Rob Chartrand (00:01.454)
All right, ready to go? All right, I'll go. I'll begin with the intro. Well, hey, we're so excited to have here on Church in the North, Todd Petkao. He is the lead pastor of Riverwood Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Todd, welcome to Church in the North.
Todd Petkau (00:03.024)
Absolutely.
Todd Petkau (00:18.078)
Thank you, really good to be here.
Rob Chartrand (00:20.474)
So we want to get into your story in just a minute here, but if you were to describe your church in a few sentences to somebody who's never heard of it, what would you say?
Todd Petkau (00:30.022)
Yeah, I would say that Riverwood is an innovative, resourceful, energized church that's serving our local community with authentic love and humble worship.
Rob Chartrand (00:42.874)
Okay, wow. That's a high view definition, but we're going to get into the weeds on that in a minute because there's so much to talk about. let's talk about your ministry journey to Christ. When did the idea of being in ministry first begin with you?
Todd Petkau (00:57.352)
Yeah, I moved to Regina when I was 12 years old. I went for a bike ride around our community, found a church that was being constructed. It was in construction stage right then. Saw this guy walking across the top and I was so impressed as a kid just watching this construction worker welder walking high above the ground. Dragged my family to that church. It was an Alliance church in Regina. Dragged my family on that weekend.
I found out that the guy walking across the top was the pastor. He was also a welder. And he roped me into ministry. I became what he called his right hand man. There was no other staff at the church. And for the next number of years, I mean, this is back in the day of Gestetner machines and running the bulletins and running the sound system and vacuuming on Saturdays and being part of crews. Yeah, I know, I guess that yeah, I know. Yeah, but you know what? I would say that
Rob Chartrand (01:28.269)
wow.
Rob Chartrand (01:46.543)
You're old, man, you're old.
Todd Petkau (01:52.936)
That gave me a really remarkable taste of ministry to be under his shadows and in his mentorship from the age of 12 right up until into high school. And from there I went to Bible school. But I would say that if I ever had a call to ministry per se, it was at the back of a chemistry class in Regina. Our chemistry teacher, I only remember him as.
I was calling him Beaker. And I remember just praying to God saying, there's gotta be more to life than this, because I hated chemistry. And I felt like God said, I want you to serve me vocationally. And I would say that was the moment I heard that voice. And not everybody gets that, but I felt like I did. And that sent me off to Cape and Ray for a year and then to Winnipeg Bible College, which is now Providence.
Rob Chartrand (02:39.882)
Wow, wow, okay. So much going on there. mean, how many people first get that tug on their heart when they watch a pastor do a high wire act on top of a church building?
Todd Petkau (02:43.998)
Hmm.
Todd Petkau (02:48.816)
Yeah, exactly. Well, my dad was a welder too, so it really resonated with him and really drew him into the church.
Rob Chartrand (02:57.07)
Huh, so what church was that in Rajanik? Glen Teren, okay, yeah, yeah. Well, good on that pastor for taking that initiative and just pulling this young person under their arm and saying, hey, let's go.
Todd Petkau (02:59.998)
Glen Curran, Glen Curran Alliance. Yep. Yep.
Rob Chartrand (03:13.508)
So are you still connected with that? So are you still connected with that pastor today?
Todd Petkau (03:13.756)
I'm losing you.
Todd Petkau (03:18.94)
No, I did have one contact with him out in Ontario and had an opportunity to thank him later on after he'd left, just to thank him for the impact that he had in my life.
Rob Chartrand (03:31.172)
Wow. Todd, just to let you know, if you hear the stream and it gets muddy, don't worry about it because it's recording two independent streams on either side that are going to be perfect. And so sometimes the stream you'll hear is a little bit muddy. I'll edit out this little part here. But yeah, so if you hear it, don't lose hope.
Todd Petkau (03:41.978)
Okay, okay.
Okay.
Todd Petkau (03:52.102)
Yeah, the only issue is when I lose your question. So I might need you. Yeah, OK.
Rob Chartrand (03:55.352)
Yes, yes, for sure. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's keep going. So let's talk about your ministry journey prior to Riverwood then, can you give us a bit of a roadmap of, of you know, all the pastoral opportunities you've had in your education?
Todd Petkau (04:11.88)
Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned, I went to capinary. I felt like God specifically zeroed me in on youth ministry, which was really odd because I felt so intimidated by students and so incapable. But that led me to Winnipeg Bible College for three years. I graduated from there, did my first interview for a youth pastor job and remember, and that was at Brandon. And I remember literally crying into my Big Mac with my wife.
After this interview, it was so intimidating and this guy took me apart theologically so wickedly that it almost scared me away from ministry. So I went into working in plastic industry for a year and a half. But at that time we went to another church and said, hey, we have a real heart for youth if you got a place for us to serve. And didn't know that the youth pastor had only started the week before. So he was hungry for people to come and help. so we started there.
worked there as volunteer for a year and then ended up becoming an intern pastor and became the youth pastor of that church. That was Kilcona Park Alliance here in Winnipeg. And we were there for seven and a half years before starting Riverwood.
Rob Chartrand (05:21.144)
Okay, so talk to me about Riverwood then. What was its genesis? How did that get off the ground?
Todd Petkau (05:28.114)
Yeah, so for about a year and a half before I wrapped up my youth ministry at Kelkona, I really had this something that was stirring in my heart towards something more, something different. We put a few proposals together, but they didn't really get very far. At the same time, there was a small group within the church that was feeling a tug on their hearts as well. There was about 20 people involved there. And we got together and just really kind of felt like God was birthing a baby church.
Unfortunately, the Mother Church wasn't too excited about that. So it didn't go anywhere. We decided as we prayed it through that we were going to step out from under the umbrella of that church. And we did. We stepped out on Easter Sunday of 1995. Very contrary to how churches are birthed today, they interviewed me one week. We started the church the next week and the next week after that we had our first official service. So we were zero to...
