 Greetings from our combined Canada West and Inland West family camp at Samish Island Retreat Centre! Lots of joy and smiles this week!
 This summer as our Mission Centre President team travels and attends events we will be sharing postcards of what we are up to. This week's postcard comes from Shannon:
Summer greetings! Last week in Vancouver for Sunday morning we took a walk by the Coquitlam river. It was beautiful and some furry friends joined us! Written by Kat Goheen Canada West Mission Centre Co-President  Shannon asked me last week if I could write a piece about being a parent of a SPEC camper. This is my child’s first SPEC experience, and by the time you read this, she will already be down in Independence along with our other seven CWM campers, getting to know the Northwest delegation and eating, relaxing, and finding their place on sports teams along with everyone. Not to mention getting their matching delegation T-shirts!
A lot of being a SPEC parent is meeting registration deadlines and keeping up with communications from the delegation. It’s checking in with recent campers about what our kids will really need down there for those ten days. Driving down to SEATAC for a 4:30 am prayer circle before the flight. It’s sharing her excitement about the electives offered and having too much good stuff to choose from! I am so excited that our best and brightest people offer ministry to our SPEC kids and will have carefully planned so much for them – from the theme of the week, to the music, to the testimonies shared. I was fortunate to go to SPEC through high school and mostly remember the sports and worship activities from back then. I had a real feeling of being part of something bigger than myself, and that the church cared for me. It was fun – and it meant a lot to me to see how fun church could be! For all of you who support campers going to SPEC and to our camps, I am truly grateful. Our Mission Centre provided significant financial support to each of our campers’ families to help with the fees, and that is thanks to your giving. Here in the CWM we’re always learning how to live in community and how to support one another in love. Having campers from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia journeying to SPEC will be leaven to our gatherings, bringing back enthusiasm, stories, and concrete ideas for how we can share together as Community of Christ – different horizons for how we can view ourselves and how we can reach out in mission. Let’s embrace these stories and show our kiddos that they are also part of something bigger than themselves here, and that they are so deeply cared for by God and by us. Written by Kat Goheen Canada West Mission Centre Co-President  Several months ago, I shared with you my take on the roots of spiritual discernment here in this space. Since that time, I’ve continued to learn and explore group discernment, and I have another offering to share, this time about the middle of the discernment process. My course has shown me a wonderful application of this image that Steve Veazey has compiled of six lenses for listening to God, seeing it as a framework for gathering data. These six lenses seek feedback from various perspectives based on their very nature, realizing that all of them are necessary and valuable. What does scripture have to say about our situation? Continuing revelation? When it’s hard to find data for one of them, it can signal a blind spot. I call this talk on data-gathering, “The Messy Middle” because that’s what it feels like to me. Unlike decision-making, in discernment we don’t rush to conclusions but instead slow down to listen to the voices around us and the still, small voice of God. This often feels uncomfortable to me, and despite my temptation to grab onto the first shiny possibility, I sit and listen and stay open as much as I can in the middle…of it all.
Your congregation may be involved in discernment right now. It feels to me that our Mission Centre is also in discernment, feeling growing pains which prompt us to search for the right question for this moment. Growing in me is my faith in the process and my trust that a committed discernment process will lead to right action. Let us build the habit of a discerning posture and let us be aware of our resistance to change! As a prophetic people, we are called. |
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