Enrich

Introduction Women who are called to ministry often talk to me about the challenges they face as female leaders. Even in churches that affirm women in leadership, they frequently encounter cultural barriers related to their roles. As Kadi Cole has recently noted, “the research reveals the problem is less about theology and more about our leadership practices and church cultures.”1 While Cole highlights some of the practical difficulties of female church leaders, in this article I wi...

Leadership An International Leadership Journey

INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS WHITE Rev. Dennis White served in full-time church ministry over a span of 64 years. While his early religious life would begin in a Pilgrim Holiness church at the age of six, Dennis would come to know Jesus as his Lord and Saviour at age 15 and would have a life-changing encounter with Jesus at age 18—an encounter that would ultimately lead to his decision to serve as a pastor and spiritual leader in full-time ministry. Dennis credits the late Rev. Robert Eames as be...

Leadership Valuing the Past, Anticipating the Future

Craig Burton, general secretary treasurer of PAOC, was elected at General Conference 2022 in Winnipeg, Man., after serving for 17 years as the Eastern Ontario and Nunavut district superintendent. Get to know him, his family, and his perspective on his ministry transition in a recent interview with Ron Davis, who served as interim general secretary treasurer. Ron Davis (RD): Craig, I think a lot of people know you as district superintendent or even as pastor in your previous ministry opportunit...

Leadership Women in Leadership

In 2018, the PAOC approved a new Statement of Affirmation on the Equality of Women and Men in Leadership.1This statement intrigued me, not only because of my own journey of navigating leadership as a woman in ministry, but also because I was curious as to how there is such a large discrepancy between the policy of gender equality in leadership within the PAOC and what we are seeing in practice. Many churches and organizations have a stated goal of developing and releasing more leaders. Yet, desp...

Leadership The Blessing in the Wrestling

Every email I’ve sent or received in the past two years started the same way, and I’m guessing yours have been the same: “I hope this email finds you well.” Do you know why we all write this? It’s because, after what we’ve all endured over the past few years, we no longer assume people are doing well. I like to think I’m characterized by words like “dependable,” “consistent,” “healthy,” “balanced” and &ldq...

Leadership Keys to Resilience

An Interview with Ken Gaetz We recently said goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021. But for the foreseeable future, it appears that we will be working in a world where we have to live with uncertainty, fulfil extra roles or take on new tasks, and cope with a measure of continued isolation. And that’s good news for those buying stock in resilience. Resilience is the ability to withstand, adapt and grow in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy and stress. It’s the ability to transcend d...

Leadership Living and Leading in Mounting Chaos

A little over a year ago, I entered a year-long existential crisis. It began before COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests, but working through it has given me a perspective and tools for living and leading today. My crisis had been building for some time. Leading up to it, it seemed every book, blog, podcast, and newsfeed that came my way relayed the message that the world is out of control and is increasingly hostile to my brand of Christianity. Fear, anger and hate dominated the discourse, o...

Leadership Acts and COVID-19

My journey with Jesus started at the age of 15 in a little Pentecostal church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 15 miles away from northern Rwanda. Two years later, I enrolled in a four-year diploma program in a Pentecostal Bible college run by Swedish missionaries. In 1985, I graduated and began the ministry with great excitement, not knowing what was awaiting me ahead. I was only 21 years old. Later, I understood the real challenges of serving God—in the DR Congo first, and ...

Leadership Something New

“Patti, would you be interested in writing an article? Here’s the topic we were thinking…” “Sure,” I said, in the middle of February. When life was normal. When I was under the impression that I knew what I was doing, more or less. It was a good topic, one I had addressed many times. I would be able to write an article like that without too much effort. Then the coronavirus shut the world down and everything changed. The original topic now seemed a bit redun...

Prayer Overcoming Evil Through Prayer

The Bible shows us clearly that we are engaged in a battle that is taking place in the spiritual realm. Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that we are not wrestling against “flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (NKJV). We are engaged in this battle because we’ve been enlisted as soldiers in God’s army.1 God has given us an armour and weapons that a...

