Dear Friends,
I read an article by Preston Manning which was, at first glance, an article about the economic anxiety attached to the price of oil, but was frankly a good lesson in dealing with anxiety in general.
I have some concern and anxieties I will share with you at the end of the letter, but let me tell you Preston’s perspective first.
I have a deep and profound respect for Preston Manning. I enjoy working with his wife on the A Rocha Canada Board, and I am always engaged by their stories of raising organic beef in Alberta. I deeply admire Preston’s resilience in all the caricature and anger that has been sent his way by both the left and the right. But, in the end, he is a man of incredible character, Christian conviction and vision, and is one of the few public intellectuals in Canada (I would include some others like Lorna Dueck and Bruce Clemenger in this,) who have a clear understanding of being a person in faith in public life.
I have rarely seen anyone take the abuse that Manning has received and still behave as a Christian, exhibiting fruits of the spirit. I also like that in so many issues, he is not predictable in terms of a political agenda.
One last observation (even though some of you have long stopped reading this because it is about Manning) is that the economic stability that Canada enjoys is to a great degree a function of the tough-minded public conscience and discipline of two people in the nineties: one was Manning, who created the political and public will to tackle deficits, and secondly Paul Martin, who ruthlessly exercised the downsizing of public expenditures (not all of which I agreed with).
If you think this is a political tirade, it is not. It is just an observation that the Anglican evangelical Charles Simeon once observed “the truth is rarely in the middle of two extremes, it is usually in both extremes…” So I give you Canadian political and economic life.
But I digress.
Preston wrote in his article in the Saturday Globe and Mail (yes, I read the National Post on the weekend as well) that he would often ask his father about the fluctuations in the price of oil. His father Ernest was a friend of my own dad’s, and along with my father and Marg Long (from Intervarsity), formed the three person Canadian Board of four seminaries Back to the Bible Hour. The senior Manning would tell the junior Manning that the best way to find a metaphor for fluctuating oil prices was to go to the nearest building with an elevator and watch the elevator go up and down, up and down… you get it. No need to expand.
There is an inevitability that prices will fluctuate, and economies and their people will bear the anxieties of that. Ernest and Preston were not being flip; they were simply describing what has happened since the oil patch took off in mid-twentieth century Alberta.
You can take the biblical, practical application and metaphor, and ongoing engagement of this, for yourself, friends, and congregation. I know each of us will have a perspective.
Manning went on to write about the challenges of facing a storm. He used the analogies of cattle and bison…. very effective. Manning commented that cattle will run from the storm and to some extent, will experience the storm for a greater length of time. The good old plains bison (maybe this is where they got their massive shoulders and mane…. I know mane isn’t the right word, I am sure some dear soul will let me know what the word is)… stands and faces the storm. They will experience the intensity of the storm and the more immediate, but short term trauma, but facing it means that the storm will soon pass.
I leave that application, biblical and practical also, in your capable hands.
I find both these illustrations to be helpful to me personally, but I am also very grateful to the faithfulness of God in so many areas in our world, including the life of the CBWC and my own personal circumstances. Being thankful and grateful doesn’t necessarily mean that I am devoid of temporary concerns.
We have been deeply grateful to God in the last three years in extra giving from churches out of their end of year surpluses. We have also been very excited that this year, once again, churches have contributed the highest amount they have contributed in twenty years. Our particular challenge now is to encourage people to sign up for monthly giving. It is something I am committed to, and it is something that gives us dependable revenue when other sources have faltered.
If you are able to contribute to our year end (which is always extended as churches figure out where they are financially), or most especially if you are able to begin to contribute any amount whatsoever on a monthly basis, I would be deeply grateful. I ask you to consider these two possibilities, and would point out that we rarely speak of money in this particular calling and do not plan to do so regularly in the future.
Many thanks.
God be with you.
Warmly,
In Christ,
Jeremy Bell