Church in the North

Hey, friends. Welcome to the Church in the North podcast prequel. My name is Rob Chartrand, and I am here with, my friends Geoff Dresser and Dan Goddard. Say hello, gentlemen.

Hello.

Hey, Rob.

Hey. Hey. We're doing this little bit, together, just to give you a little bit of an insight into what this podcast is about that's gonna be dropping this fall. The podcast, just a real short to start, is , a conversation we're having with church leaders just north of the 49th Parallel.

So we're gonna get them to share their stories with you. We're gonna learn from them. We're gonna grow with them. And, before each interview, however, we're gonna have a little bit of a preshow, which is us 3 guys gabbing together. So we thought it would be important for, you, our listeners, to get to know us before this thing drops in just a few weeks.

So we're gonna go around the circle. We're gonna introduce ourselves, guys. Why don't we start, with you telling us about your background? What's your day job? What is it that you do? And and let us know a little bit, about your families as well. So, we'll start with you, Dan.

Alright. Well, it's great to be here. I'm excited about this podcast. And, a little bit about my background. I'm a pastor now in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, is where I pastor. And I grew up in a nice Mennonite church actually, so have a faith upbringing, and then started pastoring actually really young, while I was in Bible college, funny enough. I started as as a

You too?

Yeah, see? Crazy world. Started youth pastoring even before I was married. So we actually got married a year into ministry, which is a little bit chaotic, honestly, that whole world. But served in the same church for 13 years in quite a few different roles, pastoral roles, and then moved out here for the last 15 years.

Where is out here?

In Moose Jaw now. It's been 15 years. So, yeah, that's my church world, pastoral world background.

Yeah. And if any of our listeners don't know, we are actually recording this podcast out in the little town of Caronport, Saskatchewan, outside of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, which is where the campus of Briarcrest College and Seminary is. So Dan made the huge commute

Huge drive, yeah.

Huge 12 minutes, drive to come out here and to record with us. But, Geoff, talk to us about... oh, wait. Did you tell us about you told us all about your family?

No. I can tell you about my family. Yeah. So I got married, as I mentioned, partway into ministry, so I've been married now 26 years, and married up. I'm very, very thankful for my wonderful wife, and we are actually newly empty nesters. So we got 3 kids that are all grown and living in various places across Canada and the US. And, yeah, we're very very blessed with our...

Empty nesting is a good gig, right?

Adult kids. It actually is.

All this money now. Like, what where did it all go?

I think so. That's what I'm told.

Awesome. Hey, Geoff. Talk to us about yourself.

Well, my name is, Geoff Dresser, and, I did not start pastoring when I was in university still. In fact, my undergrad was in electrical engineering, and I worked in high-tech for 10 years. But I grew up in a musical family, and we were always doing music in the church as I was growing up. So even when I was working in high-tech, I was in charge of the worship ministry at my church, and then God called me into that full time.

And so I served in the church where my wife and I were attending in Ottawa. I was there for 5 years, and then, left there and moved out to Winnipeg, where my wife and I, yeah, lived in Winnipeg. Oh, we loved Winnipeg. I loved Winnipeg. I will not speak for my wife, on that. And, and then, most recently moved out here, and I'm on faculty at Briercrest. And my side hustle is I'm the worship pastor at Dan's church.

Okay. Yeah. Two guys at the same church. This could be a dangerous conversation. Okay. Alright.

We might team up on you here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we just might.

There's also 2 senior pastors against a worship pastor.

Okay. That's true.

I'm outnumbered.

Good.

So family, talk to about that.

Yeah. So, got married in, like, my 3rd year in university. So I got married, young. And then we have 3 boys, all grown. We are also empty nesters. We've been empty nesters for a couple of years. And, a couple of them have graduated and settled in Winnipeg. We have one of them got married last summer, and the other one is going to university in Ontario.

Wow. Okay. So, I mean, all 3 of us are empty nesters. So we've just lost, like, half our audience just from the gate. Because, I mean, if we're not young and cool and, hip, you know.

Well, speak for yourself on that. But

Well, alright. Yeah. So, I'll introduce myself, Rob Chartrand. I have been in pastoral ministry for, wow, almost 30 years. Yeah. So I actually started in Moose Jaw, went to Regina, was in Thunder Bay, then we were in Toronto, Markham, Ontario, which is the GTA, and then we made our way out to Edmonton. We spent most of our time in Edmonton in ministry. That was our longest stint, which was about 16 years there.

