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.

This year we’re excited to give away the complete Everything Bundle for Illustrated Ministry’s 2026 Advent resource, A Thrill of Hope, AND the Lent resource, Here and Now to two Canadian churches that haven’t yet used Illustrated Ministry resources.

Many of the titles were surprisingly interesting and several were quite unexpected. I’m not someone who reads the back cover or goes on a deep dive as to what I’m about to read. So sometimes, I have no idea what a book might be about other than it hit the required bingo square when I searched…

Andy Root’s newest, Baal and the Gods of More: Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry names something that many of us have felt in our bones but haven’t quite had words for. I think this book should be required reading for anyone in ministry leadership today.

Ministry Forum webinars are back! This season, we're hosting webinars that together make up our "Listening Partner Network Training," but each webinar is open to anyone interested in a particular topic.

The Listening Partner Network is where leaders can turn for the support, wisdom, encouragement, and understanding they need to remain resilient and lead with confidence.

Two independent pieces, Duke's Clergy Health Initiative report on United Methodist clergy in North Carolina and Rev. Mark Clavier's reflection out of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, arrive at the same diagnosis from opposite sides of the Atlantic: clergy exhaustion is systemic, not personal. The email reads them across the difference rather than as a mirror, noting the genuinely good news in Duke's data (the first statistically significant improvement across all three burnout measures in seventeen years, and four practices that mark flourishing pastors) alongside Clavier's harder question about why the ache persists: long-term decline, isolation, and a vocation squeezed out by administration and inbox. The pastoral turn is the familiar one, that the response cannot be only individual. If overload, isolation, and displaced calling are structural, then presbyteries, colleagues, congregations, and communities like Ministry Forum share the load. It closes where Clavier closes, with Matthew 11:28 offered to those behind the pulpit rather than only to those in the pews.

Season 7 of the Ministry Forum Podcast launches September 8 with my conversation with the Rev. Dr. Michael Brooks, Lead Minister at Port Nelson United Church in Burlington and the recipient of the 2026 Paul Scott Wilson Preaching Award.

We’re looking forward to welcoming the Rev. Dr. Mark Godin back to Knox College on Tuesday, September 22 for a pop-up worship chapel and a conversation about his first book - A Theology of Particularity: Unruly Bodies and the Stories They Carry.

If you haven’t heard me talking about the need for CANADIAN data on the reality we face in today’s Christian Church landscape - hear me now!!! 

We've talked about the need we heard in our listening sessions: a desire for meaningful engagement with Scripture, opportunities to gather around the Bible together, and approaches to Bible study that help people move beyond simply reading the text toward truly exploring it.

This fall, we're excited to begin the next chapter of that work.

Catching the Spark is officially launching this September.

Sermon Shots gives church leaders a simple way to amplify their weekly sermons. This tool uses AI technology to generate short, impactful clips from sermons, automatically transcribing them and creating resources that can be shared online to engage the community throughout the week.

Here are a few points of inspiration and resources that I’m leaning into, in a prayerful, and realistically untidy consolidation of my MPS degree

We recently added a small collection of resources to the Ministry Forum Resource Hub focused on legacy and retirement planning.

Released in 2021 and led by Terry M. Wildman (Ojibwe and Yaqui), the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament is exactly what its name suggests—Scripture translated by Native North Americans, shaped by Indigenous storytelling traditions, and offered in English for both Native and non-Native readers.

Nostalgia for those who need to feel seen…

The Studio from the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities is a guided organizational assessment designed to help Christian ministries strengthen governance, leadership alignment, strategy, and operational health. Through a multi-participant online assessment, a detailed report, a facilitated debrief, and curated resources, ministries gain clear insight into how their organization is functioning and where growth is needed. By engaging leaders, managers, and board members together, The Studio supports alignment, informed decision-making, and practical action planning for long-term mission effectiveness.

MacDonald Lectureship 2026: Exploring how we can live and lead with courage, compassion, integrity, and hope in a rapidly changing world.