Leadership Leading the Generations

I first realized my calling to vocational ministry when I was 17 years old. I was standing in a youth service, worshipping and asking God to lead someone (older, wiser, and much better at being a Christian than me, of course) to speak at a weekly outreach I had started leading with a friend at my high school. A small voice suddenly whispered to me, “Why not you?” At the time, I thought there were plenty of reasons why I couldn’t do it (speak at our outreach and pursue ministry...

Mission The Urgency of Proclamation

God is clear in Psalm 139:16b when he says, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Not a moment of our lives is unknown to God. Wherever God takes us, He has a purpose in it. His purpose is always the same. Joseph explained it to his brothers after his prolonged prison experience. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:20). Paul also explained, I want you to kn...

Pentecostal Worship Seven Reflections

What are the makings of a good Pentecostal worship service? Traditionally, the answer has been an expectation for a supernatural move of God whereby people have a tangible sense of the Spirit. In this article, I briefly explain some of the background for the Pentecostal emphasis on the experiential in corporate worship, followed by seven key theological issues we need to be aware of as we grapple with the ethos of Pentecostal corporate worship. First, the background for the early Pentecostal emp...

Youth & Spirituality Engaging Theological Conversations

I vividly remember one Sunday morning as a young teenager asking a trusted mentor and ministry leader an honest theological question stemming from my personal reading of Scripture. I had become intensely interested in God’s Word and had a genuine desire to grow in my faith, leading me to think more deeply about what I was reading. My question came from a place of innocence—I didn’t know I existed in a community that avoided asking questions. Because of this, my inquiry was met ...

Revival A Lifestyle of Resurgence

God whispered the word “resurgence” to me. A resurgence is a rising again of God’s Spirit—renewal, revival, a restoration of use. It is the DNA of our Pentecostal heritage. The history of a movement 100 years old was a people encountering the Holy Spirit in a fresh way and pioneering new works. Growing up in a flagship Pentecostal church, I had an encounter in my teens that made me realize the gospel wasn’t just words on a page but an invitation to encounter the li...

Pentecostal Leadership Hearing The Holy Spirit

Have you ever had an opportunity to spend some time with someone you admired your whole life? Twenty years ago, I had the privilege of leading worship for a week of camp ministry. The evening speaker had been a ministry hero in my mind for many years. I was a young pastor and had the privilege of driving him wherever he needed to go and hosting him throughout that week. I was deeply impressed with how his everyday life mirrored his public ministry. I had begun the practice only a couple of year...

Spiritual Health Spiritually Healthy Leaders

I moved from being highly motivated to being utterly frustrated! A series of hardships in ministry such as cancer, members leaving, and the inability to grow as a church left me feeling bruised and beaten. My frustration was compounded because I thought I knew what we needed to do, only to find there was little fruit to show for it. I thought I was a good pastor, but I could not figure out what needed to happen to get us where we needed to go. Finally, I recognized I needed help from someone who...

Spiritual Health Vitalization

A vitalized church—a church that’s growing by reaching the lost—certainly does things that stagnant churches do not do. It talks differently and it walks differently. Its success at fulfilling the Great Commission comes as a result of obedience, not wishful thinking. After all, “What good is it, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions?” (James 2:14, NLT). Prior to change of habit comes a change of heart. If you want to vitalize your church,...

Spiritual Health The Simplicity of a Vision

The Simplicity of a Vision by Ross Allen How can we temper our tendency to overcomplicate when it’s important to keep things simple? Better yet, how can we nurture a vision for our church’s future when the complexities of running a church are so intense? It has been my experience, working in the business community most of my adult life, that with success comes complexity. And with complexity come increased pace, higher stress, more responsibility, and a blurring of purpose for those...

Vitalization Better Together

Blow, please Success inebriates. The best of the pack is more susceptible to delusion than everyone behind. As a result, blue-chip churches can deliriously stop doing exactly what they should and start doing exactly what they shouldn’t. The particularity of it all is that it overtakes like odourless gas. Our first response is denial that it has happened to us, and then we feel utterly stupefied as to how on earth this came about. I learned this from my good friend, Ross Allen of Broadway C...

Editorials

From our General Superintendent A Culture of Honour

From the Editor A Long Range View

From our General Superintendent Aligned for Mission

From the Editor Seeing in the Spirit

At Work in the World

ERDO OUR THEORY OF CHANGE

Mission Canada LIFELAUNCH

ERDO SPONSORSHIP MATTERS