I was an executive pastor at, Beulah Alliance, and then we planted a church that we dearly loved and served there for 12 years. And then just this last year, we got, the call and, felt Lord leading us to Briercrest here. And I'm the program coordinator for Christian ministry and professor here as well and do some teaching and just working on raising up a new generation of future leaders for the church. Love what we're doing. Married. Got married young. So I was 21. My wife was 20, and so we kinda grew up together

Nice.

And served in the church all through that time. As soon as we were married, we've been in the church together. And I got 2 daughters. They're both married, and they both got husbands and a dog, their own dog, each of them. And, yeah, now that I'm an empty nester, like I said, suddenly, I got all this money. It's amazing. Not forking it out hand over fist all the time in every school function. But, grandkids maybe one day will show up, and then you're you're using your money again. So we're gonna love it while we got it.

Alright. Talk to us about hobbies. What do you guys do for fun, for kicks? Geoff, tell us, what do you do? Let us know.

I mean, I feel like my I play guitar and sing, and I love that. But that's kinda not a hobby because that's kinda my

It's kinda workish .

Yeah. I mean, I love to to work out fitness and, and I also love to read. And for fun, I read sort of military naval espionage novels is my genre.

Okay, didn't you write a fiction book?

Yeah. I also did write a fiction book Alright. Called Mountaintop available wherever fine books are are sold.

Yeah. Okay. Like Amazon? Like

yep. Yep. It's on Amazon.

Print on demand or something?

Yeah. It's a print on demand.

Kindle too?

Yup, kindle too.

Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. Alright. Dan, how about you?

Yeah. I mean, I always hate it when people ask hobbies because, you know, your brain goes blank or you think, oh, I don't know. I'm a boring person or whatever. But, during COVID, I actually started running, so that's been a hobby for me now and actually been one that I have really enjoyed. I do a lot of reading and I actually, yeah, I enjoy learning and enjoy biographies, memoirs, and various other kinds of reading, psychology, lots of different stuff. I coach too. I coach badminton. High school badminton. Yeah.

Really? Cool.

That's pretty fun.

I didn't know that.

And, yeah.

Very niche.

Yeah. It is a little bit niche. I also play foosball if anybody wants to, you know, or table tennis.

Yeah. Table hockey.

Yeah. Yeah. I could try my hand at that. So, you know, a few fun things to do.

Foosball. Well, that's I mean, anyone who's been a youth pastor has to know how to play foosball a little bit.

Yeah. Cool. Wow. Okay. So you have you have you run any races, like, you when you run?

I have not done an official race. No. I just race against myself so far, but I will enter a race one of these days, and, yeah, for long distance kinda well, long ish distance running, maybe a half marathon or a 10 k.

Well, I mean, you got the body type for it. I don't have the body type for long distance. I mean, I've run long distance.

My body is more designed for smashing things rather than going long distances. Yeah. Hobbies, yeah. I mean, I have run a lot in the past. I'm starting to take up running again.

So, you know, I used to do races and whatnot, but very slow, very very slow. Play some video games. I'm unashamedly willing to admit that. I don't wanna waste my life on video games, so I try and put limits on it. Actually, my wife puts even better limits on it than I do.

And, yeah. I read, I write, garden. I like to garden a lot. Flowers and veggies. So, yeah.

Lots lots going on. So anyway, enough about us. Hey, let's talk about this podcast. We're gonna be interviewing a lot of different people and, I think I've talked a little bit about the format of the podcast, but why don't you guys tell me, what is it that you appreciate about this podcast? And what's what's gonna make it unique?

Any thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, it's in the north. Right? So that's pretty fun. It's church in Canada. Yeah.

And so, talking about this the way churches are operating, state of the church, what makes, church life what it is in Canada is unique and kinda special. And, you know, Canada is more secular, than the states, so we often hear a lot of, help and information and so on from the US, which is great, nothing wrong with that. Yeah. But, it is refreshing to hear things, right from our own country.

That's a fun thing.

