Testimony

Occasionally I need to go out of town for a work-related conference. These types of excursions usually last between five and seven days. Kitty, being a very independent cat (or so I thought), would be fine alone for a week, I reasoned. I had asked a friend to drop by just to make sure that her water and food bowls were filled daily. Kitty sleeps 16 hours a day anyway, I told myself. She won’t even realize I’ve gone away. She will be fine, I reassured myself. Upon my return from a ...

Lifestyle The Discipline of Spiritual Gardening

As COVID-19 exploded onto the global scene, it seemed like everything that was normal began to fly every which way. It was as if normal life was now shrapnel of the pandemic. This is what chaos does, doesn’t it? It throws all things off-kilter and out of order. Like the rest of the world, I was trying to find structure in the best way possible. In the midst of working from home, attending church online, watching daily news updates, and picking up new gardening skills, I was looking for ord...

Perspective Let There Be Light

They are the opening words of God’s creation song, the very first words spoken by God in Scripture—Let there be light! Remember that. God spoke His Word into the darkness and there was light. The world Jesus was born into was dark. All of first-century Palestine languished beneath the heavy hand of Caesar and the occupying Roman Empire. The census Caesar demanded uprooted families and added even more uncertainty and fear to people’s lives. Judea, the province where Jesus was b...

Lifestyle Pandemic Dad Life

The days all start the same: Wake up. Mumble a “startup” prayer. Get coffee. Figure out if “today” is actually today or if it is the weekend or the day before last. Open up my laptop at my kitchen table. Work until I decide “…Yup, the kids have slept long enough …” Wake up the kids, whose sleep schedules no longer exist. Set them up for their Google classroom-led school days and prepare to help with spelling and math equations for the next few ...

Worldview A Christian View on Euthanasia

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) was legalized in Canada in June 2016. The term euthanasia will be used instead of MAID to differentiate it from palliative care. The conditions under which a health-care provider can legally administer euthanasia in Canada are several: a person must be at least 18 years old and competent at the time of administration. They must be suffering intolerably from a physical condition that is considered grievous (serious) and irremediable (no cure). They must be unwil...

Everyday Thoughts Addicted to the Right Thing

Dramatic life changes can have modest beginnings. Just walking across a room was all it took to start a conversation that changed Brian Chudy’s life. In March 2018, Brian came to North Pointe Church a broken man. His home is a stone’s throw away from North Pointe, so when his wife strongly suggested he seek out help for his drug addiction, the closest church seemed like a good choice. He just had to walk across the parking lot. Brian and his wife showed up 10 minutes early for North ...

Perspective God’s Unexpected Voice

A couple of days after we buried our stillborn baby, God spoke to my wife. It was Krista’s first time returning to the grave after we’d buried Avery. As the van rolled up to the cemetery gate, a song started playing on the radio. Krista sat in the vehicle and listened as the artist declared that God does not abandon us in our sorrow. As she began to cry, the lyrics went on to assure her that God holds our tears.1 She hadn’t been asking God to speak to her. God’s voice cam...

Seven Questions Seven Questions for Rev. Michel Bisaillon

Q1: Your bio on the PAOC website is interesting. You were working at the National Bank before attending Bible college and going into full-time ministry. What led to that major life and career change? My mother left home when I was four years old. My father, however, was filled with love and devotion for his two children and secured full-time custody of us. All of this was not the norm in Quebec at the time. During my teenage years, I lived in a town near the west end of the island of Montre...

Your Story A Royal Wedding

On May 8, 2018, I received a message from a longtime friend, Shelley McAmmond, congratulating my wife and me on 37 years of marriage. Her message also included a request: “Our son, Tyrel, is engaged to be married. He and his fiancée asked me to contact you to see if you would consider performing their marriage ceremony this summer in Saskatchewan.” There are three activities that, as a pastor, I am truly honoured to do: baby dedications, weddings, and funerals. But this reques...

Everyday Thoughts Immanuel Every Day

“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel … ‘God with us’ ” (Matthew 1:23). The holy wonder of the Incarnation is the good news of Christmas, but Immanuel is more than just the baby in the manger. It’s more than a 2,000-year-old miracle. Immanuel means more than God being with us in some abstract theological way. Immanuel means God with us right here and now. If Jesus has really done this—brou...

Vitality Matters Supernatural Gifts for Ordinary People

Most Pentecostal and charismatic believers have witnessed incidences of abuse and misuse of spiritual gifts. These include everything from strange physical displays to condemning, threatening or manipulative “words from the Lord.” Such abuses can cause believers to fear valid supernatural demonstrations and, in some cases, to develop disdain for them.Improper and unwise demonstrations of spiritual gifts have contributed, in a large degree, to a downward trend in their use. &ldq...

