Reflections from The Moderator

A little over eight years ago Dale Doerksen sidled up to me at a Pastor’s retreat in Pinawa, MB and asked me if I would consider taking on the Moderator position of EMMC. Dale had been Moderator for the previous four years and was ready to step down. He had served through the transition from one Executive Director to another, with a lengthy gap in between. Why did he ask me? Well, I had served as Steinbach Bible College Cabinet chair for around 5 years and previously in various boards and councils in the EMMC. After praying about it and consulting with my wife Corrina, and local church and conference leaders, I let my name stand. Someone in our church once asked me if I loved to serve on boards and committees since I was always on one. I laughed and said, “Well, I’ve never woken up in the morning and said, ‘Yippee! I have a board meeting tonight!’ However, I value what a good board can accomplish for the kingdom of God.” As I reflect on these past eight years, four things stand out. People, churches, vision and faith.

People

While I’ve never been excited to attend board meetings, I have been excited to meet and reconnect with the General Council (GC) and General Board (GB) members. Over the past eight years I’ve had the privilege of working together with two Executive Directors and many other staff members, 39 different men and women from around the Conference on the GC and GB as well as various committee and MEM (Bolivia) members. These men and women are the cream of the crop of our churches. Their dedication and willingness to give of their time, money and effort for the work of the EMMC has been both encouraging and inspiring. Many of them served a full eight years and some even longer. Along the way many of them have become close friends, especially the General Board members and staff with whom I’ve worked the closest. I don’t think I will miss the meetings, but I will miss these amazing people. Our conference is blessed to have such godly men and women in leadership over us. The vast majority of time, these servants made life easy for me. When I needed wisdom and support, they gladly gave it. Thanks be to God!

Churches

A conference such as ours is only as strong as the churches that make it up. It is in churches that our individual and collective ministry happens. We try to have about 50% of our GC meetings in Manitoba (two regions) and 50% in the other three regions. Having meetings in Manitoba is cheaper but we gain so much by going elsewhere. There’s nothing like getting to visit all parts of our conference to help you understand the conference as a whole. I didn’t get to visit every single church but getting to many of them and worshipping with the churches we visited was a highlight of the past eight years. Thank you to all the churches that have hosted General Council meetings over the past eight years. Another two highlights were a trip to Bolivia to visit our workers and LIEAB and a trip to LaCrete, Alberta to get to know our EBMC* Bolivia partners.

Vision

Since I was a pastor in Gospel Fellowship Church in Steinbach, I was already aware of the first 5-year-plan that our staff and GB had put together before I became Moderator. Knowing that Lyn Dyck, Executive Director at the time, was wanting to lead our conference in a clear direction helped me to consider the position. The various aspects of the vision that we established weren’t always fulfilled, but they helped us to keep aiming for worthy goals. Before I arrived, Darrell Kehler had been contracted part time to help our churches get more focused through the Leading With Vision workshops. He and Lyn were instrumental in helping many of our churches refocus their efforts. This work continues and needs to continually be reinvented and refocused. COVID made it difficult to keep our objectives in focus and with Lyn’s departure in early 2024 and the transition from him to Terry Hiebert and then to Henry Redekopp, our Five-Year Plan has taken a backseat. I look forward to seeing the vision that Henry, our staff and GB and GC will develop and implement.

Faith

People, churches, and vision in the context of a conference are ultimately all about our faith in Jesus Christ. Without Jesus’ death and resurrection there is no reason for us as scattered people to ever meet, for our churches to even exist and no reason for having any kind of vision. It is Jesus and only Jesus that gives us hope for this life and for the next. Everything we do as a conference is about faith in Jesus. And if anything draws us away from that faith, we need to ditch it immediately. Jesus is the only hope we have and the only source of life that exists. We are his people, his church, and he is our ultimate vision.

In getting to know our conference through serving as Moderator, I have seen again and again how Jesus changes lives and gives us hope. One of the traditions that we have at our semi-annual General Council meetings is to have one of our GC members share their faith story. Another tradition we started is to build into our meetings times of prayer. Sometimes

it seems that these take up a lot of time, after all, we’ve come from far-flung parts of North America. Yet every time we hear a faith story, and pause to pray, we are reminded again that this is what it’s all about, this is why we meet. It’s about Jesus and if it ever stops being about him, we should either reverse course or immediately close everything down.

There needs to be a renewed focus on the spiritual life of our leaders and churches

So, what’s next? Starting July 1, John Dyck of Deer Run Church in Leamington Ontario will pick up the Moderator mantle. John has served for many years in Deer Run and, on the GC, and GB. I have great confidence in John, our GC, GB and staff. I urge you to give them the same kind of support I experienced. What direction do we need to go? I won’t say a lot. Ultimately it will be up to our leadership team. I’ll simply say that I think there needs to be a renewed focus on the spiritual life of our leaders and churches. Without a deepening love for Jesus, we will lose the plotline. Jesus is everything. He is life itself.

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*EBMC – Evangelical Bergthaler Mennonite Church

This article was originally published

in The Recorder Vol 62, No. 3