Throughout the 2011 General Assembly, one word seemed to emerge over and over again: Vision. The Record asked the nominees for moderator of the 2012 assembly to introduce themselves and reflect on their visions for the future of the church…
It’s worship and relationships that Rev. Gordon Haynes says sustained him through his years in ministry, first in congregations and then as associate secretary of Canada Ministries from 1997 until the office amalgamated with the Vine to become Canadian Ministries last year. He currently heads up a research project exploring where the church is likely to be in 10 years, and how the Life and Mission Agency can best serve that church.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you come to follow a call to ministry? What has kept you going?
I was born and raised in Edmonton and went to First Church downtown. I was pretty young at the time so I don’t remember my baptism, but I was baptized at that church, and was there up until the time I went to college. Dr. E. J. White was my minister and I would say in a lot of ways that affected how I grew up at that church. My mother told me there were times when I talked about being a minister; I was very young at the time. I don’t remember that.
I graduated for high school and went to the University of Alberta, did one year of science (and probably thought about going into medicine) and found that my one arts course was more exciting than all my science courses put together. So I started saying, okay what am I going to do? I took one of those aptitude tests; they came along and said, well, you’re going to be a stage performer, a social studies teacher or a minister.
The seed had already been there, so I started to think more about becoming a minister. I talked to Dr. White and over a period came to the realization that it was something God was really calling me to. So I graduated from arts and went to Knox College [in Toronto].
I have found [ministry] incredibly fulfilling, which is not to say that there have not been rough times. Those are automatically there. But I have had friends, and people I love going back to my first church—that’s 38 years ago—and those relationships are still there. Relationships are an important part. And the worship, too.
When I left congregational ministry and came to national offices to do the work [in Canada Ministries], I found that while worship was still there and still powerful, the relationships were still very important. The only thing was my congregation, if you will, was spread right across the country. … It was marvelous. I’ve met an awful lot of incredible people, and very talented people. I always sound a little like a cheerleader because on one hand I see a church that, yes, is getting smaller all the time and losing influence in the world. But then I come along and see elders and laypeople and ministers who are incredibly involved and talented and blessed by God, and I get excited about some of the things they’re doing and that’s kept me going.
What would you say your passion is when it comes to the church and/or faith?
What sets me on fire is God’s mission in this country and in the world—and the things God’s mission does to us in terms of our relationships with each other.
My wife and I were at the dedication of the Ghanaian church in Montreal because I’d been involved from the beginning. The congregation asked me to come to a service the night before, on Saturday night, to preach and to be with them. I said that would be wonderful, and we went. The place was filled. Sometime during the service, I came to the startling realization that Linda and I were the only two white people in that whole place, in hundreds of people. And a second realization came in the same moment that it didn’t matter. I was enjoying the worship so much, and wonderful fellowship with these people, that it didn’t matter whether we were black or white or red or yellow or spoke another language. It didn’t matter! And that’s what I think is the mission of the church. God wants us to be working with people of all types, in all places, in all situations, to redeem this country and this world. And He’s given us that job, and that’s my passion for the church and for my own life.
Some moderators like to choose a particular theme or issue to focus on during their year in the position. Have you thought about something like that? If so, what, and why is this important to you?
I think there’s a lot of ministry going on in our church that’s unrecognized because it’s in small churches, or they’re rural or remote, or they’re doing ministry that really doesn’t get into the mainstream. I’ve spent 14 years of my life doing ministry and mission work in Canada. Obviously that’s going to be something I’d make a point of saying is important. So that’s where I’d be. You’d find me on a regular basis in rural and remote churches, small churches, ethnic churches of various kinds and different languages—the ones that don’t usually take part in a lot of what we do because they’re not part of the mainstream “normal” type of congregation (although I’m not sure there is a “normal”). I think those would be the ones I’d be wanting to focus on, within a larger context of mission.
I think there’s a false dichotomy that we’ve created for mission work for administrative reasons: we talk about mission work in Canada and mission work overseas. The work we’re doing with the Koreans, the Ghanaians, the Arab churches in Canada all comes from the fact that we’ve been involved in Korea, in Ghana, in Taiwan, in India. That’s why we have those churches now in Canada.
At the 2011 General Assembly, there was a lot of talk about vision and the future of the church. What would you say is your vision for the future?
We’ve almost created some clichés about the future, but some of these clichés are clichés because it’s the truth. There will still be a Presbyterian Church. We have churches that are strong and healthy. Surprising to those that are in presbyteries, we have presbyteries that are strong and healthy. They will be there. They will be less, obviously. Institutionally less. And I guess my vision of the church is one that becomes less obsessed with the institutional aspects. It doesn’t mean we don’t have church buildings. It doesn’t mean we don’t have structures and ministry and oversight. But we become less obsessed with survival and maintenance, and become a church that experiences God. I think that’s what people are looking for: a church where they experience the grace of God, the love of God, the righteousness of God. All the words we use—they experience them, they don’t just hear them. And the churches that are doing well are the ones that have already hit upon that. They aren’t all 500 or 600 person churches, either.
There’s a church in Manitoba, for example. When I first came to the job [of associate secretary with Canada Ministries] in 1997, I visited them because they were part of a two – point charge and the other charge had closed. They told me at that time: ‘well we look around and in five years we’re gonna be gone. So we’re not going to ask for money. We’re just going to live our lives as a good Christian community here in our area for five years.’ I said, ‘okay, that’s good.’ They got some support from presbytery. And, well, 15 years later someone told me they went and visited there. What did the congregation say? ‘Well, we’ve got only five more years to go so we’re just going to keep living.’ And for me, they’re a successful church. They haven’t had a minister for…15 years? Some people would say that isn’t successful; they’ve been “vacant.” But they’ve been running a food bank in their community, and a clothing store. They have services with other churches in their town. They have regular worship. They have Bible studies. They’re living their lives in a small community, and there are only 15 of them but I think they’re successful.
So when I say we have successful churches, I’m not just looking at big churches. There are churches across Canada that people go to and feel that God is present. And my vision of the church is that we become obsessed not with survival, but with hearing God’s word in our lives. And I know that sounds like a cliché again, but I think we all say it because we know it’s true.
What do you see as the greatest challenges facing the church today?
There are the obvious ones: we have the membership issue—as an institutional church we have to recognize that—and that raises other ones: financial, closing churches (and that’s a hard thing to do, and hard for the people who are there.) So all of those challenges are there. But I often look at them as symptoms.
I think the real challenge is, I’m not sure if we believe that we as Presbyterians have anything significant to say to the world around us. We aren’t really sure. We have our faith, but others seem to be doing it so much better than us. That’s the challenge: to rediscover that we have something very precious and significant to share. The significance isn’t in us, but is in what we’re sharing.
I hear ministers talk about the difficulty of writing a sermon. And when I was in a congregation I had those times, too, but more often by the time I got to church on Sunday morning the problem was cutting out things. About what the Bible had to say about the living Word of God—not just the scriptures but the living Word—and what it had to say about where we were living at the time. How could I take all of this and bring it into one?
The problem we’ve come to is we’ve come to the other end of that. We don’t have anything to say.
