Pastor Brady - April, 2023

Hey! Brady here. It’s probably about time I write one of these– here’s “What’s Going On” with me.

Preaching
I am extremely thankful for all of the encouragement that I constantly receive from you all telling me how much you enjoy and appreciate my preaching and are encouraged or challenged by it. I now have quite an extensive break on that front as I won’t be preaching again until July. This is for a few reasons.

For starters, my school workload is going to pick up over the next little while as my semester starts to wrap up and eventually finish by the end of May. Preaching and sermon prep are easily some of my favourite work, but it will be nice for me to have the extra time and mental space away from those tasks to finish my first year at seminary strong. 

Secondly, Erick and I have been talking for a while about me doing a sermon series and therefore preaching a few weeks in a row. For the first four weeks in July I will be preaching a series on the book of Jonah. As much as I’ll miss preaching from April-June, I’ll quickly have my fill come July!

Young Adults
It’s been great to see so many of the young adults from Mountainview at our monthly gathering! Some have come once, some have come nearly every time! I am extremely grateful for both! I am continually trying to find the best ways to help make sure that the spiritual needs and wants of young Christians are met through what Mountainview has to offer– on Sundays and throughout the rest of the week.

There is an upcoming young adults panel and lunch conversation happening at Mountainview on Saturday, May 6th! This event is being put on by Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, but we are so excited to host. The goal of this event is to talk about young adults ministry– what CRCs are doing right and what they’re doing wrong. While this event is largely targeted to young adults, the invitation is open to anyone who is interested in coming.

To all of our young adults; single, married, studying, working, wherever you’re at in life; you are such an important part of this church. It’s a blessing for me to be able to worship God with you and serve you in the ways that I can.

Youth
Our weekly Youth Group has been a lot of fun, to say the least! We are studying the New City Catechism using discussion material that I wrote. Outside of that faith instruction element, we play games at the church; we have other life chats; sometimes we have larger fun events, like archery tag; we do service events, like “Custodian’s Day Off”; and sometimes we split into guys and girls groups for specific activities and discussions.

The All Ontario Youth Convention
Recently it was announced that AOYC 2023 is cancelled. The AOYC Planning Team felt they had to make this decision because they had “received numerous letters and inquiries about the main speaker for AOYC 2023, Kevin Makins, and his beliefs around sexuality and marriage.” You can find their open letter containing this quote, and more background on the whole situation here: https://www.allontario.com/2023-open-letter
There is one quote in particular that I want to address. The open letter addresses the fact that the AOYC Planning Team was simply unaware of how tense the conversation around sexuality and marriage is within some congregations and they feel they are not prepared to lead in the middle of such a divided climate. I think the line that summarizes their frustration and disappointment at having to cancel AOYC 2023 is this:

“Perhaps it’s impossible to lead an event like the AOYC given the current fractured landscape of the CRC.”

I think I disagree. I don’t think it’s impossible– at least I don’t think it should be. That being said, I also think if I was in their shoes I would have made the same decision they did. I wish more than anything that AOYC 2023 wasn’t cancelled. I am so disappointed and frustrated that this is the result of tension and division in the church around sexuality and marriage. Our youth have to go another year without this amazing event. They missed out on it so much because of COVID and now they are robbed again.

I hope that the cancellation of AOYC 2023 will continue to push us to have difficult conversations with each other and find ways to hang on. We have to find ways to let ministry still happen even in the midst of a tense and divided church climate. We can’t let our differences divide us. We must strive to hear each other and even learn to disagree in healthy ways that don't leave other people feeling hurt and less than.

I hope to be able to still plan something big, fun, and spiritually encouraging for youth to do the last weekend of May, although I’m not sure what that will look like yet. I want to promote unity and not division. Even in the middle of tension and division, let’s get together.

I will need help putting something together. I would love to put together a small team of people to make something like this happen. Please reach out to me if you are interested in playing a role in any way. 

Please continue to pray for me and with me, for my family, my seminary studies, and ministry at Mountainview and in the community.

Pastor Brady