Deep and wide

I am preparing for next weekends Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada Annual Meeting in Calgary and so I'm busy writing and scheduling and planing the parts I am in charge of.

But I had to give a small report for Malmo for the year, so here's what I came up with.
I think it's encouraging.

As I reflect on the past year at Malmo Mission Covenant Church, it’s been our desire to grow deep and wide.

We’ve worked to become more outward serving as we consider the needs of our community. We’ve continued with our multi generational Round Table discussions about how we serve our community with love. As a result this year we hosted a DVBS Community Carnival day where the
community kids came for classes and then their parents joined them for a BBQ supper, games, bouncy castle, cotton candy and an evening movie. It was great.

Our Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers continues to outgrow our space here and our youth ministry now reaches into the pre-teen ranks as most of the kids from the local school out here are dropped off by the school bus each Wednesday for activities and bible studies.

Then things like our Christmas Banquet, which the reshaped Women's Ministry worked at, our Harvestival Community square dance and supper, our involvement in the foodbank, Neighbor Outreach Wetaskiwin, Ecuador missions trip, and on and on, are teaching us how to be a blessing to this community and the world.

We’ve also been making choices to grow deeper. We sent Pastor Natasha on a sabbatical to help her recharge her batteries. We’ve created new small groups and encouraged people to participate in them for their support and growth. We’ve worked together to create worship that is more multigenerational and creative, stimulating many senses. Expanding the musicians and participants into the teen ranks has been a good thing too. The services this year have been about how we can live as Christ lived in the world today. Our space limitations for our programs has even led us to the big step of replacing our immobile pews with moveable chairs to give us more useable space in which to grow and serve.

So we are growing, deep and wide.