Jennifer McWilliams

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:11–13 “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many… Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:12–14,27 Imagine you’re at a game of your favorite team. I am not very into sports, so I will picture a Moncton Wildcats game (which is hockey for those who don’t know). They’re taking on their greatest rivals and the crowd is going nuts. As

In only 8 more days it will be March! Spring will be near, the clocks will go ahead bringing us more daylight in the evenings, and everyone will start to feel better about life. But now? Now it’s February. For years February has been a bad month for me. It is for a lot of people. The dragging-on of winter storms, frigid temps, and darkness brings many of us into perpetual gloom. I used to psych myself up that “this year will be different! I will somehow avoid the winter blues and have an awesome February!” I’m still waiting for that to happen. A couple of years ago I decided that, instead of going into another February in denial, I was going to own it for what it was. And it has made all the difference. I wanted to pass on what I’ve learned about conquering this stupid month, in the hopes that it will be helpful. 1) Acknowledge it for what it is. February is dumb. It’s dark and it’s cold and it sucks. Tons of people deal with “Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)” during this time.

I wrote this from a Pastor’s perspective, but hopefully this is helpful to anyone seeking to get more productive! As I creep through my 5th year of pastoral ministry, I continue to have a fascination with time and how we all choose to use it. Why is it that some people can thrive in their career, develop meaningful hobbies, exercise regularly, eat healthy, and still have time for their family, and other people drown in 9–5 monotony, looking back 10 years from now and realizing they’re no further along in life than they were then? We are all given the same amount of time each day. What we choose to do with it varies wildly. I’ve been trying to better use the time I’ve been given to accomplish more, so I can look back 10 years from now and see that I have come a long way, in both my personal life and in my ministry life. As I began writing this, I realized I have way too many resources/ideas on time management for this to be one blog post! So here is part one of how to get more pro

A discussion that sometimes crops up in youth ministry circles are questions around how to get youth involved in church. How do we make them feel included and that they matter? I’ve heard of Youth Sundays, Youth bands, and the like. Those are not bad things necessarily… But sometimes I think we over complicate things. Why do youth need a special group or weekend in order to serve? Why can’t they just… serve? To the left is a (really bad iPad) picture of our sound booth on Saturday night. Our booth requires 3 people to operate, generally. Here we have our lights guy (10 years old), our sound tech (16 years old), and hidden behind the screens is our projection person (12 years old). On Sunday morning we had an 11 year old on bass at one site, and a 15 year old on keys at another site. Of our 20 children’s volunteers, 1 was a high schooler, 3 were middle schoolers, and 2 were grade 5 kids. I am sure kids and youth were also a part of our hospitality teams (I don’t have that in front o