What Is Ministry Forum?
September always feels like a good time for a reset - Summer holidays have wrapped up, kids are back in school, calendars are filling up again with programs and monthly meetings. We’re back in the swing of things! So with that “reset” in mind we thought it’d be a great chance to RE-INTRODUCE ourselves.
A lot has happened at Ministry Forum over the past year. Some of it you’ve seen. Some of it we’ve talked about here and there. And quite a bit is still taking shape behind the scenes. We’ve also welcomed new faces and voices to our community, so for those who are new, here's an overview of who we are, what you can find here, and what’s coming next.
Meet the Team!
If you’ve been around Ministry Forum for a while, you probably know me. I’m Rev. John Borthwick, Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Knox College and curator of Ministry Forum.
Before moving into this work, I spent 25 years in congregational ministry. I know the joys of this vocation, but I also know how challenging, exhausting and isolating it can sometimes be. I want Ministry Forum to be a place where ministry leaders can connect, learn, ask questions, find encouragement and remember that they don’t have to figure everything out alone.
Thankfully, Ministry Forum is very much a team effort.
Heather Powers is a Registered Social Worker, Family Therapist and Organizational Consultant with extensive experience working with churches, nonprofits and community organizations. She brings particular expertise in program development, facilitation, leadership development and coaching.
This fall, Heather is leading our new Listening Partners initiative, creating opportunities for ministry leaders to experience intentional, supportive peer listening. As part of that work, we’re also offering a series of webinars on listening and care throughout the fall.
These webinars are part of the training for our Listening Partners, but they’re open to everyone. Topics include intentional listening, spiritually integrated listening, cultural humility, group facilitation, caring for ourselves as helpers, and healthy boundaries. Join us for all of them, or just pick the one or two that would be useful in your ministry.
Heather is also helping lead another major project focused on Next Gen ministry. More on that one below.
Lauren Wasyluk is our Creative and Brand Manager and Digital Solutions Specialist. If you see something from Ministry Forum online, there’s a pretty good chance Lauren had something to do with pulling it together. She oversees our communications and brand, designs digital resources, and takes the ideas, conversations and contributions coming from different corners of Ministry Forum and figures out how to share them with you.
Lauren also leads our Virtual Front Porches initiative. She has been working closely with six churches as they rethink and rebuild their digital presence, with a particular focus on how church websites can better serve the people who encounter a congregation online before ever walking through its doors. We’ve shared some of the learning along the way, and this fall several of those new websites will begin going live. We’ll have lots more to share as that happens.
And then there’s Sara Traficante, our Field Contributor.
Sara is currently studying at Knox College, with interests in spiritually integrated psychotherapy, spiritual care and theology. Her background includes years of congregational involvement in children and youth ministry, adult discipleship, music and social justice, alongside a 20-year career as a professional flutist and teacher.
You’re going to be hearing more from Sara as she talks with ministry leaders, digs into what people are encountering in different ministry contexts, and brings some of those conversations back to all of us.
She kicked things off this fall by sharing three books she has found particularly helpful as she has prepared for ministry and practicum experiences.
Rev. John Borthwick
Heather Powers
Lauren Wasyluk
Sarah Traficante
Those are the four of us you’ll see most regularly, although there are plenty of other people who come alongside Ministry Forum for particular projects, conversations and initiatives.
If you’re new here, start HERE
MinistryForum.ca is the home base for everything we do.
Three times a week, we share something new. Sometimes it’s a conversation about ministry. Sometimes it’s a practical resource or a roundup of things we’ve discovered. It might be an interview, something happening in the church that we think is worth talking about, or just an idea we want to pass along.
You don’t need to read everything. Check in, see what’s new and take what’s useful (you can also search any topic that’s on your mind - if it’s ministry related there’s a great chance we’ve touched on it here in the past few years).
Stay in the loop
The easiest way to keep up with everything happening at Ministry Forum? Join our email list. Every Tuesday at 9 a.m., we’ll send a new reflection straight to your inbox, along with a few things worth knowing about—resources, upcoming events and other opportunities we think might be helpful.
Dig around in the Resource Hub
Our Resource Hub now has almost 300 resources spread across 21 different categories.
There are books, podcasts, videos, organizations, websites, downloadable tools, training opportunities and more. You’ll find resources related to technology, pastoral care, justice, conflict, retirement and legacy leadership, and plenty of other areas of ministry.
There is already a tremendous amount of good work being done. We want to make it easier to find.
And if there’s a book, tool, organization, podcast, website or other resource that has been genuinely useful to you, send it our way. We’re always adding to the Hub and want it to reflect what is actually helping ministry leaders right now.
Your New Favourite Podcast
We’re now in Season 7 of the Ministry Forum Podcast!
