Ayeeeeeee! Haaaayahooooo! Blamn, blam, blamidy blamn blamn! Three blonds crested the hill, two running flat out as fast as their short legs could carry them; the third, game but somewhat slower, hollering blue murder with six – shooters blazing. This was not a scene from the latest rerun of a John Wayne cowboy movie on TV. It was from a recent scene viewed from my front deck. The three blonds were my wife and her two Labrador retrievers. The blazing six – shooters were my grandson’s cap pistols. The object of the armed charge was an armada of Canada geese that had sailed into port and clambered ashore for a lawn party.
The armada of geese gently lifted off the lawn and flapped twice before setting back down on the lake 20 metres off shore. They turned to glare and wag their stubby tails. Linda continued to berate them and shake her fists and pistols. Buddy and Addy, hunting dogs to the bitter end, were sweeping the lawn with their noses down looking for the latest droppings to delightfully lap up like candy. Why do Labs like to eat everything that stinks?
This scene is a relatively new thing in these parts. By new I don’t mean in the last year. Linda has been carrying on her war with the Canada geese every summer for the past 21 years that we have lived on the shores of Lac La Hache. But when I was a kid some 50 years ago, we seldom saw Canada geese anywhere. Sometimes, in the spring and in the fall, a few would straggle through on their way to wherever it was they wintered or nested. But large flocks that nested right on your doorstep, raised their young on your lawn and greased the dickens out of every beach and patch of lush grass in the area, living 10 months out of every 12 as full – time residents; no, not ever.
Authorities tell us that the resident Canada goose population has increased five times since 1975. According to a June 2008 story in the Vancouver Sun, the Canada goose now has the capacity to double its population every five years. That is a pretty greasy geesey proposition. Why the capacity for that kind of increase? There are many complex biological answers to that question but the short answer is that the Canada goose is a master at mastering change. As the landscape has been radically changed by an increasing human population filling in swamps and replacing them with grassed – in lawns, parks, airport runways, freeway meridians and even hay fields, the Canada goose has simply approached the change as an opportunity. Its swamps may have been filled in, but hey, ‘what’s wrong with a newly mown lawn?’
The Canada goose is truly a master at mastering change. Right now I feel like I need to sit at the feet of a goose and learn from it. In the Presbyterian Church in Canada and in the rural mission field that Linda and I serve, we are facing massive change. Not only is the rural human population and their social and economic circumstances changing all around us, but internally we are facing massive changes too. About a year ago Charles McNeil, one of my partners in mission and his spouse Shannon Finley, our church treasurer and business manager, left to answer a call to another rural ministry in the Lloydminster area of Alberta. Both Charles and Shannon had been, in various capacities and ways, a crucial part of our mission team for going on eight years.
Their leaving meant we have had to radically alter our mission strategy and practice in the Cariboo – Chilcotin region, which makes up about one – fifth of mainland British Columbia. Some house churches have had to be terminated, some worship times have had to be shifted, some pastoral work dramatically altered, some mission practices changed. In addition to the changes in the mission field, in the mission team, and in our mission practice, our mission support has dropped off considerably, especially from congregations and sacrificially for many years with their regular love gifts. This reality has meant we have not sought a replacement for Charles and Shannon. Hopefully this is a temporary thing but if financial changes continue, more changes will have to be made. And we are just a microcosm of the whole denomination. How do we as a whole church, how do we as a mission field, approach and deal with all of this change?
To be honest, as to the specifics, I am still not sure. The Canada goose on my doorstep seems to be telling me that attitude is key. Does change mean misfortune or does it mean opportunity?
As I contemplate this, I find my mind gently being turned by the Spirit to the apostle Paul. If ever there was a missionary who greeted change as opportunity, Paul was the master. At one point, facing some of the same kind of changes I have alluded to in this story, Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi: “But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again; though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:10 – 13)
If the changes we are facing in the Presbyterian Church and in its mission fields are going to truly be seen as opportunity, the reality that bracketed all of Paul’s life and work—”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”—will have to be our reality too. The rural mission fields that Linda and I and our partners Jon and Shannon work in are truly ‘ripe unto harvest,’ all 100,000 square kilometres of them in the Cariboo Chilcotin region, which though huge is only a pittance in size compared to Paul’s mission field of all of Asia Minor. And yet Paul’s ability to embrace change as opportunity—”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”—resulted in the gospel being preached throughout his huge mission field, and beyond it to the whole of the Roman Empire, which was eventually converted to Christianity. When the fields are the focus, and the sufficiency of Christ the experienced reality, the harvest is a forgone conclusion.