Your Story Love Never Lets Go

Phyllis Ryan Fisher was born December 19, 1947, in Toronto, Ontario. Her mother was a loving and resourceful woman who, during those postwar years, either cared for Phyllis herself or left her in the care of wonderful people who “adopted” her into their families. Although Phyllis was an only child, the “moms,” “dads” and “sisters” she collected along the way enriched her life and helped mould her into the lady she grew to be. This small-town girl l...

Our Story No “Do Nothing” Option

The town of Slave Lake, Alta., gained international attention on July 6, 2011, when William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, came to visit. Seven weeks earlier, a devastating wildfire had swept through the town destroying 40 per cent of its buildings and forcing all of its 7,000 residents to evacuate. Many left with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. Asthe world watched these two representatives of an earthly kingdom tour the town, representatives of God’s ki...

On The Issue In Need of a Good Samaritan

In November 2013, Brock Harrison was going about his life as a new dad and speechwriter for the leader of a political party when it hit him. It presented innocuously enough as panic attacks. Sitting down at his computer brought sudden and paralyzing physiological discomfort. He had experienced the odd panic attack in the past, but they were periodic and easy to shake off. These were different. He was physically unable to work. “Fortunately, I never experienced the desire to end my life,&rd...

Seven Questions SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR: VINJELU MUYABA

Vinjelu Muyaba and his wife, Kathryn, are lead pastors of Lighthouse Fellowship in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. They have a great love for the community they serve. Having grown up surrounded by poverty in Zambia, Vinjelu brings a fresh vision for reaching a needy and broken world. They have nine children: Million, Esther, Francis, Seth, Lexsina, Taliah, Elizabeth, Chawezi, and Hezekiah. Q 1: Tell us a bit about your family … and your nine kids! I come from a ver...

Everyday Thoughts Door to Door:

“I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35b). As I rounded the corner on my alternate daily run, I could not help but notice them. They were paired up, two on one side of the street and two on the other. Middle-aged, modestly dressed and book in hand, they were going through this prestigious neighbourhood knocking on doors. They were not selling anything. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses doing “door-to-door” evangelis...

Lifestyle Minding the Mind

Our nine-year-old son would not swallow his dinner. He cried, coughed, and then ran to the bathroom to spit it out. It wasn’t my cooking—not this time anyway. It was anxiety. He had learned choking safety tips at school that day, and for the rest of the week he was consumed by the fear of choking. It startled us because we weren’t dealing with the typical childhood fever or scraped knee. We were trying to comfort a child whose mind was not OK. As parents we strive to keep...

Interview SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR: PAUL FRASER

In October 2017, Rev. Paul Fraser of Edmonton, Alberta, accepted the call to serve as the PAOC’s Multiply Network co-ordinator. His role is to support and co-ordinate our local, district and national church multiplication movement. Paul brings a wealth of experience to this challenge. Here is a glimpse into his story and his heart. Q1: Congratulations on your new role as the PAOC’s Multiply Network co-ordinator! For those in our Fellowship who may not know much about you, what are so...

Worldview Flashes of Facts

A Tim Hortons® coffee shop is an excellent spot for eavesdropping. Wedged into a corner with a dark roast and a book, I mostly watch and listen to three men at the next table. Someone from their church has died recently. They wonder what heaven will be like. Being a preacher, I have much to say about that, if only they knew to ask. A fourth man, whom I know somewhat, enters and joins them. I didn’t know that his wife had died during the year, but his friends speak of it and ask him wha...

Our Story One Hundred Years Young

The year was 1917. Edmonton was a rapidly growing prairie city of 54,000 citizens. The High Level Bridge and the Hotel MacDonald had recently opened, and the dismantling of Fort Edmonton had just been completed. The First World War was still raging in Europe. Many young Edmontonians had lost their lives at the Battle of Passchendaele and at Vimy Ridge. That same year, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Taylor invited interested friends to their home at 11816 79th Street in Edmonton to pray for revival. Th...

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Editorials

From our General Superintendent The Responsibility of Representation

From the Editor Great is Thy Faithfulness

From our General Superintendent A Culture of Honour

From the Editor A Long Range View

At Work in the World

Mission Canada CALLED TO THE URBAN CORE

Mission Global FOR GOD SO LOVED TURKANA

ERDO BLINDSIDED BY WAR