Editorials

From the Editor STACEY MCKENZIE 2020 – A Year of Spiritual Battle

Finding peace and purpose in turmoil On a warm Caribbean night on December 31, 2019, I sat in a New Year’s Eve service and listened to a message the pastor felt the Lord had given him to bring his listeners into 2020. The title? “Prepare for War.” Basing his message on 1 Kings 20:1-30, and on what he believed God had spoken to his heart through a series of dreams, he conveyed the warning that we should enter 2020 prepared for spiritual battle. His central encouragement was tha...

From our General Superintendent DAVID WELLS What We Call Ourselves

The characteristics of a movement On May 5, 2020, I was again selected by our General Conference’s voting delegates to have the immense privilege of serving The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) for another four-year term as our general superintendent. With the restrictions in place because of COVID-19, I was in a church auditorium with a handful of my closest colleagues. It was a unique experience, yet I felt the affirmation and prayerful support of so many within our Fellowship. T...

From the Editor STACEY MCKENZIE A Spring to Remember

Life in the midst of a global pandemic Few planned for the kind of year that 2020 is turning out to be. Long anticipated and pegged as a milestone in many ways, a marker for years for many leaders and decision makers in casting vision and making strategic plans, it has quickly become a defining period in modern history, even as all that this entails is still largely unknown. The emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic has radically, even traumatically, altered and upended life as we have kno...

From our General Superintendent DAVID WELLS A Developing Leader Experiences God

A testimony If you have read my last two articles, you have journeyed with me from my experience as a child who initially engages the Christian faith to a teenager who has a maturing, sustainable life in Christ. I now invite you to journey with me through the next decade as I move from being a high school graduate entering Bible college to becoming a young married man with children seeking to faithfully pursue God’s leadership call in my life. The transition from home life and high schoo...

From our General Superintendent DAVID WELLS A Student Experiences God

A testimony One of the great spiritual formation challenges the church in Canada continues to engage is the effective discipleship of children. What does it take to carefully lead each child who initially engages the Christian faith? What can we do to take them successfully through their journey to young adulthood with a maturing, sustainable life in Christ? A major survey was conducted earlier this decade, exploring the reasons why Canadian young adults are staying, leaving or returning to the ...

From the Editor STACEY MCKENZIE Spirit Now

It’s Time! The 25th Pentecostal World Conference in Calgary, Alta., late last summer was a reminder to our worldwide Pentecostal family of our critical mission as we enter a new decade. If you weren’t able to track with any of the live stream sessions, you can read highlights from the conference on pages 9 to 13. Laura Bronson’s appeal on behalf of the next generation was a well-received message in Calgary, and she recaps her message on page 14. This issue of testimony/Enrich a...

From the Editor STACEY MCKENZIE Extreme love

A year-end reflection Christmas and a new year are just a few weeks away. For some it will be a joyful time, while for others the season merely intensifies the pain of an unwanted reality. For all of us, it’s an opportunity to get out of our ordinary routines and look with new eyes at the gift the Christ child is to us. What did it really mean for the Creator of the universe to take on human form, to be born into a nondescript family in unremarkable surroundings to an unwed mother and a ca...

From our General Superintendent David Wells A Child Experiences God

Uncovering a God-given calling Envision with me an entire generation of children, youth and young adults becoming loving disciples of Jesus, empowered to fulfil their God-given callings. This is our passion and vision. It is important to ask, “What does that look like? What takes place in the life of a child, a young person, or a young adult that forms them into whole-hearted, whole-minded, whole-life followers of Jesus?” In pondering this, I was drawn back—I believe by the Spi...

From our General Superintendent David Wells Younger Voices

Reaching and discipling the next generation Younger voices than mine echo in my heart and mind, voices from a generation half my age and younger or from those who serve with that generation. They are living for Jesus and calling us to live as His church in a transformational manner today. The questions and related comments below are drawn from the Strategic Vision Committee of the PAOC’s General Executive. This group has been reconstituted to focus solely on our mandate to “reach, di...

From the Editor Stacey McKenzie Summer Issue Update

God at Work in Every Generation Welcome to the second issue of the newly combined testimony/Enrich magazine. Taglined Lifestyle and Leadership, its content is intended to highlight the evidence of God’s enduring work in the story of our lives, our Fellowship, and our world (an affirmation of testimony magazine, which marked 100 years with the recently released centenary edition). Our Fellowship is linked to a beautiful and complex mosaic of stories and experiences, and we want to take care...