And so naive. had no clue what we were doing and what a blast. It was so much fun. So that was, yeah, it was in 95. We started renting a junior high school and haven't looked back since it was 30 years ago.
Rob Chartrand (06:42.788)
So your first Sunday was in a junior high school. Wow. And to think that you got the rental that quickly.
Todd Petkau (06:45.192)
Yes it was. Yeah.
Yeah, it was nuts. Yeah, it was was different back then. But yeah, that was 30 years ago.
Rob Chartrand (06:54.84)
Yeah. How many people on your first Sunday?
Todd Petkau (06:57.34)
I actually had 70 and I have no clue where they came from. Yeah, it was kind of bizarre. We had no clue where they came from. We were prepared for much less, but yeah, grew from there.
Rob Chartrand (06:59.347)
wow.
Rob Chartrand (07:07.842)
Okay, wow. So what were some of the challenges you guys faced in the early years of Riverwood?
Todd Petkau (07:16.372)
Yeah, would say knowing who we were, think we actually had a couple of different, we found out later, like three or four years into it, that we had two different tracks of people thinking that this thing was going to become something different. I'm not your typical traditional charismatic pastor and we had a group of people really thinking this was going to go the charismatic direction. So we had to work through those tensions, which was...
Rob Chartrand (07:30.969)
Okay.
Todd Petkau (07:43.378)
Yeah, that was hard. And those folks ended up leaving. We tried to do that on really good terms, but those times, you know, we often said in those days, you know, Riverwood is going to Orlando on the bus. And if your bus, if you're wanting it to go to LA, you know what, this wonderful bus is going to LA, but we're not going to LA, we're going to Orlando. And so if you want to come with us is where we're going. And that's hard as a leader to kind of lay that down. But it's also
logical, right? I mean, it's like you can only sort of go one direction. And if you've got a bunch of people pulling in other directions, it's better to bless them and set them free and actually help them find the bus going to, you know, LA. so they're not coming in and grabbing the steering wheel, always trying to turn it. so we had that kind of crisis moment probably about four or five years in.
Yeah, resources were tough, right? mean, it was tough to have enough resources and we had no clue what we were doing. So trying to make it up as we go.
Rob Chartrand (08:44.878)
Yeah, like when you first plant a church, I mean, I've been through that. In those early years, you're really still trying to discover who you are. And if you have a short runway like you did, I mean, you don't have the chance to take a year and do test groups and build a team and all that. You're just hitting the ground running. So your first few years are kind of like the test group. And when you plant a church, you get all these people coming in. The nice thing is, I you get to create your own culture, right?
Todd Petkau (09:03.476)
Yeah.
Todd Petkau (09:08.529)
Yeah, absolutely.
Todd Petkau (09:14.333)
Yep.
Rob Chartrand (09:14.552)
The other side is you have people join your church who have a vision for your church and it might not be the same vision you have for your church.
Todd Petkau (09:19.582)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's certainly what we discovered. Yeah. And being a portable church for five years, moving in and out of the junior high school every week. I mean, that was just hard work.
Rob Chartrand (09:31.096)
Yeah, yeah, the setup days. For our church, the setup days were hard, but in some ways for the men in the church, they were great because it gave them something to do together. So they kind of look back and miss the days of setting up the chairs and the lights and all of that. But yeah, from a pastor standpoint, it's a lot easier having a facility.
Todd Petkau (09:45.502)
Yeah. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (09:51.998)
Yep. And it is, and it's not, it comes with its own, its own liabilities and issues. Right. So, yeah. Yep.
Rob Chartrand (09:59.064)
Yeah, well, especially for you guys. So Riverwood's a multi-site church. Tell us about how you ended up going in that direction.
Todd Petkau (10:07.764)
So we were in the junior high school, which was in nicer suburban area. One of my elders phoned me up one day and said, Hey, I'm just driving down in more of the inner city and there's this welding shop, a commercial door factory for sale. I think we should walk through it. So we met down there, we walked through it. was just being emptied out. It smelled like welding shop, which is the career my dad had. So it kind of brought back all these memories and it was about an 18,000 square foot.
empty building and we just lit up around this idea of having our own home base. It was in more of the inner city, which was a little bit challenging at first for us and we prayed it through and we really realized that God was actually calling us that direction. Often people get kind of called further out into the suburbs or they're in the inner city and they go to the suburbs. We were being called into the inner city. And so we went to our church. actually had a
soup and biscuit lunch in the old factory. We set up a projector and cast a vision and said, here's what we see. The way we're going to vote on this is your pledge card. And so if we can raise $300,000 towards this. Now, what you have to understand is that the building was up for half a million. The elders asked if I'd go to the owners and ask them what their very best church friendly price was. And they came back and dropped it 150,000 off. So was there for 350.
Elders prayed about it. They said, go back and ask if they'll do it for 250. And went back and sure enough, they said, you know what? They were Christ followers. They said, we would be so honored and blessed to see our old commercial drawer factory turned into a home base for Christ in this community that we have been part of for so long. So they helped us out to the tune of quarter million. That was 20 years ago, but we still needed 300,000 to even get going. so people, it was unbelievable.
there was somebody that sold an old cottage, somebody sold an RV, somebody sold a boat, somebody cashed in their RSPs, lots of people cashed in their RSPs. They scraped together whatever they could and on Pledge Sunday, I think we ended up with 279,000 and somebody stepped up, I'll finish it off to close the vote at 300,000. And that was only enough for us to now do all the volunteer work. So.
Todd Petkau (12:26.684)
We spent the next year, this is when building codes were a little different and the process was different. So I was actually the architect, designer, engineer, contractor. I kind of led all that. And we did volunteer crews for a year to just get it to a place where we could move in. So again, those are hard days, but they are some of the most endearing memories of the early days of our church. That got us our first building. So from there, we kind of grew and we outgrew that. We started renting some space around.
