Hello there!
I’m very pleased to be the latest addition to the Ministry Team at Central Okanagan United Church. My partner, Laurel, and I moved to Kelowna from Duncan BC, and are early in our discernment of the gifts offered by church and community. We have five children between us, three on Vancouver Island (one with a family of her own) and two in the lower mainland. All are grown and flown, although keeping in close contact with them is an important part of our lives.
My path to ministry has been somewhat convoluted. Baptised in the United Church, I started out life in Kitimat BC, spent my teen years in Flin Flon Manitoba where I began working in industry. Moving to Kamloops where I worked in mining and smelting, I shifted careers when a move to Castlegar took me into the pulp mill. Through it all I was engaged in Union and social movements, community organizing and political campaigning. I worked for provincial cabinet ministers before taking up education for ministry as a diaconal minister with the United Church of Canada.
Graduating in 2008, I was appointed to a call in the West Kootenay before moving to the Island. A trained ‘Intentional Interim Minister’, I’ve served in pastoral ministry, as chair of Kootenay Presbytery and as President of BC Conference. My appointment as an Ecumenical Accompanier (Human Rights Observer) for the World Council of Churches in Bethlehem in 2020 is seminal to my experience and my analysis.
Diaconal ministers come out of the deaconess stream of church ministry and are charged particularly with service, education and pastoral care. We are called to seek out voices that are unheard or overlooked, marginalized or deliberately discounted in church and community. We are actively engaged in the repair of creation, working through an analysis of justice and right relationship. We are taught not to be the voice, but to help bring attention to the voices of the relations. It’s a fine line to walk and I’m not sure I’m always on the right side of it.
Called to be ‘Community Minister’, I’ve been spending my time in ministry here learning how ministry in the community was carried out by our three founding congregations, while integrating with a gifted team of ministers, musicians, creative system navigators and dedicated members of our newly formed congregation. I’m learning about the Central Okanagan and its particular way of experiencing the opportunities and gifts presented to all of us in this time and place.
In general I’d say we live in a time when many of us wish we were well past the post. We yearn to be post-colonial, post-capitalist, post-Christian Supremacist, post-disconnected and post-scarcity. We look to a time when we and our neighbours (human and non-human) can live in respectful relationship, cultivating communities built on narratives of abundance and sharing. Where the gifts each being brings are honoured, valued and treasured. Where exploitation ceases to be a primal lens on the world and motivation for human interaction. Where sharing, caring and the call to love focus exploration and activity across the wide and wonderful spectrum of being and relationship.
We seek places where the call to something greater than human ambition can be shared and deepened in companionship with others. I believe Central Okanagan United Church is discovering what it means to be one of those holy places. I look forward to continuing the journey, perhaps with the benefit of your experience, wisdom and yearning joined in the circle we share.
- Keith