Part of the MB Family - Conference Update

KGF sent three delegates to the annual convention of BC Mennonite Brethren Churches in Richmond April 30 - May 1st.  It was an encouraging weekend to hear and see what God is up to around the province.  Here is the report from Don, Harry & Jake. . . .

I would like to thank God for the opportunity of attending BCMB Conference this past weekend as well as Pastor Mike and the Board of affirming me to go. The experience was a very good one as I visited with people from all over the province. The theme was to lead BCMB to be a community of deep-spirited friends by having short term ministry partnerships develop into life-long friendships. The leaders spoke to the idea that community has to be intentional and whether we agree or disagree we must live in harmony to go out into the community. There was a sense that it was easy to talk differences instead of what we have in common and that is a huge Heart for GOD.

Great encouragement by MBMS International as God is at work not just at home here but all over the world. I was proud to see that our church was able to give our 5% contribution to the conference as they received a total of 1.4 million overall from all the churches and alot of great works were accomplished (Praise God ) but if all the churches of BC had contributed their 5% the Conference would have had over 4 million.

I was able to attend two of the workshops offered on Sat, one of which was the Pastoral Ministries Committee S.T.R.E.S.S.S. The committee examines and approve all new candidates in the member churches to ascertain their general suitability for such ministries and their doctrinal agreement with the MB Confession of Faith. The themes for S.T.R.E.S.S.S are Spiritual Health & Vitality,Theology as M.B., Relational Health, Ethics, Skills for Ministering, Self-awareness Depth,Spouse. The candidate must demonstrate all of this for long-term pastoral service. One suggestion brought forward was to train search committee's at local churches to ask the same in depth types of questions as the conference would ask,so as to reveal area's that need work before the individual is affirmed. The suggestion was that we need to partner with conference on this so the question for us is should we follow this up?

The second workshop was on camp ministries and the good news is that we are reaching kids and seeing great numbers of confessions of faith. Praise God. There are 5 major camps with 3 of them owning the property and the other two exploring to own their land in the near future. Again the talk was about partnership with fellow churches about working together on projects and use the same camps and programs instead of creating or duplicating.There is over 600 staff and volunteers in the camps around BC and we need to continue to pray for all of them and the children who come as these are God's children and future leaders.

I would like to thank Harry and Jake for their companionship and the sharing of their wisdom with me during this first conference for me.

God Bless

Don Embury, Harry Koop, Jake Schroeder