For about four years, we began to just really pray about what's our next move, how are we going to grow? And the only model for church growth that I knew of at the time was to build a mega church, to build a 12, 15, 100 seat auditorium. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the only model I knew. And so we looked at properties all over our area. We felt called to this local community, this neighborhood, but there was nothing available, nothing big enough. And so we began looking outside of the community and really felt like God kind of slapped our hand and said,
Rob Chartrand (13:07.15)
Yeah, I think you're building somewhere.
Todd Petkau (13:25.33)
I've called you to that community to which we said, well, that's great, but there's no space for us to grow. And with about two weeks until the conference, I came across Larry Osborne's Sticky Church Conference down in San Diego and never heard of it, never heard of the church, but their tagline for the conference was growth changes everything. And I thought, my goodness, that's us. And so I asked our elders if I could go, my wife and I went down there, conference was good, but I heard their story and that changed everything for us.
So their story, if I get it right, was basically they were a church about 2000. They were in a multi-site sort of rental venues. And so they purchased a property and they were going to build a 2000 seat auditorium. And the community rose up against them and said, we don't want your mega church in our backyard. And they blocked them for four years. And so during that time, this church continued to grow. Finally, city council comes back and says, okay, you can have your 2000 seat auditorium, your mega church. And,
Larry Osborne said, we don't want a 2000 seat auditorium anymore. We've grown so much. Now we want an 800 seat auditorium. And that just left them scratching their heads because they said that doesn't make any sense. He said, no, it does make sense. He says, what we've learned is that leaders like it big, but people like it small. So we're going to build six worship venues on our property. The largest being 800 seats 800 seats, because that way people continue to get to know each other and can recognize each other.
And the other ones are all going to be built around styles of music and a lot smaller. So they have these six worship venues today. I think they're a church of 13,000 with no auditorium bigger than 800. And so we came home and we looked down the street and a block away was a 2.7 acre warehouse. And a half a block from that was a 1906 fire hall, both for sale. And we went to our congregation, cast the vision based on what we'd seen down there and said,
we believe that God's calling us to be a multi-site church within a block. And so today we own six buildings. Five of them are recycled and they're all within one block of each other. That basically has become, and it's in the core of this area of Winnipeg called Elmwood. And that's just become our footprint. like I said, we're not not moving to the...
Todd Petkau (15:46.612)
perimeter of the suburbs because we don't have enough money. We're staying here because God's called us here. And so what we did is we went to the quarry and we got the great big massive 13 foot quarry rocks and we had them craned in and planted in front of every one of our buildings to make a statement to our community. We're not going anywhere. This is us. Our buildings are a little bit ugly. They're not the legacy buildings, right? We have a factory
the factory, the warehouse, the garage, the fire hall, the shed, and then Riverwood house. And so these are our buildings within, we just repurpose them. They all had a function before this. so that's kind of our footprint. It's a very unique, know, in a world where you're told, don't multi-site plant within a 20 minute drive, right? We're like, you know, a 20 second walk from each other.
Rob Chartrand (16:42.508)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Todd Petkau (16:43.892)
with right now six worship services.
Rob Chartrand (16:47.16)
Yeah, so what year was it you were down at Larry Osborne's conference?
Todd Petkau (16:51.39)
Hmm. I want to say that would be about 10 years ago. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (16:55.544)
Okay, okay. Wow. So that's, that's a lot of change and infrastructure development in 10 years. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I can remember visiting his site and it would have been in 2009. I think is when I was down there and being on the campus and going, he was hosting a multi site conference and then going from, you know, building to building to building and seeing it just thinking this does not make any sense. But it does. You're right. People like it small.
Todd Petkau (17:01.33)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (17:10.414)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Todd Petkau (17:22.036)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (17:24.85)
and pastors like it big. Yeah. So, describe for us some of your locations and then maybe tell us what are some of the ministries you share and then maybe what's unique about some of your facilities.
Todd Petkau (17:40.468)
Sure. So our model is where we have a central office. All our offices are at the fire hall. The fire hall on the main floor also serves as our food bank, our drop-in, our commercial kitchen, our community services, where we have at-risk moms groups and things like that. It used to be in what's called the garage. We moved it over here because this is much more of an iconic, more recognizable space and bigger as well.
So that's the fire hall. We also have a worship gathering that happens here at the fire hall. And that's about 70 or 80 people or so. So it's our smallest worship gathering venue. Then the factory is our original building. It's about a 400 seat auditorium and it has a addictions program that we give space to all week long. So it's being used all week for an outside addictions program. And then there's lots of children's
programs and various life groups that happen throughout the week in that setting. Our warehouse block away is another 400 seat auditorium. That's where all of our young adults and uprising student ministries happen. It's got a bigger foyer space and it's just more serviceable for them. The shed is off of that and that used to be a 1950s lumber yard wood shed. so that's our
Rob Chartrand (18:56.026)
Okay. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (19:03.994)
Mm.
Todd Petkau (19:05.716)
The garage right now isn't being used. It's a 1940s garage that used to be used for converting trucks into milk wagons and paddy wagons and things like that. Right now we're just in the midst of renovating that to become a discipleship space, but also a operational cafe. And we're hoping that our clients from Riverwood House, and so Riverwood House is our last building. It's a 40 unit,
transitional housing space. This is our only new building. So this one about, I want to say six years ago, our community pastor and I would often walk past the slum landlord eight unit apartment building next to the fire hall and just dream like it'd be so awesome if we could ever get our hands on that. But we knew we didn't have the money to buy this apartment building and transition it and renovate it.
