A Greeting from our New BCY Regional Minister, Brian Louw
Hello world! What a joy it is to be serving our family of churches here in BC and the Yukon. My prayer is that it proves to be a fruitful time of witnessing God at work in and through the churches, pastors, chaplains, and other servant leaders that make up this incredible associational family. I ask that you pray for me as I have rather large shoes to fill in Larry Schram’s recent departure.
Growing up, I had a poster on my bedroom wall of a surfer riding a wave, with the words “Only a surfer knows the feeling.” Those words resonated deeply with this little 16-year-old whippersnapper who thought he was all that. You see, there’s something truly indescribable about riding waves. The sheer power of the water, the surge of the wave, the roar of the barrel if you’re deep enough in it, and the spray of salt water as the barrel closes and sends the plume of spray hurtling past your head. When you’re deep in that barrel with a translucent curtain blocking your peripheral view, and all you can focus on is pointing the nose of your board towards the only way out. What an absolute rush when you make it out still standing and still going… Only a surfer knows the feeling.
The thing is, to get to that feeling, you have to ride a lot of waves and you have to learn by falling over and over. You must learn to get beaten by the wave and held under water for what can feel like ages; to let go in that veritable saltwater washing machine and learn that the failure is part of the journey of improvement. For every picture of a surfer riding the perfect wave, slotted deep in the barrel, know that they had to go through a lot to get there; good and bad.
Now that I’ve been in vocational ministry for 20 years, I’m starting to think only a pastor knows the feeling. Whether your title is pastor, chaplain, camp director, administrator or whatever, if you’re involved in ministry in your day-to-day life, you know the feeling I’m talking about. You know the incredible valleys of walking through death, discouragement, and discontent. However, you also know the incredible mountain-top feeling of seeing the lights come on as someone responds to Jesus in faith and walk into eternal life in Him. As much as I enjoy surfing, there’s no experience that compares to lifting a new Christian up out of the water as you baptize them into Christ their Lord. What a rush!
As I step into this new season and this new role. My prayer and focus will be on doing all I can to help you, and to help you know the feeling that only we who serve the Lord truly know. How can I help?
Soli Deo Gloria,
Brian
A Warm Welcome to the following Pastors in the BCY Region
David Dawson, lead pastor at First Baptist Church Victoria
David has served with the CBWC in Victoria since 2014. After spending 6 years with Emmanuel Baptist and having been away from pastoring for a few years, he is glad to serve at First Baptist Victoria. David and his wife Julia have been married for 29 years and have two sons who live in Vancouver. David received his MDiv from Regent and was ordained with the CBWC in 2016. Currently, he is bi-vocational working also with the BC Pension Corporation.
Lincoln Tatem, worship pastor at West Point Grey Baptist Church
Lincoln Tatem is a multi-disciplined musician operating out of BC’s Lower Mainland since 1996. Growing up in the Toronto area he began his musical training. In 1991 Lincoln transitioned to Regina, SK, where he earned a degree in music composition. Lincoln is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and an award-winning recording artist who has worked in studio and on stage as producer and arranger, currently serving as conductor and musical director of Bez Gospel Choir. He has over 25 years’ experience as a pastor, liturgist, and church musician. Lincoln is also an in-demand educator, adjudicator, and clinician, having served as the long-time director of the Church Music department of Pacific Life Bible College.
Hillside Baptist: a place of healing and comfort since 1943
Hillside Baptist Church has been ministering in North Vancouver BC for over 80 years now. Our church building has been in Lynn Valley, close to Lynn Canyon, since the mid-70’s when our Lonsdale area location was re-zoned for apartments. Our current location was expanded to include our sanctuary and more meeting space in 1990; back then, at the opening of this sanctuary, our vision was summed up in the Prayer of Dedication, a copy of which sits outside the sanctuary entrance:
The dedication of the church building to the preaching and teaching of the Good News of Jesus Christ was foundational, and expressed confidence that the result of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel would be that the church would become a place of comfort, a stronghold, and a training center ~ all prophetical words that have been realized in multiple seasons over the past 80 years of Hillside’s ministry.
We are trying to maximize our capacity to serve our community and our mission. Our building now contains a full-time daycare/preschool and an after-school program. We are newly partnering with a local Anglican church to provide them with needed worship space, and Keats Camps, a valued ministry partner of ours, has their office space within the building. Partnership in ministry is truly a blessing to us, and to the community. The daycare and afterschool care programs bring lots of life into the building. Partnering with another church for meeting space both helps them in today’s pinched markets for meeting space, as well as allows us opportunities (such as us being invited to join them in Evensong for example). We find Christian camps such as Keats provide a vital link with youth, children, and their families; our youth and children’s programs (Oasis, Club 67, & Sunday programs) benefit from camp ministry as well as provide camps with young leaders trained up in the church.
Hillside church was founded in faith during war-time in 1943, flourished with prayer, teaching, fellowship, and joyfully supporting Baptist missions through the mid 20th C, grew during the late 20th C, and briefly became a training center with a school of mission in the years before Covid.
Of course, we haven’t been without some strife and growing pains. Our church has changed a great deal with much movement both into and out of the church since Covid restrictions ended. We are now a cultural mix of people; we truly can say that we have congregants from every continent, seeking to love and serve the Lord Jesus together. People from other faiths are coming to our community and, through relationship and focusing on God’s Word, are coming to faith in Christ. We are grateful that the Lord has led us through the ups and downs of many seasons.
As Christ’s church, prayer is at our center. It helps so much to have our dedicated prayer team who continually encourage us to seek the Lord, and to give Him our all. In current days our congregation and our elders have been seeking the Lord’s direction in prayer as we feel the call to be a place of healing and comfort ~ this seems especially relevant in the upheaval caused by the stresses of this time. We’ve experienced physical and emotional healings within our church body, and have been thinking, talking and praying about how we can further missionally embody Christ’s healing love to one another and to our neighbours: Of course this has always been the mission of God, but we are intentionally seeing ‘healing’ as a key word in our vision for the Lord’s work in and through His work at Hillside.
We’re thankful for God’s care and provision over the past 81 years, and we look forward to following Christ together for as long as He calls us to this ministry in ‘the valley’ and on the hillsides of North Vancouver!
Submitted by Pauline Sanderson, Nate Collins and Jeff Schuliger, Co-Pastors, Hillside Church.
This regional newsletter is published quarterly within the CBWC’s monthly newsletter, Making Connections. Have a story idea? Email our senior writer, Hannah Hamm: hhamm@cbwc.ca