Interview with Pastor Kevin Coghill of Royal City Mission
Summary:
In this episode, Pastor Kevin Coghill shares the story of Royal City Mission in Guelph, Ontario, a church reimagined as a mission to prioritize community service over conventional Sunday worship. Coghill explains how the mission operates seven days a week, providing meals and support for the city’s most vulnerable, guided by values of relationship, justice, and shared beauty. Leadership at Royal City Mission is collaborative and includes voices often overlooked, creating a welcoming space for those who feel marginalized. Despite challenges and occasional community pushback, Coghill emphasizes a posture of openness, where "saying yes" to needs fosters deep connection and understanding.
Quotables:
Both my grandfathers were pastors, so I spent a lot of time in the church. And the other part of that was my grandfather, on my mom's side, was also mentally ill, and he was removed from the pastor because he was mentally ill. And so that person also was my, probably my biggest hero in faith. So I came to this with a different set of eyes, where looking at someone that struggles as a hero, not a villain. - Kevin Coghill
…we want the people that are not welcome in your churches. The joke used to be that we're the Island of Misfit Toys, and I love that analogy, actually, because we know that we're all broken, myself, probably the chief of the broken, and so we just have accepted that, and we've set up our things to care for the broken. But again, that's been a long process - Kevin Coghill
Sunday mornings, we've actually decided that we only preach from a position of learning something, not something that I know. So when we preach, we try not to come across as “I've already learned this”, but “I'm in the middle of learning this thing” so that we never kind of present, like “I know more than you”, and the structure of our Sundays, because I know this is kind of Sunday centric, is that we've shortened everything to be 45 minutes, with at least 15 minutes of question and answer, so that people can have voice, and often people ask questions that have nothing to do with what we've spoken about, but more about what's going on inside themselves. But we found that again, allows more voice, more people to feel like they have agency. - Kevin Coghill
I recognize that the ministry that we do is problematic for people. It is problematic for people, and yet the person that I follow was called a wine Bibber and a glutton was criticized for touching the unclean. And I just keep coming back to Jesus has given us this like it's not an easy thing. We expect that the world is going to be excited about the things we do, and yet, Scripture says that's not true, that if you follow if you follow Jesus, we're going to be persecuted. Now I'm not saying that we're persecuted. I'm saying that people struggle with perceptions, with understanding. And so the way that I try to deal with things is, it sounds terrible to try to educate, but education comes from contact. - Kevin Coghill
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Royal City Mission, Guelph, Ontario
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Transcript
[Introduction]
Welcome. Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel. I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen. Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.
[John Borthwick]
Welcome back as we share another episode of the ministry Forum Podcast. This time, we're bringing to you a significant excerpt from the conversation we had with Pastor Kevin Coghill of Royal City Mission in Guelph, Ontario. We hosted this conversation at Ministry Forums, inaugural conference called Creative Ways in June 2024 the theme of the conference was creative ways for being church today, we were delighted to be able to showcase communities of faith from various denominations who were being church differently from the typical.
It was a privilege to highlight Royal City Mission in this way. As I queued up our interview for those in attendance at the conference, I mentioned that as our ministry forum team were planning for conference participants, we found ourselves brainstorming about churches. We knew that if the government, for example, were forcing it to close, there would be a huge community outcry beyond its own members. And when we thought about that kind of community of faith, we immediately thought of Royal City Mission, who were invited - encouraged to stay open and to receive funding to do so by the city council of Guelph during the pandemic, and even a bit beyond that.
Now I've known Kevin since he came to Guelph. I live in Guelph, if you didn't know that, for the last 20 or more years, and since I also served a downtown church in Guelph, I've been fascinated to witness the journey of this community that made the decision with intention to change its name from church to mission that tells you a little something about this community that is different.
It was a great privilege to talk to Kevin about the nuance of being a mission, instead of having a mission. The posture of saying yes to the mess and the beauty that surrounds us all, and a little bit about how leadership works at Royal City Mission and the work towards de-emphasizing Sunday mornings. I think you'll find, as I did, this conversation enriching, fascinating and really engaging. I hope it'll resonate with you as you seek to lead in the communities where you're planted.
Now, just a reminder, the quality of the sound will be a bit different than what you're hearing right now, since we recorded this in a university lecture hall and super, super advanced notice if you're interested in attending our next iteration of our conference, Creative Ways. Creative Ways 2025 will be held on Sunday, June 1, 2025 in the afternoon in Hamilton, Ontario. We hope to see you there, and we'll have lots more details in the months to come. Now enjoy this conversation with Pastor Kevin cogiel.