And then one Sunday morning it burnt down and that was sort of our answer. Okay, I guess we're not meant to have this building. But within six months, a group of philanthropists, retired rancher, an architect, a lawyer, a bunch of other people, not from Riverwood, came knocking on our door and said, we have some money and we have a real desire and a calling to create a transitional housing space. We're looking for a place, we're looking for an organization to partner with and our
deal is that if we could build it to the tune of, I believe it's $9.1 million, if we can build it, we want to hand the keys and the deed over to somebody and then it's theirs and they run it. Would you guys be willing to join us on this journey? So that was bizarre. so we did, we joined them on that journey. And just this last year, Riverwood House, 40 unit transitional housing space opened up and we are now learning what it means to
help people out of addictions. It's a sober living space. Lots and lots of challenges. But we've got, we've got eight staff. Most of them are Riverwooders that we'd be little higher on. And it's just a remarkable venture. Yeah. That just dropped into our lap. And, and really I think because of those, not, not the big stones themselves, but because of that attitude, we're here in this community for the community and we're staying here. We're not going somewhere, you know, in my,
Todd Petkau (21:29.404)
Weaker moments, I often dream of a large 1500 seat auditorium with a paved parking lot and a beautiful foyer, right? I mean, but that's just not our calling. Those are wonderful churches, but that's not what God's us to or me to. And so, you know, we just continue to kind of plod along here in the community, but it's because of our commitment to this community that we had this opportunity to do Riverwood House.
Rob Chartrand (21:36.047)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (21:52.89)
Hmm. With Riverwood house, is there someone at the helm who's an experienced expert? Like they've done this before they've connected with other agencies before.
Todd Petkau (22:00.838)
Yes and no. Our community pastor who's done a remarkable job of building networks amongst the provincial agencies and the city agencies is the lead of that. Then he hired a person who was a former nursing home coordinator with, believe they had 400 units or something like that. So he had piles of experience in terms of staffing and working in difficult situations. And then they brought on
Navigators, they don't call them caseworkers. They call them navigators to help people navigate their way through their recovery. And what I love about this is that we've got a few people that are retired and have come out of retirement, but two of them were in the justice system for 30, 35 years. And they will tell you they've seen everything, that they were in the jails, they've seen everything. So now working in this Christ-centered recovery.
setting isn't quite as stressful, but they bring that wealth of experience that they had and it's really fun to watch what God's doing with them.
Rob Chartrand (23:00.27)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (23:04.558)
Yeah, I was going to say, mean, for most churches, without that expertise, insider knowledge, mean, you just wouldn't feel overwhelmed trying to do a transitional house. That was just, yeah.
Todd Petkau (23:15.974)
Yeah, this was very much a natural next step for all that had been built over the last 15 years in our community, right? So, I mean, our community pastor is busy, is often called on to do funerals or go do visits and crisis situations and helping people move and all this stuff for people that don't come to our church. They just know that we're here in the community and they know they need help. So the first place they look is.
Rob Chartrand (23:24.73)
Yeah.
Todd Petkau (23:44.156)
isn't that a church down there? Let's go there, right? And so many of them have accessed our food bank. And one of the things that Pastor John really works out hard is dignity, just making sure that we have one of the most dignified experiences possible in those settings. And so it's been over a decade of working in that. And this was kind of the natural next step, right? It didn't start there. It very much has just progressed there.
Rob Chartrand (24:12.612)
Well, I know that a lot of churches that are trying to do some things like these run into a lot of roadblocks with zoning issues, municipal interest groups, et cetera. How has it been for you guys to navigate all of that?
Todd Petkau (24:28.21)
Remarkable, absolutely remarkable. mean, first of all, this lead group of philanthropists kind of really, they all had skill sets that helped to really get that thing going. And that was all outside help. literally we hadn't put any money in, like it was a $9 million gift that just kind of dropped there. And we've since invested a lot. And we've also learned that free isn't free. mean, it costs you a lot, right? But in terms of the city and the province, I think we've
I think this is a very timely project and these kinds of projects are, know, with with the federal government and everybody talking about housing shortages and issues and addictions issues. This is this is a time, you know, that there's a lot of favor towards these, at least in our city. There's a lot of favor towards this. we're being very careful on the faith government relationships side of it. Right. I mean, we're walking carefully and I think we're walking wisely.
And authentically, I think we're able to be authentic. know, so people don't have to come listen to a sermon in order to get food or, you know, they don't have to join our discipleship class in order to be part of Riverwood House. It's nothing's forced, but it's so much fun to watch when some of the navigators with groups of five, six, seven, eight of our Riverwood House clients are walking over to the factory for church and they're becoming part of the faith community.
But that's all on their own volition. Yeah, that's all on their own. Yeah. the actually we've, think John has given something like upwards of 65 tours of this facility to various government agencies and other agencies, because there's some innovation to it and some, some stuff that's just, yeah, really lighting up different agencies with some of the innovation and some of the effectiveness.
Rob Chartrand (26:21.146)
Wow. Yeah. So was that true of your other buildings? I mean, you're developing several properties. Did that pretty go that go without too many challenges with in terms of getting zoning and? Yeah.
Todd Petkau (26:32.998)
Yeah, yeah, no, that wasn't really an issue. You know, we were taking derelict buildings and in fact, we it was all volunteer labor that renovated the fire hall and we actually got a heritage award for the renovations we did, which was kind of cool that we didn't see that coming. But so, you know, our philosophy is that we don't need to have the nicest buildings. You know, we're not going to win any.
Rob Chartrand (26:47.404)
wow.
Todd Petkau (26:57.908)
other awards I don't think on our buildings, but as long as they're functional and as long as they serve people well, you know, so we don't want them to be junkie, but at the same time, they're nothing that's too much to look at.
Rob Chartrand (27:10.702)
Yeah, yeah. So you're doing local work now and it seems like this has evolved over time, the more that you're doing, you know, in terms of hands and feet of Jesus in that community. Is there kind of a missional, incarnational philosophy that undergirds all of this?
