THE FORMISSION BLOG
Reunion
Happy New Year, family! Since the end of the pandemic, we have been on a journey as a fellowship of embracing annual themes to guide all our camps, events, initiatives, and communications: Come Home (2022) Invite (2023) Belong (2024) If the themes sound relationally...
Good News for Canadians
Christmas is a time of year that largely has Canada’s attention. What should we as Christians and churches be communicating about it? As diverse as we are religiously and ethnically as a country, we still have a public holiday on December 25th. It has become, in...
Jesus’ Very Long Day
I’ve noticed lately that our society is getting tired, and I am convinced that God has something better for us as citizens of the kingdom. Just pull up a chair and watch people. They run from paid work to housework to volunteer work, pushing every yellow light, taking...
Pentecostal Belonging
Why are you a Pentecostal? Is it history, present experience, future hope, or a combination of them all? If you dug out my baptism certificate, you would know that I was Christened Anglican. Mom returned to her childhood faith at a Pentecostal Sunday School when my...
Kingdom Economics: Forfeiting Power
We all want power in our lives. Whether it’s our workplace, our church, our direction, or even our relationships, the quest for power over such things feeds an inner need for security that often transcends logic. If I could only make my boss do this, or make my pastor...
Belong
One of the things I love most about working at the PAONL is the sense of belonging. I’m not sure what you envision when you think of walking in the doors at 57 Thorburn, but for me it is a family. Mary, Owen and Dave are more than just MDSI Team members. Owen and I...
What is God Doing Now?
“Do not remember the former things, or consider things of old. I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19). As long as I can remember, I have had spiritual FOMO (fear of missing out). As a young person, I was often...
Non-Anxious Living
It was a profoundly spiritual moment for me at MDSI Summit 2023, sitting at a table surrounded by other leaders and prayerfully shaping a mound of clay. The keynote speaker had asked us to form what we hoped God would mould us into this year. Though it might not have...
How to Love a Town
How to Love a Town One of the most beautiful, relatable, and surprising parts of scripture is that God loves towns. “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their...
Stuck in a Moment
It is a strange moment in between Easter and Pentecost. The scriptures give us vague, curious, compelling, fascinating snippets of what it was like to be with the risen Christ before His ascension. Luke’s summary hooks me every time: “He appeared to them over a period...