[Kevin Coghill]
…Our dream has been to be open seven days a week, and that was possible during the pandemic, and so Sunday is important, but it's not the most important. It's no more important than Monday. It's no more important than Tuesday, but altogether, that is the expression of the church. And so when you see mission, people get it, your doors are open. When you see church, people come in and they expect you to have flooring that's suitable. When people came into Roral City Church, it wasn't suitable. People tripped on our carpet because it was so terrible. It was put in in the 60s, and it had never been changed. But once people learned that, when you change the name from church to mission, and people learn that they don't care.
Everybody knows I'm Pastor Kevin, even though I don't like being called Pastor Kevin. But it was actually an internal thing that helped us. And the question was, who do we serve? So our kind of statement is we serve or we're open for anyone in need, sounds like a big thing, and the reality is, most people don't know they're in need, but the truth is, all of us are in need, and so it's a pretty wide net to cast, and what we found is we have people that come because they're in need of basic things like a meal, so we serve meals every day, and we have people who they don't necessarily need the food, but they go home to an apartment with no one else to eat with. Some have money, some don't. And then we have people who come that they have a need to give. They don't know where to give, so they come so that they can give. So we've just found that almost everyone actually has this need, including myself. I have needs, and they're met at the table. And so for us, very central to everything we do is the table. We eat together, we hang out together, we get to know each other's stories. What was the other part of the question?
[John Borthwick]
That's okay, let me ask a different one or a related one, because I think that is an interesting piece where you talked about anybody who has a need. And I like that you shared that notion of even people who have a need to do or be in service to others. Can you talk a little bit more about how many, how many churches, faith communities, and I think even probably businesses and individuals actually are a part of making it possible. As I recall, you would know the best Royal City Mission is probably a place where, one of the only places in Guelph where you can get three, meals a day, Monday through Saturday, and maybe Sunday is still happening or not happening. You can tell me more about that, and then just who all is involved. Okay,
[Kevin Coghill]
this is part of the funding from the government right during the during the last year we've been open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, yeah. So that was three meals a day. Last year, we served 86,000 meals. So yeah.
So with funding, we've had to cut back. We're now open Tuesday or Wednesday to Sunday for six hours a day, and we've chosen specifically the weekend, because other places are not open on the weekend. So we always look at where the biggest needs are, and it's not good for staff to be open on Sundays and Saturdays, got to be honest, but it's good for people that have needs. And so we ask our staff to make some sacrifices, multiple Catholic schools and go prepare meals, Union groups, like it's huge when we start schedule for 2025 it will be started in September, because it takes that long to get it ready. And then ask, Who do we serve? I always say, like, it's not just about people who we think, you know, we always look at people who are struggling streets. We always look at people who are in addiction, and go, “all those people need help”. The reality is, I look at it, whoever walks in our door, whoever we participate with, is part of who I'm there to minister to. And I love that. It's actually makes it fun to be honest.
[John Borthwick]
And you had said to me, you all don't have a mission statement or things like that. Do you do? Are there values by which you do your thing, or what's your what's the way you operate.
[Kevin Coghill]
They’re pretty simple, right? Relationship. We all, we all kind of know that we need relationship. First of all, for me, my first relationship is with God, my relationship with Jesus Christ, and then with the people that I encounter all over, right? And and even with our neighbors, which we'll probably talk about later, how the neighbours of Royal City don't always love us. And then the justice piece isn't just about the court system, because I don't always perceive law as justice, to be quite frank, but the justice of equality, of seeing people in front of me, of perceiving them not as other, but as, you know, as me, as part of our community. And then beauty is this one that everyone struggles with because it we have all these connotations of beauty, but really, beauty is what happens when we sit down together and we let go of the barriers between us and we just learn each other's stories. Those are our values.
[John Borthwick]
So from hearing a part of your story. What I would say is, what I think some might be curious about, is, what sort of makes Royal City Mission like, how did they become, how did they become wired that way? They've had a part of their story is that there was an existing United Church that it had had a long history within the city of Guelph. So just a very, very quick Guelph history. St. Andrew’s in Guelph was the first church in Guelph, we’re the oldest congregation. Super exciting they would always say that kind of stuff, not sure that's a great advertisement, but yes, they were the oldest congregation in the city of Guelph, established from the Church of Scotland. A split happened in the late 1800 Hundreds Knox Guelph, you know, really good arm throw, rock throw from each other is just on the main drag. And then another split happened within the congregation at Knox and a church called Chalmers came, and that was over alcohol, whether or not you're allowed to serve alcohol at communion or not. Chalmers United Church. Chalmers Presbyterian Church was started, and then Union came, and then that became Chalmers United Church. Chalmers United Church had been there for quite some time. And just as a brief side thing with Chalmers United Church, they had started these Chalmers dinners. They called them. They started serving meals at this church. And then they also worked towards starting a non profit called the Chalmers Community Support Center, and that has continued and carried on. But the church basically sold, and you all Royal City Church purchased it before you came on board and they started. They kept carrying on these dinners.