Todd Petkau (27:31.316)
I don't have anything posted on my wall that would be our mission, know, incarnational philosophy. think dignity for everybody. so that's regardless of, you know, sexual orientation, regardless of economic background or your addictions or whatever. just we want to love on people in a really profound way. So that certainly drives a lot of it. When I mentioned earlier how I would describe Riverwood and,
I wrestled with the word humble worship. And I don't mean that, we're so good in humbling ourselves to worship, but I mean, we're not much to look at, right? And the whole venture is, yeah, it's not flashy at all. It's just, it's very real. It's very authentic. It's humble in the sense that we want to care for people in a genuine way. you know, I had somebody a little while ago say, you know, gosh, after I told them the Rufwood story,
They said, how come I've never heard of this? I said, well, we just keep our heads low and serve the people in our community. And those aren't the people that are talking about it. Right. So it's it's part of I guess our part of our philosophy is, know, we're not out to become a megachurch. We're not out to become anything other than really good at serving the broken and the marginalized and the people that, you know, maybe are getting forgotten and are struggling. And
And so we probably touch about anywhere between five and 700 lives a week that don't come to our services. They experience the love of Christ and they experience the church in action, but you're not going to see them sitting at a worship service or a part of a life group. And you just got to be OK with that. You could very easily feel used or you could feel like this is a dead end, so accomplishing the.
If your goal is to grow numerically in your worship service and grow your finances, this is not the way to do it. In fact, I'm toying with the idea of writing a book, something along the lines of why do things easy way when you can do them the hard way? Because that's very much what we're doing. We're doing stuff the hard way. But when you look at Scripture, tell me where that principle isn't lived out.
Rob Chartrand (29:32.378)
Right.
Todd Petkau (29:53.246)
marching around the walls seven times. I mean, that is not the easy way of doing something. That's the hard way, right? And Jesus never called us to the easy, most efficient way. think efficiency is highly overrated. So I think our philosophy would be, authentically love people with the love of Christ without looking for anything in return. And keep your head low and serve.
Rob Chartrand (29:58.307)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (30:15.438)
Yeah, well, it's like Eugene Peterson, the long obedience in the same direction. And this is definitely a long obedience. And you might not see the fruit that you would hope to see. But you see fruit, but it's a different kind of fruit. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (30:27.24)
Yeah, yeah, it's certainly not the Attractional Church that I mean, we do have people, you know, there's a saying, go after the people nobody wants. You'll end up with the people everybody wants. And there is there's a degree to that that we do have some resourceful and some people with resources that come here because of the mission we're on. But but there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of churches in Winnipeg that are just great churches and they're doing wonderful things and they're of a different
Rob Chartrand (30:31.119)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Petkau (30:56.518)
style. They're of a different vibe. They're kind of the place you'd like to be. Riverwood isn't necessarily, you know, our buildings are on old back alley kinds of streets. People are worried about the cars getting broken into. you know, so it's not an attractive sort of model for sure. It's a, you know, in very much a real way, it's a missional model.
Rob Chartrand (31:20.634)
And yet you do have some pardon me, you do have some people who drive in like who are more regional than they are local. Is that correct? Part of your? Yeah.
Todd Petkau (31:31.246)
absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. mean, not everybody. Yeah, I think we've got some other ministry things that do, you know, draw people. And if you want to just be part of a church that teaches the Bible and worships and so on, you can you can be part of that as well. Right. So.
Rob Chartrand (31:49.7)
Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you guys have faced over the years? I think we've identified some of them, but any that you could highlight we haven't talked about.
Todd Petkau (31:57.736)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this over 30 years. mean, you know, the the rogue sermon by one of my associate pastors that led to seven weeks attention to me firing the pastor and half the church not showing up the next week because they were aligned with him. Right. I mean, it's like that was a hard one. Right. Our second in command top leader, you know, with moral failure and that uncovering
Rob Chartrand (32:16.366)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (32:27.253)
some really serious allegations of sexual harassment of five of our women staff underneath my leadership and I didn't see it and I didn't listen to it and that led to a year and a half of just soul searching and some really, really difficult moments. that it shaped us in a really good way. We started putting policies in place and you know, and we were
Rob Chartrand (32:33.86)
Hmm. Hmm.
Todd Petkau (32:55.22)
vulnerable with our congregation right from the very beginning, but it was gut-wrenchingly hard. I think scaling, scaling the size of our church, think there's just, I mean, every weekend we need to have three welcome teams, three Riverwood Kid teams, three usher teams, three worship teams, like three of everything because of three venues, right? And I think that that's been certainly difficult.
the complexities of this kind of operation where you've got before COVID we had seven services, we're at six right now. But we got six live worship services a weekend plus online plus six buildings. You know, it's just, there's a lot of complexity to that and managing, you know, I was never trained to be HR or manage a staff the size we have or a budget size we have. So.
Yeah, those are challenges. then COVID, mean, for all of us, right? I COVID was just that, you know, proverbial Mack truck that that slammed into all of us. we not only did we have to, of course, pivot, but there was there was stuff that got lost in COVID, including one third of our congregation. Right. I mean, just where did they go? All right. So we were still dealing with that. And the just it changed the the.
Rob Chartrand (33:55.13)
Great.
Todd Petkau (34:20.136)
the vibe of our services, changed the ethos of our church. People just aren't as ready to go out or ready to volunteer. There's just an inwardness that happened after COVID that we've not been able shake necessarily. All those are certainly some of big challenges.
Rob Chartrand (34:40.014)
Yeah, wow. Yeah, so it everything has not been up and to the right easy going. There's been three steps forward, two steps back all along the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you and I spoke about this previously, I mean, you obviously have a complex organization. mean, complexity in locations and sites and staffing and whatnot. But you have talked about the importance of good governance for your church.
