TREVOR'S WRITING

If you know me, or have followed my blog, or been a member of the youth group or even attended at WEFC, you will have known that God has been changing my outlook on life for at least the last four years. It has been an incredible journey where my eyes have been opened to a lot of suffering and pain in this world. Not only have my eyes been opened to this, but my heart has been as well and then along with that, my hands and feet feel the need to get involved. It has taken me a long time to really figure out what it is that my hands and feet should do, and there were many times that I was incredibly frustrated with that, and even wondered if I really believed all the things that I said I did. I wondered if I truly did care for people in need, or if I just liked the idea of being the person who cared about "social justice," but didn't really do anything about it. Just over two years ago I took a group of youth and leaders to Hermosillo, Mexico. It was an in...

We have had a lot of babysitters, and we have had a lot of really good ones...but the situation that occured during our night out at a Grey Cup party was one that made us realize that we (and especially our kids) may have experienced the greatest babysitting feat of our lives! We got a call from our kids around 8:30 to say that they loved us and to say good night. "We saw a rat!" says Owen (5). "You mean a mouse," Nicky says. We have had a mouse in "Moby" lately and so Owen was obviously confused. We stayed at the party a while longer and got home at 10:30 or so. Jocelyn (the aforementioned "Best Babysitter EVER!!") greets us at the door and says "...I was able to trap the rat." I was convinced that she was wrong and that I would find a mouse. We went to where she had stood up some books, moved some boxes and a shelf and formed them into a closed semicircle by the wall...we looked under the desk to see a long tailed, 6 inch long, bulgy ...

Today is 4 1/2 months since our house fire. Let me tell you that this has been a real up and down ride. In a lot of ways the first six weeks after the fire were the easiest in terms of being emotionally/mentally/spiritually strong (below I am showing the state of mind we were in during those six weeks - it is a blog entry I wrote that never got published). I also preached a sermon on those six weeks on August 29th which listen to here...on our church podcast . Don't get me wrong those times were hard as we moved from my parents house to one hotel room then another, to a borrowed house, to another hotel, and another hotel, and finally to a mobile home. Everything was so uncertain, but I felt strong and confident. The second six weeks were probably the most difficult where I struggled to keep my head above water, where things got very dark for me emotionally and spiritually. The last six weeks have been a slow and arduous climb out of that dark place. Let me just say that I don't...

7 days ago would have found Nicky, myself, Ben, Hannah and Owen hardly able to comprehend how good we felt we had it. That was the day we took possession of our home. It was very exciting for us because it was a "country home" that we couldn't wait to have people come and enjoy with us. As I write this it is now 24 hours from the time when I noticed a sound in the attached garage, going to investigate I noticed smoke coming in under the door to the garage, as I got closer I could hear the roar of fire. I quickly yelled to Nicky that we needed to get the kids and call 911, "THERE'S A FIRE!" After we woke the kids and herded them to the door we emerged from the front of the house to see the flames pouring from the front of the garage 20 feet long and 30 feet high, completely engulfing the car in parked in front of it. We called 911 as we expected to watch the whole house burn. Neighbours came over and we were introduced to them for the first time as they i...

I am currently wearing what Nicky lovingly refers to as my panty hose, or support hose. A few months ago I was at my Dr. and she noticed my varicose veins on my leg. I told her I have had them for years. She decided to refer me to a specialist. When I went to see this specialist he prescribed support stocking for my left leg. I am starting to develop ulcers on my leg and because I am young I am getting away with it, but I won’t forever. I am supposed to wear them every day now. On my way home I stopped in the place that he recommended for me, it was a prosthetics and orthotics store. I walked in and immediately felt out of place, there were a couple old ladies getting walkers fixed, there were a bunch of old man scooter’s lined up and a whole bunch of other things that I identify with old age...canes, walkers, blue hair and of course...support hose. I got fitted for my hose and she told me that I would need to get a custom-made one. For the records she asked me how old I was,...

I am a Christian, I love Jesus deeply, and according to my church I believe all the right things. Sometimes I wonder though, if what I say and what I do are connected. Sure, I am a Pastor and I have made some choices to do what I think Jesus would want me to do, but does my faith and my action truly interact? I read this morning in Frost and Hirsch's book that the medium is the message and as that applies to the Christian life, our actions are the message. Do my actions in my everyday existence communicate what Jesus means to me? I think all to often the answer is no...instead of communicating what Jesus means to me, my actions all too often communicate that I am selfish. Do you want to be with the kids right now? No, I'd rather watch TV. Do you care about the poor? No, I really want a new iPhone (or laptop, or car, or house, or kitchen, or book, etc.). Do you care about people in your community that are hurting? No, I don't take time to be with them, I have too many other ...