So how would you say that community that kind of walked into a church in the downtown core of Guelph that was serving meals to basically Saturday night suppers, was what they were called. How did this congregation that walked in and took over or rebirthed a church community? How did it get wired to do the kinds of things you do? Because, quite honestly, and no offense to anyone in the church world today, many churches wouldn't want to be Royal City Mission. It's a very busy spot. It's a lot. You personally, take in a lot of stuff. It's traumatic, it's hard, it's difficult, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's redeeming. And there are, I know firsthand that there are a lot of Guelph congregations that are glad you exist, because then they don't necessarily have to do anything tangible in their own churches, right? And maybe we have congregations in our own communities that are similar to that. Could you, could you just sort of say a bit about what is the wiring of Royal City Mission that makes you so on fire to do what you do? Let
[Kevin Coghill]
Let me start with my personal because this, this kind of helps. So I was brought up. Both my grandfathers were pastors. So I was brought up. Both my parents were pastor. Both my grandfathers were pastors, so I spent a lot of time in the church. And the other part of that was my grandfather, on my mom's side, was also mentally ill, and he was removed from the pastor because he was mentally ill. And so that person also was my, probably my biggest hero in faith. So I came to this with a different set of eyes, where looking at someone that struggles as a hero, not a villain. And so that's my personal background.
What I have found in the context, I'll get back to the history a little bit. But I've found in the context of everyone that kind of partners with us and works with us, is we found that they have similar stories, not that their grandfathers are pastors or mentally ill, but that they know someone that is not doing well in some state, that they have a brother who's got an addiction. They have a mother who suffered from bipolar. They have connections to people who were struggling, and they found a way inside to connect to them. That's why, that's why they're with us. How royal city got there was through a lot of pain. I hated the first five years I was there, I did not like the congregation. They did not like me. I represented something that they - so I was brought in to run the mission, the meal program.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, there was a there was a lead pastor or a senior pastor, correct? And then they had this other thing within the church as the Life Center, or the Christian life center, and you came in to run that at that time.
[Kevin Coghill]
That’s right. And the lead pastor was amazing. We worked 12 together, but I did have an elder take me aside and say, “I think you’re a nice guy, but I'll never like you because of what you represent”. So this is my introduction to the church from the elders. And so, welcome, welcome, welcome, and so my first five years, I felt like I spent protecting our community from the church, literally on Sunday mornings, it wasn't protecting the church from the community that they think is dangerous. I spent protecting people who are vulnerable from church people. And through those five years, we began to work real hard at talking about giving up power, actually following Jesus in that like, you know, thinking quality with God was not something to be held on to, like we we've tried to grasp those, those concepts and lay down our decision making, lay down what we thought about membership, all of all of these things that have stopped people from being part of the church, and we had to work through that, and it was hard, And we lost most of what you would call like regular church people. We lost people because they didn't want to sit next to pedophiles. That's what we were told. I can't come because I don't want to sit next to a pedophile. Well, the person that they were sitting next to was blind and an alcoholic, but they were not a pedophile, but that was the person. And so it went through this, I would say, a purification process. And I will say, kind of unashamedly, we have decided to do things for the people that are not welcome. And so if you can come to any church in Guelph on Sunday morning, you may not want to come here because you belong in many places, we specifically are saying we want the people that are not welcome in your churches. The joke used to be that we're the Island of Misfit Toys, and I love that analogy, actually, because we know that we're all broken, myself, probably the chief of the broken, and so we just have accepted that, and we've set up our things to care for the broken. But again, that's been a long process. There was a point in our history where the church, it's hard to the language is funny, right? The Church, which Sunday morning, let's say, wanted to separate from the mission or the, I don't know, the justice or para church kind of thought process, they wanted to separate. And my state, my stance was always that's the easiest thing to do. I don't think it's the most beautiful or the best thing to do. I was part of the Para church organization in the past, and I don't think that's wrong, but I believe the church needs to be known for doing beautiful things, justice based things. And so we again, we lost leadership, we lost people, we lost a lot of resources. And yet, in the 14 years, 13 years I've been there, we've also seen that turn around, and now people are coming and they're having kids in our congregation, which is problematic, right? Like my kids grew up in the congregation. My kids, I think my youngest was five when we got there, yeah, five when we got there. And so her formative years were based in hanging out with people that other people don't like. She loves our community. She doesn't like to miss church.