Todd Petkau (34:49.552)
It's a slog. It's a slog. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (35:08.41)
I wonder if we could go in that direction for a little bit. Why is that so important to you?
Todd Petkau (35:11.337)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm kind of now the poster child of policy governance and I never used to be. So probably about five or six years ago with all those complexities, we had an elder team that operated in such a way that they were wonderful people. I loved them. They were good leaders, but they all had very diverse backgrounds, very diverse careers and their own personal finances and all these things.
Rob Chartrand (35:39.715)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Petkau (35:40.388)
The reason I mentioned that is because every time I needed to make a decision, I needed to go to the elders, get their permission. So if I wanted to take our staff on a trip conference, I would need to get permission. If I wanted to do a week off for a study break, I need to get permission. So all these different things, was all and it became very, very heavily micromanaged. But what drove me nuts is based on what they had for supper or what their background was or whatever, their decisions were never consistent and I could never count on it.
It was all based on something very, very subjective. And we all recognized that this was not the best way to govern at the size we were growing. So I started looking into policy governance. I'd heard of it. Carver has the book on policy governance. Long story short, we ended up hiring a policy coach. Cost us 10 grand, which the other thing you need to know about Riverwood and about my leadership is I'm extremely cheap. And that's why we have.
recycled buildings and we take every dollar and we just stretch it as far as it possibly can go. And so spending $10,000 on a consultant was unbelievably outside of my idea of what we should be doing. But we pushed through and it was probably the best $10,000 we ever spent. Began to put these policies in place. So for the people that don't maybe understand policy governance really quick, it's basically for me, it's 75 fence posts that are that
form a playground around me and it's quite a large playground. And the idea is that the elders have set 75 policies that if you go outside of this policy, for instance, I'm not allowed to buy a building. No more buildings can be bought without the elders permission, right? So if I went and put a down payment on a building or sold a building, I would be outside of that. I'm not allowed to run a deficit at the end of the year. need to have an, you know, and so.
I'm not allowed to mistreat my staff. there's so all of these 75 fence posts are around us. They've already determined what those things are. And what it does is it creates this great big playground where I get to play wherever I want in that playground, providing I'm not stepping outside of the boundaries. And so now, you know, when I wanted to take my staff to Orlando to the to exponential conference and it was going to cost us whatever it was, $25,000, whatever.
Todd Petkau (38:03.142)
I looked and it was all within the policy. And so I had the elders automatic blessing and support. I didn't have to go asking for permission. So it is just streamlined things so much. And on the other side, it's freed up our elders to do more elder education, have every one of our staff in two at a time, just to spend 45 minutes with them, say, tell it, this isn't a performance review, just.
Tell us what's going on in your area. How can we bless you? How can we pray for you? What can we do to support you? It's made them so much, if I can use this term, so much more human in their leadership and more caring. And so they're going on praying for people and then they do their policy stuff as they need to, but it takes a fraction of the time of what that stuff used to take. yeah, I'm, you know, took.
It took me probably three years to finally get my monitoring reports in order and to figure out what all the evidence is. Like it was hard, hard work, but it was absolutely worth it. And it has put us in such a better place. Our elders are healthier, their leadership is more effective, and my own leadership is far more effective and less frustrated.
Rob Chartrand (39:11.982)
Yeah, yeah, no, well, I'm a big fan of policy governance. think as you know, I have a side consultancy where I work with churches and not-for-profits in helping them with policy governance. Matter fact, last night, there's a board in Mushta that I volunteer for, I've just pro bono said, well, I'll just help us with our policy governance and to refine it and re-script it. So yeah, if you can free up your executive director or your lead pastor,
to do the work that they need to do without, you know, a thousand permissions needed to try and do it. Your organization's gonna be far more effective and far more efficient at the end of the day.
Todd Petkau (39:53.512)
Yeah, my only warning on this is don't call something policy governance. I'm working with an organization right now that says they're operating by policy governance. But when I took a deeper look into it, they have some policies, but they're not actually functioning in a meaningful way the way it's supposed to. Right. And so if you do that, you're kind of tricking yourself into saying, we operate by policy governance. But you don't really because you're not actually monitoring or reporting. So you're left with a huge liability.
Rob Chartrand (39:59.578)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (40:10.254)
That's right.
Todd Petkau (40:22.31)
And so if anybody is going to get into it, you have to be fully committed and it's going to be a process.
Rob Chartrand (40:22.394)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (40:27.864)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is value. I know it costs you $10,000 to get the consultant, but you have expertise and it's and it's not wasted time like they they you are a busy leader, right? And for you to actually give that dedicated time to the writing and to the training and all of that. That's like a whole learning curve, right? But if you can outsource it to an expert, bring them in for a season and then and then let them go. I mean, it is
It is very liberating for organizations to do that. And I'm not just making work for myself. I'm just saying the experience I've seen other organizations do the same thing. It's just worthwhile. Yeah. So I noticed something on your website as well. You have this thing you've been doing for this past year called Catechism in a Year. Can you explain what that is?
Todd Petkau (41:01.237)
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. It's true.
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Todd Petkau (41:19.604)
Yeah, I did not grow up with Advent. I did not grow up with catechism. I didn't grow up with many of these mainline anchor sort of spiritual experiences. you know, somebody asked me the other day, where did this come from? And I said, you know what? We always want to be innovative as a church. And I guess my innovation was going back and doing something we've never done before, which happens to be a really old practice.
Rob Chartrand (41:31.844)
Right. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (41:47.956)
And so it caused me to dive into what is catechism? Because I had no clue, you know, what it really was. so we decided to do and what was meeting that, I guess, was that I have this conviction that our people are becoming increasingly biblically illiterate and theologically illiterate. Right. So we thought, is there a way to to ask 52 of the hardest, most important, most difficult questions in a year, 52 weeks?
and answer those questions, but in a way that doesn't bore people and doesn't, you know, cause them to to disconnect and fall asleep. And so, yeah, we just we just wrapped up 52 weeks of teaching. our people are people are asking, can we do catechism in a year two? And it's like, you've got to be kidding me. We just finished this. But it was incredibly rich for us. And we kept it alive and fun. And so every month we had a different theme.
