by Brett Thorton, Summer 2005
Brett is the youth pastor at Willow Creek Ministries in Nanton.
My name is Brett Thornton. I am originally from Louisiana, but I have been a resident of Canada since January 2005. I completed the spring 2005 semester at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary while serving as youth pastor for Willow Creek Ministries, a church plant in Nanton, Alberta. The church plant is a year and a half old as of August, and the ministry for the majority of that period has focused on a Thursday night youth meeting designed to reach out to unchurched, unsaved youth in the community. There have been over a dozen of these youth who have confessed faith in Christ over the first year of the Bible study. Since I arrived in January, I have been leading this Thursday outreach meeting as well as a second meeting on Sunday nights designed to disciple those youth who have begun a walk with Christ.
This summer I stayed in Nanton full time and worked with the youth. I was joined by the church planter who began Willow Creek Ministries, Keith Pickerill, as well as a group of 3 college students from Louisiana who served with us for the duration of the summer. We continued the 2 weekly youth Bible meetings. We also began the summer by joining the Tapestry Church Tuscany youth group for a youth retreat weekend in Crowsnest Pass. Beside these youth ministries and many hours of just hanging out with the youth playing card games, playing sports, watching movies, etc. Willow Creek Ministries also ministered to adults and children of the area. We had a weekly summer kids club ministry. We began a weekly “cowboy church” service for adults that will carry on into the fall.
Willow Creek Ministries also put on a second annual rodeo school designed as an evangelistic outreach tool. Young men and women from all over the area as well as different parts of Alberta an other provinces were taught different rodeo skills, anywhere from bull riding to barrel racing, while hearing each day a gospel presentation by someone from the rodeo circuit or cowboy church ministry.
The most recurring theme this summer in terms of what God was teaching me involved my perspective of the youth group. When the church plant work began, Keith had in mind to begin the work with the adults. The youth meeting was almost a “Plan B” when the adult study did not gain much interest. But God has richly blessed the youth ministry over the past year and a half. The meeting attendance grew from 4 to now averaging 15-20. And as has already been noted, there have been many youth with no previous church background that have confessed faith in Christ. But always in our minds was the idea that the youth would be part of a church that would include also adults.
More and more this summer we have seen that these youth are not just a potential part of a church, and not just the church of the future, but they are the church now. We have a group of young men and women who have heard and responded to God’s call and together are continuing to hear His call to leave their old lives behind and walk in His light. They gather together to pray to Him, to worship Him, to fellowship together in Him, to proclaim what He means to them, to hear Him speak to them, and to encourage each other in their walk with Him. They are the church now.
So now we are in the process of letting God teach us what it means for these youth to be the church and to impart that vision to them. Please continue to pray for the young church at Willow Creek Ministries in Nanton.
Brett