I often look at passion as a negative thing. I hear things like this...I got in an argument and I got passionate and it got me in trouble...I got caught in a moment of passion, and now she's pregnant, we didn't mean for that to happen...I better be quiet now because or my passion is going to get me in trouble. What if we looked at passion differently? What if we noticed that the problem was not so much our passion, but our direction. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch write about this in their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (this book is excellent if you love dreaming about the church, and what it could be - I will probably post more about it over the next while), they say that, "Passion is only evil when it remains in the directionless state, when it refuses to be subject to holy direction, when it will not accept the direction that leads toward God." This is a beautiful picture of passion. The Church is often kn...

I am a Christian...I believe in a dude named Jesus and I try to live my life like him...I am also a Pastor, which basically to me means that I get paid to...believe in a dude named Jesus and try to live my life like him. I am increasingly uncomfortable with that idea. I often wonder if it cheapens my christianity, or if it makes who I am unauthentic. I remember when I volunteered to work with young people I would often say things like this to the young people, "I just believe in this so much, I really love you guys, I don't get paid to be here, I do it because I truly care." I can't say that any more. I do believe that I do it because I love it, and I can't imagine doing anything else. I guess I just want to be authentic in my beliefs and in sacrificing for those beliefs...I am not sure how I do that in the situation I am in.

There was a story that caught my attention a little while back in my city. At first I was happy about the story because it isn't often that homeless people are painted in a positive light. Here is an excerpt from the story: Faron Hall, 44, was given a medal of valour by Mayor Sam Katz at a ceremony not far from the riverbank where Hall often sleeps. Hall saw a boy fall into the river last weekend and dove into the chilly, fast-moving water to pull him ashore. Now the man who has been homeless for about seven years has become the talk of the town. I was excited to see that people would see that homeless people have heart, courage and respect for their fellow man. However, when I saw the same thing on the national news a few days later, as the story seemed to take off around the country I began to wonder...is it really that surprising to us? Is it so shocking that people who live on the street care about people? In the time I have spent around homeless people that is the thing t...

We are renovating our upstairs bathroom...so I am going to jackhammer in my basement...makes sense to me. It definitely is something I don't get to do everyday:

I work at a church, I have attended a church my whole life and if I were completely honest I love church (probably a bit of a love/hate). I am scheduled to preach on March 29th and I was thinking about speaking about the church. However, I am not sure that I completely understand what church was intended to be, in fact, I think there are many times when I think that I have completely misunderstood what church is supposed to be about. Sometimes church seems to be misunderstood, sometimes people within the church do not represent it well, sometimes the way it is set up just does not work, sometimes the church does not seem to be at all close to what it should be... I have some thoughts on these questions, but I am more interested in yours. ...but what is church supposed be? What is it that church is supposed to accomplish? What is it that church is doing well? What is it that church is not doing well? Why is it that church is misunderstood? What can be changed about the way it is set u...

Seeing people is at the same time simple and difficult. I remember when I preached a sermon about 1 1/2 years ago. I spoke on the story of the good samaritan and talked about how we should learn from the people we normally look down on (those on the margins - for me...the homeless). I remember that someone talked to me afterward and challenged me on it. He said he knows a lot of people in the inner-city who are not good people at all, in fact they do a lot of evil things. What are we supposed to learn from them? At the time I said that the evil things are not what we are to learn from them, but that we can find some good. I have always felt uneasy about that conversation because I did not think I answered well. At the end of Tim Huff's book, Bent Hope, Steve Bell writes a Benediction. In it he says that Tim has an innate ablility to really see people. Not their problems and tragedies, not their lies, not the external decoys, but truly see who they are and that they are a p...

3 years ago Ben received a prize from his preschool teacher. It was a small bag full of a number of little things. There were little toys and trinkets, but the thing that immediately caught my attention was an unopened pack of Score Football Cards from 1991. I couldn't figure out why the pre-school teacher would be giving these unopened packages of football cards away. I cracked them open to see what was inside, it was a collection mainly of unknown (to me) football players. There was one that caught my attention, it was a Brett Favre rookie card. One of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game! I couldn't believe it. Ben took the other cards and played with them and eventually they were all worn out and in the garbage. But I took Brett Favre and placed him on my bedside table thinking I might have my children's college fund right there. Brett sat there and sat there, through the time I spilled a cup of water all over my bedside table, shoved under whatever I happ...

