Home News Gathering 2016 recap – Saturday decision making session

Gathering 2016 recap – Saturday decision making session

3 comments

Leading into a significant decision making session, Phil Collins (pastor at Willow Park – not the other one) delivered a message on the theme “compelled to reach Canada for Christ.” He called delegates to release evangelism in theie midst: love others, pray fervently and recognize that engagement is disruptive. “To reach Canada, my devotion needs to change,” he said.

Speaking from the story of the Good Samaritan, he encouraged delegates to identify with the person bloodied and beaten by the side of the road to access a humility and compassion about our own condition to respond to others.

Now, when we see a broken body on the road (Luke 10), he asked, “will we step over, or step up?”

The call to step up extended into the decision making session – a well engaged couple of hours where delegates approved motions about C2C and MB Mission collaboration, Legacy bylaws, and budgets.

The motion to approve a task force to give accountability and study collaboration on C2C and MB Mission passed with encouragements from the floor to consider a variety of collaborative partners, to seek diverse perspectives including gender balance, and to offer the opportunity for delegates to speak to the task force’s future recommendations.

The subsequent motion to approve C2C and MB Mission collaboration in the United States received vigorous discussion, including a defeated motion to amend. Delegates were concerned the inclusion of MB Mission represented a foregone conclusion to as-yet-collected results of the task force in the first motion. “The request from USMB originally came via MB Mission,” said moderator Harold Froese, explaining there are legal issues to C2C working in the United States that are eased by MB Missio’s existing legal standing in both countries.

Though motions to approve financial statements went quickly, delegates engaged the floor mics with comments on the 2017 budget. Discussion from the previous day’s finance breakout resulted in an amended motion which passed after more dialogue and expressions of concern about the state of the reserves and the shortfall of income over expenses.

“Based on conversation in last two days,” said CFO Jim Davidson, CCMBC is in a place of needing to cut or increase revenue from another source.”

“Here is a way to increase revenue: our churches investing in the conference. Paying our dues,” said Gerald Dyck. “We have amazing things happening. We need to go back to our churches and say God is at work – we need to invest.”

“The first part of leadership is to face reality,” said Willy Reimer. “God will lead us forward; step into that in faith.”

He closed the convention with a brief reflection from Matthew 28: “We are commissioned in the authority of Christ and promised the presence of Christ.”

View AGM documents here. 

Previous sessions




Gathering 2016 recap – Friday morning sermon

Gathering 2016 recap – breakout sessions

Gathering 2016 recap – Friday evening celebration service

Gathering 2016

You may also like

3 comments

Jacqueline Block July 9, 2016 - 18:31

As a lay person who would love to be at this conference but such a trip is not feasible I really appreciated this summarizes that you have posted Karla. Thanks!

Reply
Karla Braun July 9, 2016 - 20:53

Thanks, Jacqui! We’re here to serve.

Reply
Keith Reed July 11, 2016 - 15:32

Agreed. Thanks for your excellent work, Karla!

Reply

Leave a Reply to Jacqueline Block Cancel Reply