[John Borthwick]
So how does that, you talk about a shedding, you talk about because the transition happened where the senior pastor retired, and then there were, I don't know what happened within the transition. I just knew that you, you started coming to the old stone churches luncheon and your other fellow there, John, started coming, yeah. And then eventually you became, I guess, the as you don't like the title, but you're the Lead Pastor.
[Kevin Coghil]
Pastor, yeah, yeah. So by attrition, I was the only one left and this, I think this goes into another question, but yeah, the leadership of Royal City is sort of the rejected people, just like our congregation. I was asked to leave a church because I was a cancer on the body of Christ. Another beautiful statement. So I'm not - believe me, I'm saying these things - I am not negative towards that church, I have reconciled with them. That's actually something I really value, is reconciliation. But we find that all of our leaders were either fired from other places because they didn't fit, or they're super reluctant leaders. In fact, we found that the worst leaders are people that want to be leaders. They do not function well in our context, if you want to be a leader, you got to wait, because that's going to kill people often that's about power, not about service. So I myself am a reject, and I belong, which is great.
And so the leadership is this kind of group of like, they're just the core of the misfit toys. They belong as part of the community and even how we structure.
I know we're talking a lot about content. Sunday mornings, we've actually decided that we only preach from a position of learning something, not something that I know. So when we preach, we try not to come across as “I've already learned this”, but “I'm in the middle of learning this thing” so that we never kind of present, like “I know more than you”, and the structure of our Sundays, because I know this is kind of Sunday centric, is that we've shortened everything to be 45 minutes, with at least 15 minutes of question and answer, so that people can have voice, and often people ask questions that have nothing to do with what we've spoken about, but more about what's going on inside themselves. But we found that again, allows more voice, more people to feel like they have agency.
Even though we do have hierarchy at this point, we operate on a team base. So technically, I'm the lead and I rarely make decisions. We work collaboratively, which is slow, but everybody comes along at some point, even as far as like lead pastors, usually the lead pastor is in the pulpit the most - I am not. Last year, the co-pastor spoke more than I did. I'm super thankful. I hate preaching. I mean, I don't hate it. It's my least favorite part of the job. I do it because it's needed, and sometimes it's beautiful, but it's not something I feel amazing about. So this co-leadership thing is great, and in our leadership structures, also we have people that oversee areas, and we make sure that every leader is in submission to another person. So myself, when I when I work in the kitchen, or I work on the floor, which is required for all of our staff. You cannot be a staff at Royal City without actually doing frontline ministry. So I'm in the kitchen, I'm on the floor, I am responsible and I answer to the person in charge of that area. I don't get to do what I want. I do what they have given there's sort of this, like we all are in submission to people, even if we're there in submission to us as well.
[John Borthwick]
Wow. So it really does as a creative way of thinking about church being church today, a lot of what you're talking about, you've certainly changed up what a Sunday morning looks like. I think I would perceive that a lot of churches today are very their leadership, the engine that is the church is really all about Sunday morning, and even the finances of the church are all directed towards Sunday morning. And it sounds like what your context, that's not the case at all. Sunday morning is a thing, because also within your Sunday morning, you took all the pews out of the church. You did a great job you've got because now it's a multi use space. But I think you also set up the church differently. I think in a beautiful way. I know lots of people in my life who would really appreciate this. Coffee is readily available, or there's even other kinds of food available during the service. You can go and get stuff during the service if you want. It's all like, there is that sort of cafe style a little bit.
[Kevin Coghill]
So, yes sometimes, because we use the building so often, like we realize that there is no space that should be let's call it sacred. We say it can't be sacred and that it can't be used for anything. It needs to be multi purpose. And so our sanctuary is the biggest room. It seats 400 people right in this in this building, and it's used on an hour on Sunday morning, because pews destroy the space, to be quite honest, they wreck it. And so we started looking at, what does it look like? It took us, I think it took us eight years to convince people that we could get them out. But when we took it out, it out, it was a celebration. And what that has changed is what we can use that space for now. And I mean, I we might go back to this, but we use the space now for a lot of things.