I have been thinking quite a lot about homelessness (over the last two years especially) and have come to all kinds of conclusions about myself and the things that I (and the church) need to do in order to help people who are in that situation. I have been involved in a few organizations who work with homeless people and met with many people to discuss what I/we should be doing to help. I finally discovered something very important that I can do right now. I am reading t his book called Bent Hope which is a really interesting read. The author is a Youth Worker who works with young people who live on the streets in Toronto. He walks the streets and hangs out with them and helps when he can. He basically just tells the stories of his encounters with people and talks a little bit about what he has learned from them. I am loving it! So, I know what I am supposed to do to help homelessness. In his book, pretty much everyone he encounters he mentions how they come from a family situa...

I got Jesus for President for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw really have inspired me to think more creatively when it comes to politics. It was very interesting to read it during the inauguration of Barack Obama and seeing the hope that people put in him. It would seem that a lot of people really look to Obama as a savior of some sort. Of course there are many others who look at him as something much different than a savior as well. This book argues that Christians should not put their hope in any sort of politician or political system but that Jesus really is the only Savior that we can truly put our hope in. Living like Jesus is the way we are political. Christian's started out as being anti-empire when Rome would have nothing to do with them. Everyone was forced to say "Caesar is lord," but this was the time that Christians took their lives into their hands and instead said, "Jesus is Lord!" I think that so ma...

After shaving you go to wipe shaving cream from your hair near the temples and it doesn't come off, because it is grey hair You remember life before computers The computers you first used were measured in kilobytes (Commodore Vic 20) You used to actually "dial" the phone You played Pong when it first came out You love 80s music You used to be able to beat teenagers at most sports, and now you have to cheat to do it You know you are not cool...and you really don't care (in fact you embrace your lack of coolness with bad jokes and purposefully wearing "bad clothes") 5 years seems like a short period of time Your sports heroes who you are sure just came into the league are retiring You are turning 35 today

I have been a youth pastor at Winnipeg Evangelical Free Church now for nearly 5 years.  This means a few things, but one of the things it means to me is that the people who were in Grade 7 (the grade our churches youth ministry starts at) when I came to this Church are now in Grade 12, the poor kids have only had me as a youth pastor.  Apart from feeling sorry for them, I also have a sense of "fatherly(ish?)" pride in who they are as people.   There are ups and downs in being a youth pastor, the ups come when I get to see young people making good choices in their life, the downs come when I see them making choices that have long-lasting negative impacts on their lives.  There are many of each of these. A couple weeks ago was a big up...the youth were in charge of the whole service at our church.  This meant that they ran everything from ushering, to speaking, to singing, to sound and tech stuff.  I know that these young people are talented passionate people, but it really gav...

So I got up yesterday morning and stepped out into the cold. I thought to myself, "boy, it's really cold out here today." I hop in the car and drive to church. My route takes me past the Royal Canadian Mint where they have a screen that shows videos and the time and temperature. I glance at the screen just as the temperature flashes onto the screen. The screen tells me that it is -572 degrees celsius in Winnipeg...I began to be very thankful that my car had started.

This title is a paraphrase of the great theologian and social commentator, former basketball player Chris Webber (I can't remember the exact line but this is pretty close), in the pre-game show of an NBA game today. So true Chris! We often remember (and we should) the stellar contributions to society that people like Martin Luther King have given us.  However, it is so true that a man like Martin Luther King Jr. only exists because of the "significance" of other people, the people that he rightly recognizes in his own immortal "dream" speech: I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of  you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the  veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redem...

I was thinking back a bit on my life...there are many things that I regret, many things I wish would change.  I think about deep things, really crucial things to the survival of my family and my own well-being.  Things like, growing a beard, or driving fast, or watching football, or eating more than I should.   You see I used to grow a beard more or less by accident.  I never shaved more than once a week, and I can pretty much grow a beard in that amount of time.  So, sometimes I would shave, and sometimes I would trim.  Now I shave probably on average about 2-3 times per week, and try to appear somewhat put together on occasion.  I used to drive fast and win any race I was having at any cost (sometimes the cost was quite high).  The other day I was driving next to Nicky and I pulled out to pass her, got to 10 over the speed limit and slowed down because I was worried I might get a ticket.  I feel a bit Granny about that. I used to watch NFL Football on TV no matter what else was going...