We built on our app, we built a resource page that had notes and videos. had the entire message squeezed into 60 seconds on video. had take-home questions. It had fillable note pages, Bible reading for the week and so on. And so it just allowed us to hit every single one of the most important.
topics and questions that a catechism typically would. And a catechial, just as a side, catechial in the New Testament interpreted doctrine actually means echo or resounding. So we call it echoes, catechism in a year. We didn't do the actual call out question and answer back, but we didn't do it in that way. We just use it as a construct. But it actually follows some stuff we've been doing over the last number of years. We did chapter a day for three years.
Rob Chartrand (43:27.139)
okay, okay.
Todd Petkau (43:39.892)
And so it was 1189 days, 1189 chapters in the Bible. I blogged every single day for 1189 days on the chapter for the day. So our people were following along with us. They read the chapter. And then on the weekend we would preach somewhere out of those seven chapters that we just read. And it took us three years to get through. And prior to that, know, sometime earlier we'd done Route 66, which was every book of the Bible, you know.
in a weekend. So we've just been doing a lot of stuff to call people back to the Word and to theology.
Rob Chartrand (44:16.25)
Yeah, so just to clarify, you for your catechism for each of those, you didn't have like a question with a specific response that they would, you know, a very short like a Twitter length type of response. Yeah. What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Okay.
Todd Petkau (44:27.868)
No, no, we had a question. Yeah, right. Yeah, no, we modified it that we had the question really clear and short and then on the app is but it's usually a longer answer like probably two sentences, not something you would just call out. But we just wanted to use the construct concept of catechism and the topics and, you know, and being able to hit the essentials and all those things. So.
Rob Chartrand (44:40.986)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (44:53.986)
Yeah, and I think that purist question, truncated question version is much more newer in the long history of catechism. mean, catechism, I think, finds its origins in Judaism and in the rabbinical schools as well. And then it changed for the church through the centuries.
Todd Petkau (45:02.504)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Todd Petkau (45:08.924)
Right. Yeah. And it's bizarre because there are some catechisms with 1500 questions, 395 questions. I found that there's like all sorts, right? So we just thought, we felt freedom to make our own and to make it really alive and fun and energized and important and relevant. And our people responded remarkably. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (45:15.832)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (45:28.408)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (45:31.94)
Yeah. So what's the cultural trend that you're confronting with your catechism? Why is it important to you guys?
Todd Petkau (45:40.658)
Yeah, you know, I think we, one of things we want to do with the grads is we're hoping to set it up as a discipleship center where we actually offer Bible college level classes and other classes. And just we've missed out. think the pendulum always swings, right? And so we used to have adult Sunday schools and lots of adult Bible studies and different classes like that. that kind of pendulum swings over to life groups and home groups and small groups.
Rob Chartrand (45:48.484)
Mm-mm.
Todd Petkau (46:09.94)
which are really great, but then they kind of miss out on the meat of some of that stuff. And I think for us, the pendulum is sort of swinging back where we're saying, hey, let's do the relational stuff. Let's do the missional stuff, but let's not be afraid to get into the a little bit more heady, a little bit more theological, a little bit more challenging and let's equip people right so that they have the answers. And one of the things that we wanted to do with that app. And we told our people this in the last weekend again was no matter where you go, you're carrying the entire catechism.
questions and answers. So should you ever get into a conversation with somebody and you're not sure about any of these questions, you have it on your phone, you have it with you. We wanted to equip people, you know, and that's just kind of a modern day, I guess, way of equipping people in a, in a relevant way where they're carrying it with them all the time, right? But that, I think that's where it just becomes really important to us that those foundations are, we live in an individualistic relativistic.
society and the more relativism, I mean, we bump into it all the time. What is Orthodox? What is true faith? Right. And so everybody has their own idea. And the further you allow people just to everybody create their own, you lose your unity and you lose some of that sense of, yeah, just kind of solid foundations. Right. So we're not dogmatic about it. I mean, we leave room. We just did the end times, which was the last chapter, you know, echoes on the future.
Of course, there's many, many heightened emotions around the end times, And so we just, I think we were able to bring it down to a place where we respect everybody's interpretation, you know, and acknowledge it, but at least we know about it. And at least we help people kind of know where they land.
Rob Chartrand (47:37.86)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (47:51.64)
Yeah. So that app, did you have somebody in your church design it or do you outsource it to another group?
Todd Petkau (47:58.126)
So it's on our Subsplash app and we were able to just modify our own app to include a tab. So on the Riverwood app, we have a tab called Echoes. And if you go in there, it's got everything is in there. So it's just on our existing app. wasn't a separate app. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (48:09.7)
wow. Yeah. Very cool. When you think about your discipleship school, are you thinking that you want it to be more just advanced discipleship training or are you hoping that it'll be accredited somehow with another school?
Todd Petkau (48:24.242)
No, we're not at the place where it's accredited, but I mean, we don't have any place in our church for those who would want to know how does evangelism work and how do I share my faith? We don't have a place for that. What does the book of first Peter say? How do I become more spiritual disciplined in the disciplines? We just don't have a place other than Sunday morning if we happen to be hitting that topic or if your life group happens to be studying that, we don't have a solid place for those things.
Rob Chartrand (48:34.318)
Yeah.
Todd Petkau (48:53.908)
We have baptism class, have alpha, we have a few of these touch points, but it's just not as full as we need it to be and as specific as we want it to be. yeah, unfortunately we're taking a little longer to develop this than I was hoping, and that's on my shoulders, but that's really the idea behind it.