So one of the postures, and this is the posture question, one of the postures that we've tried to take and is to say yes, I feel like often the answer is no. And I tried to pattern this off to my parenting skills, which you probably get really mad at me that I parent by saying yes. But I found that the most beautiful things happen when I say yes, like my kids are going to bed and they say, Dad, can we go outside and watch the stars? And I say, what if I said, No, you need to go to bed instead of, let's go lie on the deck and look at nature and what God has, you know, given us? I just said no to something beautiful, why? Because, you know, I know there's times I'm just, I'm just trying to paint the picture that saying yes is a beautiful thing when it's not harmful, and so we've taken on this posture of saying yes. And that started way before the pandemic.
But when the pandemic hit, things started happening where people are like, hey, like, we want to provide a 24/7 Care for the Homeless because they have no place to shelter. So we moved our entire staff team and volunteers to another agency to support that agency to be 24/7 care. Then that agency said, well, we no longer want to do this. It's too much. Well, it's not too much. They were focusing on something else.
They said, Can you run drop in during the day and meals? We said, yes. So we moved everybody back to our space and opened up there. And then people from local government said, well, there's no place for people to be between eight o'clock and 12 o'clock. Can you open for four more hours a day? Yes, we can do that. And that became our joke, is yes, we can do that. It was the only answer we had.
But it didn't just happen in the pandemic. It happened when the university came to us and said, You have a beautiful venue, and we don't have any music venues in Guelph that will seat 400 people. Can we do concerts here? Yeah, sure. Why not?
When the county of Wellington needed a place to run a conference, can we use your space? Yeah, yeah. And all of that might seem like, Oh, you're just, you're just giving and giving, but the reality is, what we found, and this kind of comes to the heart of why we do things and how we do things, is that the space at Royal City Mission has become a place where classes cross contaminate.
We don't like to think that Canada has classes. There is classes, there is definite even the government has recognized. They have a program called Bridges out of Poverty. They can label and they know the exact like kind of behaviors, the values of each class of person. And so Royal City Mission become this place where we have these concerts. People who are wealthy walk in. They walk in immediately to see our meal program. That's the first thing they see. They have to walk through this like space of like what is happening here, and then they come and ask us, there's never been a concert, whether it's been a faith-based organization or a punk band, any anything that's happened there where someone has not come to us and said, I can't believe a church would let us do this. Always. One guy was swearing from the front, stopped in the middle, which, I mean, I hear swearing all day, it doesn't bother me, but he was swearing from the front, and then he stopped. He said, This is church, I shouldn't be talking like this. And this is a band. I mean, they don't care about faith. They didn't care at all, but for whatever reason, had some kind of respect for the space, and we found that saying yes creates opportunity for us to have further conversations every time. There's never a time we don't have good conversations about why we let people use our space now. We don't give it for free, just so you know, like we cover costs. But what we found, even in that, is that people are excited because they know that the money is going to the meal like anything that is beyond our expenses goes to our meal program. So we have dance companies that come to use our space because they know that the money they're spending isn't going to a corporation that's just making money, but going to us that's now helping to feed people.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah. Yeah. And so often, I think, in the church today, people are looking for ways to define what is it that the church does? So people will say, you know, you should give to our church, support our church. But even sometimes, the people in church, in the church, don't know exactly how to describe that in a very tangible way. And with your mission, it's visible from outside, inside, and all the ways in which you guys can articulate it, there's a nobvious need in an obvious way in which your support, that anybody supporting the mission, they see exactly how its impact, but it's also interesting in the city of Guelph, and this, again, would happen probably in lots of places. How people, probably all people, have opinions about the mission that you all are on, because the mission becomes a focal point in the downtown city of Guelph, individuals congregate and hang out around that area you'd already mentioned. Some of your neighbours have some concerns with you. How do you navigate some of that? Whatever you receive criticism, backlash, challenges, conversations around moving things out of places, when this is something that you're also passionate about, and this is just who you're how you're wired to be. Can you just share a little bit about your story?
[Kevin Coghill]
The way I the way I deal with that is I cry myself to sleep on my huge pillow.
[John Borthwick]
I'm sure you do. Yeah, I
[Kevin Coghill]
I recognize that the ministry that we do is problematic for people. It is problematic for people, and yet the person that I follow was called a wine Bibber and a glutton was criticized for touching the unclean. And I just keep coming back to Jesus has given us this like it's not an easy thing. We expect that the world is going to be excited about the things we do, and yet, Scripture says that's not true, that if you follow if you follow Jesus, we're going to be persecuted. Now I'm not saying that we're persecuted. I'm saying that people struggle with perceptions, with understanding. And so the way that I try to deal with things is, it sounds terrible to try to educate, but education comes from contact. It's the first thing I keep coming back to this when someone complains.
