Rev. Dr. Kevin Livingston is associate professor of pastoral ministry at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. He’s ministered at churches in British Columbia and Ontario, moderated the Presbytery of East Toronto, and served nationally on the Maclean Estate Committee, the Special Committee on Sexual Orientation and the E.H. Johnson Memorial Fund committee. He serves on the board of governors of Presbyterian College, Montreal, and chairs the board of trustees of the Latin American Mission Canada. And he’s the author of A Missiology of the Road: Early Perspectives in David Bosch’s Theology of Mission and Evangelism.
The Record sent him a few questions to help you get to know him a little better.
Tell me about yourself. How would you describe your faith journey?
The Latin American theologian Orlando Costas speaks about three distinct “conversions” — to Christ, to the church and to the world — and that is how I would describe my Christian pilgrimage.
I was raised in a loving family and a small, supportive congregation that nurtured me in the Christian faith. Going away to university, I was fascinated with politics and planned to become a lawyer. I realized I needed more than the inherited faith of my parents; I needed to wrestle with the larger moral and spiritual questions and make the faith my own. I began looking for a church to attend, and found a caring extended family at the First Presbyterian Church of Seattle, a vital congregation in the heart of the city with an effective ministry to university students. At the same time I became involved with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. These influences, along with a broadening intellectual curiosity brought on by courses in history and philosophy, all served to deepen my faith.
In 1976, First Presbyterian, Seattle sent 19 students (including me) to Urbana, the triennial Inter-Varsity Missionary Conference. It was a profoundly life-shaping experience for me. Under the daily Bible teaching of John Stott, I felt called to preach the gospel. I wanted to have the same kind of impact on other peoples’ lives that John Stott had on mine. Facing graduation, I naturally thought about going to seminary. But a pastor friend counseled me to spend a year testing my “call to ministry” before I spent three more years in study. This was wise advice!
Following graduation from Seattle University in 1978, I spent 15 months as a full-time missionary with the Latin America Mission. I lived in Mexico City and Tegucigalpa, Honduras, conducting evangelistic Bible studies with students and serving in Presbyterian, Christian Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, Disciples of Christ and Pentecostal churches. Living and working in Latin America broadened my understanding of the global church in all its ecumenical diversity. It also served to awaken my conscience to the plight of the poor and oppressed, particularly in the urban barrios where we worked. My later doctoral studies in Scotland, focusing on the church struggle against apartheid in South Africa, also stretched my horizons.
I was originally ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), but in 1988 I immigrated to Canada. Now, after 22 years of service in three Presbyterian congregations in British Columbia and Ontario and the last five years teaching at Tyndale Seminary, I see how these varied experiences have been a working out of my commitment to Christ, to his church and to the world God loves.
What would you say is your passion?
Two answers come to mind — being a pastor and preaching the gospel.
I have loved being a pastor. I find a deep part of my identity in the act of living “in-depth” with a particular community of God’s people, sharing in the ups and downs of life together and being given the privilege to see God at work in the most unlikely places and among the most unlikely candidates! I resonate with Presbyterian pastor Eugene Peterson’s words: “[Being a pastor is] a difficult life because it’s a demanding life. But the rewards are enormous — the rewards of being on the front line of seeing the gospel worked out in people’s lives. I remain convinced that if you are called to it, being a pastor is the best life there is. But any life can be the best life if you’re called to it.”
I also love preaching. As Darrell Johnson puts it, God has chosen to use preaching the good news of Jesus Christ — which is ultimately what any biblical text is about — as a means of participating in God’s work of transforming the world. I find that to be an amazing privilege and a lofty responsibility. So every time I preach, I try to invite people on a journey with me into a particular text of the Bible and then faithfully try to explore, explain and apply what God is saying to us within our own cultural and congregational contexts. While I am under no illusion that every sermon I preach hits the mark, I find great comfort in claiming God’s promise that “my word… will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).
What concerns you most?
I am concerned about the numerical decline of our Presbyterian Church in Canada in terms of a shrinking membership and the closure of churches. But I am even more concerned by what seems to be a loss of hope, rooted in a decline of confidence in the gospel as God’s power to change lives, churches and whole societies. Growing congregations and denominations across the world today are those who stand firm in their conviction regarding the nature and power of the gospel, and they feel compelled to share that good news with others. The gospel, as Peter’s speech in Acts 10 make clear, centres on the good news of the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ. As Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller has put it:
“The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us.”
Churches that waver on this point will have no real, long-lasting missionary passion because they will have no life-changing message. I have a deep concern for the future of the mainline Protestant churches because of our confusion on this point.
Bishop Leslie Newbigin, in his books Foolishness to the Greeks and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, reminds us forcefully that our faith rests not on some abstract ethical principle or eternally valid proposition, but in the historical life, death, and resurrection of one particular man. The event of Jesus Christ is of ultimate significance for all humankind, and provides the clue to the meaning and direction of human history. In Jesus Christ, we discover God’s best and final word to us. He reveals the heart of God’s character to us. He is the one Mediator through whom we can know and love and serve the eternal God. What seems like foolishness to many of our Canadian neighbours must be maintained and proclaimed with humility but with deep conviction in our increasingly pluralistic society.
What gives you the most hope?
Let me answer that question in three ways.
In the absolute sense, I feel hope because God is in control! As we confess in Living Faith, “the living God is Lord… and all events in this world are under the sovereign care of the eternal God” (2.1.1).
At the congregational level, I see many vital examples of hope-filled Christian service and witness that encourage me deeply, including:
- An English as second language program serving new immigrants and international students.
- An older Christian couple mentoring a pair of newlyweds about life and marriage.
- A hot meal and food bank ministry serving at-risk teens and young adults in Jesus’ name.
- Community-friendly grief and divorce recovery support groups.
- A workshop to build confidence and competence in sharing the gospel of Christ with our neighbours.
- A church’s gym is opened weekly for a time of pick-up basketball, with the goals of building relationships with local high school students and exploring who Jesus is in a welcoming and safe environment.
- An attempt by a presbytery to plant a new congregation in a growing neighbourhood.
At the national level, hope is harder to come by because of declining membership and financial resources. Living close to our national church offices, I can attest that our national staff work extremely diligently to serve our PCC family, but we are encumbered with structures and procedures that seem ineffective and outdated. But what gives me hope is my sense that almost all of us seem open to radical change in the way we do ministry. We finally realize that the old “Christendom” way of doing things is no longer working. I am hopeful that the Holy Spirit may yet breathe fresh life into our lives and congregations, which, in the end, is the only hope worthy of being called Christian.
Some moderators in the past have chosen a particular theme or idea to focus on during the year. Have you thought about choosing a theme? If so, what might it be?
I would love to foster a conversation about what it would look like for the Presbyterian Church in Canada to go missional, pondering our identity and calling as God’s sent people into the world, and then rethinking our core values and ministries in light of that vocation.
How can we become churches that genuinely serve and participate in God’s redemptive mission to the world, in order to touch and transform our culture the way St. Francis or John Calvin or the Wesley brothers impacted the cultures of their own day? That is a question worth giving time to!
