Dear Friends,
I thought it highly ironic and somewhat amusing that I wrote a newsletter last week and failed to mention anything I was thankful for. Let me just begin and invite any of you to give your suggestions and thoughts and I will publish a selection of them in the weeks ahead.
- I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve with this family of churches. I embrace and celebrate the opportunities at Assembly, conference, leadership hubs and Celebration Dinners – the encouragement, prayer and joy that is part of these events.
- I am thankful for the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of so many individuals and in the ministry of so many of our churches. That is evidenced by many things but includes the myriad of worship styles, the incarnational places of ministry and the willingness to risk and be challenged beyond what we believe our own resources can sustain which drives us to a dependence upon God.
- I am thoroughly enjoying and am thankful for the present Board and its leadership and for the staff that serve the constituency through the Board.
- There is a beginning to the conversation, now over to you.
Additionally, I am well aware that many of the pieces I write are only partial representations and are often entirely inadequate. The recent story on the BC Ferries helped me understand that when Clark Gietz, pastor of Comox Community Baptist Church and a former ferry worker, sent me this piece. It is magnificent and helpful and helps makes sense of my previous story.
First, here is the original story:
What follows is a simple story and is provoked by the fact that many of us are already well into fall activities and some of us have already been “leaning onto our own understanding” and not reflecting at all on the spiritual nature of discernment and decision making. The story is simple, the point is obvious… I’ll just tell the story.
BC Ferries, here on the west coast, regularly do a man overboard drill. They announce it well in advance so you know what is going to happen. Many on the ship crowd the deck and press their noses against the windows to see the drill unfold. There’s a great embellishment of this story which I won’t pick up on today but it is sufficient to say that when the alarm for man-overboard is sounded, a small boat is launched with two folk on board to go in search of the victim. What is interesting about this exercise is that the crew of the small boat don’t actually look for the man overboard. They engage in an exercise where they are guided and directed to the man overboard by the captain of the bridge of the main ferry. They deliberately do not seek to find the one that is overboard and they are entirely dependant on instructions from “the bridge”.
The point of this story in its application is already quite clear and I won’t belabour it except to mention one other thing. A captain of the boat not only guides a rescue launch with verbal commands. A captain also points the prow of the ship in the direction of the missing man overboard. So while I resist a full comment, I already know this fall, of the peril of trying to guide myself. I need to lean into my Lord’s understanding, I need to hear from him and I need to constantly follow into even the unknown places, the places where He is pointing.
What follows is Clark Gietz’s letter to me:
I appreciated your latest Connections/Reflections, referencing the rescue boat procedures for man overboard emergencies at BC Ferries. Obviously, you’ve been well informed! From my training and experience in several MOB drills, I’d like to add a couple of details which might add further perspective.
First, the crew in the rescue boat (normally deckhands ☺) likely will not be able to see anyone in the water from surface level, especially if there are any kind of waves. The bridge will already have marked a GPS point following the “man overboard” call, and will direct the rescue boat crew towards that point, if no one can be visually spotted in the water. So the boat crew is pretty much wholly dependent on directions from the bridge—which is the point you made so well.
The other point is that the ship will be directed towards the MOB for two reasons: first, to shorten the distance the rescue boat has to return if/when they do pick up a victim, and second, if the weather is rough, to position the ship to windward of the retrieval operation in order to provide as calm an area as possible for the rescue boat crew to effect a rescue and then to be retrieved into the ship. Of course, during the time the rescue boat crew is launched, the ship’s crew—catering, deck, and engineering—are all taking on their various MOB responsibilities, with things like passenger control, etc. But one of the people on board who’s most concerned is the OFA (Occupational First Aid) who will be looking after any victims brought back, with hypothermia and its associated cardio risks foremost in their mind.
There are some rich analogical details which you’ve brought out quite nicely.
Blessings!
Clark
Many thanks to all. Might we keep tracking and engaging a season of thankfulness.
Warmly,
In Christ,
Jeremy