We had a neighbour who swore at me every day because someone would park in his parking spot, which, if you know our space, there's no parking spots, but whatever, he would yell at me every day. So he was mad at me. So I said to him, why don't you just come inside, come in and hang out with us and see what this is about. Like he would criticize, “you parking in my spot, people are smoking dope, they're doing this... I said, “come inside”. A year later, he's serving Chile. Every three weeks because he found that there was community there. It wasn't his perception. But you know, we have this in the middle of the pandemic where everyone's applauding Royal City Mission, your guys are amazing, thank you for opening four more hours a day, thank you for serving people, and then you open up all the doors to the stores, and people are angry. “There's people outside smoking dope, there's people doing this, there's…” and my first statement is, you know, I don't like people using drugs, just so, you know, like, it's not something I agree with. And then they'd be mad at us because there's an encampment down the street. And I said, you know, I don't like homelessness, like it's not something I advocate for. In fact, I'm I would like those people to be housed. I would, they're my friends. I don't want them freezing. But that is what happened, is it was turned on all of a sudden. It was our fault that these things that everywhere across Canada is experiencing was now Royal City Mission's fault. But I still come back to this place of contact, where I try to go, and if someone has a complaint, I go to them. I don't hide in the building. I invite them to come and hang out with us and that usually helps. It hasn't helped with everyone. In fact, there was a letter sent to me by one of the council members who thought I should take legal action against someone because they said that I was profiting off drug dealing in the church and pocketing the money. And I thought, you know, If only my salary reflected that kind of thing, you know. But there's a volunteer here today who can tell you, it's a beautiful community.
Yes, we experienced lots of drug overdoses on our property. We experience open needle use, and we deal with, we work with those things. You know, it's not against the law, and if you call the police, they don't do anything just for everyone's kind of like education. It's not something that you can enforce, and we do enforce it, but the perception is that we allow it. We're called unsafe injection site last year. But again, I keep coming back to the I think that's what they would have said about Jesus. And so there is struggle. And I'm a person that wants to be liked, and so I do struggle when people are like criticizing, and especially because it's about people who I love and who I'm in community with, and most people don't actually understand the depth of trauma that people have gone through. You just wouldn't believe how many people that I encounter that have been trafficked, one sitting there, and maybe they're using openly. And our first judgment is, you know, how dare you or you know you're messing up the reputation of someplace. And yet, if you knew the story, you know honestly, I would use the drugs to numb that pain. I don't think I would be able to live life without God. And so I try to live like on that side of things, and it does make me both a hero and a villain in every room I go in.
And so you learn to be the villain, I guess, sometimes, but I just try to be kind to the people that are negative and try to welcome them in, and some do. Some come and they change their minds. But that's I would say. That's true for everyone, even people that come to our church that are like, why is this guy yelling at the pastor that he's a Satanist in the middle of the sermon? Well, you know, you have to navigate that kind of thing once in a while, and so, but then they actually see the expression, well, this person wouldn't go to another church, and other churches wouldn't welcome that doesn't mean we don't have to deal with that stuff we do. For the last month, we had three, three weeks in a row that someone screamed at me while I was preaching. You navigate that. But I say, You know what? Like, if someone's screaming at me and preaching when I'm preaching, that means they're in the right path. Like, okay, my sermon was interrupted. It wasn't that good anyway. What, what the real sermon is, is that we cared for this person that's hurting, that's so much more powerful than any words I could ever use, and people see that the one guy hugged me after the service left, and I think it's beautiful.
[John Borthwick]
Kevin, I know I want to personally thank you for sharing your story about Royal City, if you want to learn more, if you are and if you happen to find yourself in Guelph on any night of the week or during the day, I'm sure that they would be more than happy to welcome you as a part of their community in any way possible. Kevin, I appreciate you as a leader and the creative way in which you're being church today. Thank you.
[Kevin Coghill]
Thank you.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for joining us today on the ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology and our. Team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues. Tell Someone, please don't keep us a secret, and of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts, Your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you, and honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either, and don't forget to follow us on social media at ministry forum, on all of our channels. You can visit our website at ministryforum.ca for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community until next time. May God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do. May you be fearless, not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be at peace.