From our General Superintendent David Wells Let's Celebrate

100 Years of Pentecostal Passion We have arrived at a very meaningful season in the history of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada family. On June 9, Pentecost Sunday, we will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of this Fellowship in May 1919. Across the country we will tell the story of how God raised up a movement of people and churches who humbly and passionately sought more of God in their lives. The Lord honoured that hunger with experiences of the Spirit’s pr...

From the Editor Stacey Mckenzie A Renewed Perspective

Owning your unique call Feeling battle weary? Worn down by bad news and complicated relationships? Those aren’t uncommon sentiments or experiences in these interesting days. Next to God’s timeless and encouraging Word, this centenary issue may be just what you need to find excitement and motivation to seek God’s perspective on everything you face. Whether the result is that you feel challenged to go back to your first love (Revelation 2:2-4) or you discover Jesus for the very f...

From the Editor Stacey McKenzie Centenary Issue Update

To our valued readers: We’re hard at work preparing the centenary issue, which will be the first combined issue of testimony and Enrich. The expected delivery date is in June 2019. Here’s some of what you can look forward to: -Testimonies from Bible college students (over the next two issues) highlighting God’s work in their lives and reminding us of our call to keep Jesus as our first love. At least nine students will share personal stories in this issue a...

From the Editor Steve Kennedy Slim Pickings -30-

One of the first things I learned when I started to write for publication was the use of “-30-” to indicate the end of an article or story. The origins of this practice are up for debate. One common explanation traces its use back to the telegrapher’s practice of using “xxx” to indicate the end of a dispatch. Placed below the last line of a newspaper or magazine submission, -30- says to the editor or the layout artist, “Don’t look for any more copy. That...

From our General Superintendent David Wells Our Greatest Challenge

It’s 2019 and that means we are fully into the 100th year of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada’s existence. The “Letters Patent of Incorporation” that established the PAOC was dated May 17, 1919, and was recorded on May 20, 1919, by the Deputy Registrar General of the Dominion of Canada on behalf of His Majesty, King George V. Talk about official! Seven Canadian Pentecostal pioneers made application for the charter: R. E. McAlister, F. Small, G. A. Chambers, H. M...

From the Editor by Steve Kennedy Into These Darkening Days

I don’t like winter. I do have brief, fleeting moments of attraction—trysts, you might call them. When I see the Milky Way spilling over the edges of a coal-black sky or notice sunlight diamonds scattered across a crust of freshly fallen snow, I am tempted. But I try to keep these moments of weakness to myself for fear of being mistaken for a true lover. My reasons for disliking winter are plenteous, but I think I’ve identified the primary culprit, the root of my disconte...

From our General Superintendent By David Wells “The Hopes and Fears”

We all have hopes and fears. Every day we face the uncertainty of life, the tension between all that we long for and all that we do not know. In the face of that uncertainty, do we choose to have hope or do we succumb to the waves of fear that threaten to overwhelm us? We hope for those we love, that they will flourish physically, emotionally and spiritually. In faith, we pray and trust God for these outcomes in their lives. But if we are honest, we also fear for them when they exper...

From the Editor Steve Kennedy Summer Pickings

I’m writing this in the last full month of summer. By the time it makes it to print, we will be eating this year’s crop of apples, the maple trees will be hunting in the root cellar for the paint cans, and the back-to-school displays will be picked over like a salad bar at closing time. Summer always goes by too fast on my calendar. I have a respectable tan on my arms and face to remember it by (a run-in with basal cell carcinoma finally convinced me of the need for sunscreen)....

From our General Superintendent David Wells Family Dynamics

I stood recently on Pier 21 in Halifax, N.S., where my bedstefar (grandfather), Jakob Thomsen Dam, landed on May 5, 1928. He came aboard the SS United States of the Scandinavian America Line at the end of its voyage from Copenhagen, Sweden and Norway. From Halifax he headed west by train, along with his future wife—my bedstemor (grandmother), whom I never met—and other members of her family to begin their new life in Canada. They each had 25 dollars in t...

From the Editor Steve Kennedy Taking Stock

I’ve been at this job for 11 years. I’ve seen lots of changes over that time, both with the magazine itself and in the wider world of hard-copy magazines. When I started in 2007, testimony was a monthly magazine. To offset the rising costs of publication, we have gone from 12 to 11 issues per year, and then down to 10. Now we publish every two months. To compensate for the reduced number of issues per year, we now offer six feature articles per issue instead of only four. T...