Rob Chartrand (49:17.398)
You guys seem to have developed a lot in the last six years. So I'd say as a friend, cut yourself some slack. That's a lot of change. And the diversity of the different things that you're doing and how they fit together, but are also so very different. That's pretty incredible. What about your staff? Where do your staff come from?
Todd Petkau (49:20.404)
So I get a bit of a pass, do I?
Yeah. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (49:37.747)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:44.836)
Do you raise them up from within? Do you hire from without? There's a bit of a blend.
Todd Petkau (49:49.524)
It's a bit of a blend. Our preference is always to hire from within. And we've got some great success stories of that. In fact, my second in command, our associate pastor of community has been with me since he was a junior high student when I was a youth pastor and then all the way up through Bible school and started the church with us. And now is leading this major component of our church. So I mean, that is just the best, right?
and we have a number of stories like that. have hired from outside. We've had mixed success. I would probably say we're 50-50. The ones that we have now are great that we've hired from the outside, but that's always a little more. You really don't know what you have for two years. We're trying to raise up people from within and that's certainly our preference.
Rob Chartrand (50:39.374)
Now you have your own because you're independent, have your own, it seems to me a very sophisticated ordination process. I wonder if you could talk about that.
Todd Petkau (50:49.428)
Yeah, we call it pastoral distinction. Is it sophisticated? I don't know. It's compared to what it... Yeah. Well, compared to what I did with the Christian Missionary Alliance to become ordained, I managed to take my two-year ordination experience and squeeze it into five years. And it just took forever. It was so intimidating. no, so we... we... In fact, we have somebody right now who has got some Bible school, has got...
Rob Chartrand (50:54.338)
Well, I mean, it's certainly laid out and it's certainly public, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (51:07.502)
Yeah, yeah.
Todd Petkau (51:19.006)
their Bible school degree, isn't known as a pastor at our church, but is now in a role that would be potentially pastoral. So I'm anticipating that she's going to be asking to get into the pastoral distinction process, which takes about a year. There's some mentorship there. There's some papers that are required. There's preaching and doing some assessing of their preaching and so on. There's an interview with the elders, but it's not a grilling test interview in the same way.
And then once we get to the end of that, if the elders and myself are able to affirm them as pastor, then we will have a moment of celebrating them. So it's, yeah, I think in some settings it's a lot harder than that. In other settings, it's you're a pastor, you're a pastor, everybody's a pastor, and we didn't want to do that, right? So we wanted to make it meaningful, but not too arduous either, so.
Rob Chartrand (52:06.169)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (52:13.21)
Yeah, I think it's rigorous compared to a lot of autonomous local church governed, congregationless churches would have. is it true? Like I'm looking at your history. mean, you've been with Baptists Mennonite. No, your background is Alliance for sure. Were there any other?
Todd Petkau (52:19.026)
Hmm. Okay. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (52:32.88)
Right. Just as a kid, as a kid I was, you know, in some of those other churches, but no, it's just Christian Mission Alliance since high school. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (52:37.878)
Okay, yeah, yeah. So you're taking the rigor of that and applying it to a local church setting and saying, well, this is what it could look like for us independently. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (52:46.834)
Yeah, yeah. mean, we, we borrowed when we started, we loved our, the mother church and had no issues there. And we just borrowed their statement of faith because we didn't, you know, we didn't need to write our own. So, yeah, so there's certainly has been influence like that, in our background.
Rob Chartrand (53:00.207)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, how do you do that in a congregationalist setting where you're ordaining your own people and to apply rigor to that is great. I think it's fantastic. Well, as we close, I wonder if you could share a word of encouragement to our listeners, our ministry leaders across the country today.
Todd Petkau (53:10.92)
Yep. Right. Yeah.
Todd Petkau (53:24.948)
Hmm. Yeah, you know, I guess I would say that you're going to face challenges. They might be having to fire staff or you might be threatening to get sued or might be building permits or any of a million challenges that we pastors and ministry leaders face. I just want to acknowledge that I think the greatest challenge we'll ever face is actually from within. I'm just really
very aware of mental health and mental wellness these days. So I would just, guess my challenge would be take care of yourself and your soul, because you will be able to increase your capacity to serve better if you're healthy. But I think especially in these last four years after COVID, I think there is a tremendous hit being taken on our minds and on our psyches. And you might not even be aware of it, but I would just, would talk about it.
I would, know, when Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn, it's literally blessed are those who get what's on the inside out. And, you know, I've always tried to use that. Like whatever's on the inside, I think that's going to be your biggest challenge. And what will probably take you down is probably not the outside circumstances or challenges. My guess is that you can rise to those, but it's the inside stuff that will wear you down and will.
secretly knock your feet out from under you. And so I just, know, whether you're struggling with a particular sin or, or habit or something that you are embarrassed to talk to somebody else about, pay attention to that stuff. If it's a worry, if it's a, mental, you know, kind of messaging that continues to just go around, around, around in your head, pay attention to that stuff big time. And I guess the other thing would simply be, don't be afraid to innovate. I think,
Far too many of us plan our visions looking backwards at other churches and what are they doing and what are their buildings like and what are their services like? And I think we have enough cookie cutter churches. I would encourage you to go to the Lord and knock on heaven's door and say, give me something different, give me something unique, give me something fresh, give me something innovative and that maybe I can do that is gonna be a bit of trailblazing into the future as opposed to simply doing what everybody else is doing.
Rob Chartrand (55:49.366)
Amen. Todd Betco, thank you for joining us on Church in the North.
Todd Petkau (55:52.564)
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.
Rob Chartrand (55:56.378)
I look forward to visiting your site one day. Yeah, All right, take care.
Todd Petkau (55:58.516)
Awesome. All six of them. All right. Yeah, bye.