many atheists haven’t thought this completely through, is the whole area of free will and rational thought. In fact Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist who has, apparently, given this some thought (although I would argue, not enough) has said, “This is a question that I dread.” And here’s the problem – the atheist, or let’s say, the naturalist (a person who believes that everything must be within the realm of the purely natural, or physical) must believe that our minds, like everything else, are nothing but, as atheist Lawrence Krauss puts it, “particles in motion.” Krauss in fact gets the ramifications of his position. He says that we really don't have free will. I, of course, don’t pretend to know the entire workings of the human brain, but to put it very simply, all our thoughts are just the result of electrons travelling along certain pathways in our brains – everything is physical.    So let me try something....

(Previously posted  by me elsewhere) Sometimes I have been asked the question, "What is the most difficult question you've ever been asked, as an Alpha small-group leader, and how did you answer it?" Now, you may think of difficult questions like, "Why did my husband die of cancer?" or seemingly flippant questions like, "How did Noah get two polar bears on the ark? But the one that comes to mind was not that kind of question. This was during one of my prison Alpha's a few years back. It came from a Native Canadian - would have been in his late'40's or early 50's I suppose - tall, distinguished, in a warrior sort of way that the prison system had not been able to beat out of him. He could have been a chief in an old western movie. His long salt and pepper hair was pulled back behind his ears and over the collar of his orange jumpsuit. He said this: When my father was a boy he was taken from his home, his village and his people, and sent t...