In September I signed a two-year contract with Southminster United Church as their congregational minister. This is a student position as I’m completing the Supervised Learning Experience(SME) with the United Church of Canada (part of the candidacy pathway). I am really appreciating the process and all of the training and mentoring involved. As a minister I have never felt more supported. Even my educational supervisor, Rev. Jenni Leslie, has been such a blessing, I did not expect to have so much hands on mentoring and it has been so helpful. I am also loving the experience of Southminster itself. Our church has its challenges certainly, but Southminster is a warm, welcoming community with a passion to continue worshipping in Old Ottawa South, I can work with that.
At the same time I had already agreed to 10 hours teaching at Algonquin College (2 courses NET1001 and CST8117). While teaching I also have been enrolled at Atlantic School of Theology (AST at SMU) completing a testamur. My PhD in theology is a teaching degree and so the testamur matches it to an MDiv which I cover off easily, but not the four denominational formation courses I wanted to take anyway and an advanced preaching summer course I’m hoping to do this coming summer. This meant that while ministering and teaching I was also writing papers for Rev. Dr. Catherine Faith MacLean’s excellent United Church Theology course. I also finished up an anti-racism course on ChurchX (required by the denomination) and have been working on developing a course on poverty and privilege with a group out of Peterborough. Needless to say I have been a busy boy.
Other than the inevitable marking, all of these are things I absolutely loved doing.
But what I’ve learned is that the 42+ hours a week I committed to is way too much for me. So this semester I’m scaling back my Algonquin teaching considerably. I have agreed to just 5 hours and only working on one course: NET3010 which is the BitNet web programming course I enjoy. I’m also only doing one of the lab sections so that means marking will be exams and one lab’s worth (about 25 students) of lab assignments. I think that will be a lot more doable. At least I hope this will be the case.
I’ve also learned that I really love doing pastoral work. After all I’ve been through with the church I had pretty much given up on working as a minister. But the challenge is quite thrilling and ministry is full of those teachable moments that keep me coming back to teaching positions. I’m also enjoying seeing new faces in the congregation, some returning and some just finding their way to our sacred space. I was overjoyed to receive authorization to celebrate communion with Southminster, and Christmas Eve was my first communion service there. I’m so looking forward to new opportunities to serve Southminster and our wider community spiritually this coming year.
Not bad things to learn.
I’m hoping that this season will also afford me more time to curate this blog consistently. We’ll see, I have hope.
Have a blessed New Year!
