June 3rd

Witnessing to Jesus' Healing and Hope at Bergthal Mennonite

When you attend a Sunday service at Bergthal Mennonite Church, do you look at all the empty spaces, spaces that now are full only at funerals or weddings?  Do you count the congregants?  Or do you listen to the witness to Jesus’ work in someone’s life? 

This congregation that used to host more than 200 people every Sunday, now routinely hosts about 15% of that number.  Two years ago, our pastor Anna-Lisa Salo announced her retirement to Ontario.   We have decided that a part time pastor is appropriate going forward, a difficult switch for us and we have mourned the loss of who we once were.

Of course, we have been between pastors before.  We use the skills that we have learned, everyone volunteers to do what they can and we ask for help. We are so grateful to God in providing speakers.  We are grateful for those who are willing to preach. A great joke on us is the time that the invited speaker remembered the commitment to speak, but we forgot. At the last minute we were spared an urgent search for a Sunday speaker. Who can deny the grace of Jesus when we are reminded with a giggle at ourselves?

We host the Alberta MCC sale and share our space for MCA meetings. Members quilt, participate in MDS activities, volunteer at the thrift store, support Camp Valaqua and other shared ministries. We share with each other: how God is working in our lives, prayer needs for ourselves or those we love.  We share our concerns about the future of Bergthal, but overall, we rest in God’s love for us – which we see day by week by month. We have heard that we are a dying church, but we feel alive as we see how Jesus’ love touches our members, our church and our community.

Jesus has healed our concern for our future. The future is God’s work not ours. We know that God’s church will go on, though we are not sure how. God loves the church as a whole and Bergthal specifically. We know that Jesus loves each of us, and cares about our connection to God which is nurtured in this community.  Based on that we can wait, trust and hope in Jesus for the future.