The podcast gives me the chance to sit down with people serving in all sorts of ministry contexts and have a conversation. Sometimes it’s one-on-one, other times we bring a few people around the virtual table and occasionally use the podcast to share conversations or presentations that happened somewhere else but deserve a wider audience.
We now regularly get guest suggestions, invitations and ideas for conversations from people in the Ministry Forum community, which is pretty great.
You can find the Ministry Forum Podcast wherever you normally listen to podcasts.
Events
We also keep a Ministry Events Calendar with events, courses, conferences, workshops and other learning opportunities that might be interesting to ministry leaders.
To be clear: we do not expect you to attend everything on this calendar.
Please don’t. Seriously, who would have the time?!
Browse around. See what catches your attention. Maybe you’ll discover a workshop you didn’t know existed, a conference happening nearby, or an online course that addresses something you’ve been thinking about.
You can even look backwards. If you discover an annual event that happened last spring, perhaps it becomes something to watch for when it comes around again.
But wait, there’s more!
The articles, Resource Hub, podcast and calendar are part of the regular rhythm of Ministry Forum. We also have a few bigger projects on the go.
Catching the Spark
Catching the Spark is a Bible study initiative we’re developing alongside Dr. Derek Suderman from Conrad Grebel University College.
How do we engage Scripture in ways that are deep, dynamic and genuinely engaging?
There’s no shortage of devotionals and Bible studies available. But sometimes we need to slow down. Pay closer attention to the text. Ask better questions. Look at context and culture. Notice some of the literary artistry that we can easily skim right past.
That’s what we’re doing through Catching the Spark.
This fall, Derek is leading a four-week experience in Waterloo using the Book of Ruth. Participants are reading closely, asking questions, exploring context, culture and literary artistry, and trying different approaches to the text.
The approach isn’t just about the Book of Ruth, the practices we’re exploring can be used with other passages and can shape personal Bible study, small-group conversations, preaching and teaching.
Later this fall, we’ll take that same material into a weekend-long experience in Listowel, giving us a chance to work through it in a different format and spend more time together.
We first piloted Catching the Spark a couple of years ago and learned a lot from the people who took that first chance with us. We’ve built on it since, we’ll learn more from this round, and we’re already looking ahead to another biblical book next year.
If you’ve been wanting to shake up the way you approach Bible study, keep an eye on this one.
Support For Next Gen Ministry
This is probably the project that has occupied the most space for our team lately.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking with people involved in Next Gen ministry - surveying, asking questions and trying to better understand what it is like to serve children, youth, young adults and families in mainline church contexts today.
Many of the people doing this work are under-resourced.
They may be the only person in their congregation doing this particular kind of ministry. They may be working part-time, serving as a volunteer, or trying to adapt resources created for completely different church contexts. And they don’t always have colleagues around them who understand the particular challenges they’re trying to navigate.
Our team is developing a new learning experience for people serving in Next Gen ministry in the Canadian mainline church, with particular attention to the context of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.
We want to connect people doing similar work so they can learn from one another, workshop challenges together and build relationships with people who actually understand their ministry context. We’re also bringing in people with experience and expertise in the areas where ministry leaders have told us they need more support.
Beginning this winter and continuing through the spring, we’ll be offering a series of learning opportunities around Next Gen ministry. Individual webinars will be open to anyone who is interested (much like our Listening Partners series).
But we’re also working toward something larger.
Taken together, this learning will form the foundation of a micro-credential in Next Gen ministry - we’re still finalizing some of those details and our team will be meeting again over the next few weeks to keep putting the pieces together.
So stay tuned. We’ll have much more to share soon.
So, that’s us
When we sit down for a Ministry Forum team meeting these days, there are usually quite a few things on the go. I’ve often used the analogy of a buffet when it comes to our Ministry Forum offerings: You aren’t supposed to take everything.
Not every article is going to be about something you’re facing. Not every webinar is meant for you. You probably don’t need all 300 resources in the Resource Hub. And we certainly don’t expect you to register for every event we share.
But hopefully there’s something here that you need.
Maybe a podcast conversation helps you think differently about something happening in your congregation. Maybe you find a resource that saves you from reinventing the wheel. Maybe you meet another ministry leader who understands a challenge you thought you were facing alone. Or a webinar gives you a practical skill you can use tomorrow.
Maybe something simply gives you a little energy or sparks a new idea.
We hope Ministry Forum can be a place where you find something that is helpful, that builds you up, creates a connection or nourishes the ministry you’ve been called to do.
So, as we head into another fall together, poke around.
Explore the Resource Hub. Browse the calendar. Listen to a podcast. Join us for a webinar. Send us something you’ve discovered. Tell us what you’re wrestling with. Tell us what you wish someone was talking about.
And if you’re new here, welcome.
We’re glad you found us.