You know, when we were doing the research on this podcast, we discovered that, most Canadian church leaders, I think 90% of their content or more is from south of the border, is from the US. And there's not a lot of Canadian content that's available, so that's certainly something we wanna hit on. You know, what what is it that makes us Canadian? I mean, what's, what's distinct about Canadian, material other than, you know, we really like to make fun of ourselves. But what's any any thoughts on that? What makes us the Canadian?

Well, I think like Dan mentioned, we're a much more secular culture, and I think there's also more of a suspicion of authority, maybe, that's more part of the Canadian outlook. We have this concept of the loyal opposition, and sometimes it feels like a congregation can assume that role as the loyal opposition. But, like, I'm excited about this being a Canadian, podcast because in my ministry, I mean, so many great resources from the US, but I would always have in the back of my mind this sort of niggling sense that, well, is this gonna work here?

And having to do that work of of recontextualizing things from a different culture into your culture, and then having to, and then having to convince, you know, other leaders or other church members that that something from Wade, you know, from the big bad United States is gonna work in our context. So I think it's great that that we're gonna be talking to Canadian church leaders about things that they are doing here in our culture in Canada.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I think you're right, Dan, just saying that. I mean, we're much further along the continuum of post Christian, post Christendom

Right. As as a culture. And and, and that certainly makes us different than Americans. I you know, one of the other things I was thinking is, we don't experience in Canada, or we haven't experienced to the same degree as the US what's called the polarization effect. Like, historically, in American history, there's always been kind of two sides. I mean, they had a civil war.

Right? There's, you know, Republicans and Democrats. Like, there's always this, you know, this polarization that you see so much in American culture. And I think a lot of that bleeds over in Canada Sure. Because we're so inundated with American media.

Yeah. We still have it here, but maybe not to the same extent.

Yeah, yeah. And I think since COVID, it's like really magnified in a Canadian context, but it wasn't there. But our history, you know, I read an interesting research paper many years ago from Mark Knoll, who's an American historian. And he was he was actually explaining why Canadians are different than Americans. And one of the things he talked about in Canada is is that we have, in Canada, always had to be comfortable with diversity.

Right.

Because we're French and we're English, because we had, like, the Catholic church and all these other Protestant churches as well. And so we just kinda learned to get along as Canadians, and that's why we never had a civil war and all those sorts of things. Right? So that's something that has been a big part of Canadian history and Canadian lore is, I mean, is this this idea that even though, like, we're multicultural. Right?

And then the desire to

There's more celebration of diversity

Yeah.

Yeah. I think in in Canada. Yeah.

I mean, and one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Yep. The world In the world. Toronto. Yep. Like, I mean, it's it's that's kind of our part of our Canadian ethos.

So those are I think those are some of the things we wanna get into and celebrate and and understand that, yeah, as Canadians, we are different. And as pastors trying to, as Geoff would say, contextualize the gospel in this world in our Canadian context, we really wanna understand who we are as as a Canadian group. Alright. So any any other things that you think are unique about this podcast you want us to talk about?

What do you what are you guys celebrating about that?

Well, I mean, I'm excited just to have, varied guests, different kinds of folks on talking about different things, and, you know, it's neat that we have the opportunity from our vantage point here to talk to Canadian leaders across the country and Canadian leaders who have just different experiences, different ages, different contexts, different sizes of ministries and churches, and Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's neat too.

I mean, I'm looking forward to having ethnic pastors on the congregation, on the podcast, female pastors. And and I and I what I what I do really look forward to is is giving our listeners an opportunity to hear from people they don't know. Like, they've they've Right. Some of these people would just be like these pastors working in maybe in a in a small rural town, you'd never have an opportunity to hear from them, but yet they have something very unique to offer us, right, as as as listeners. So I'm certainly looking forward to that as well.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to hearing from from real ministry leaders doing the ministry rather than, someone with a a book or a course or some other thing that they're Right. That they're promoting. And, so I I think I think that's one of the things that I'm looking forward to.

Yeah. Like, boots on the ground type of leaders rather than, well and and for us

Not that there's anything wrong with having a book to sell.

Yeah. No. No. No. Well, and some some of our interviewers, interviewees will have books.

I mean, that's but that's not why we're going after them, for sure. And, of course, we're in the academic world, Jeff, and so we always hear a lot of theory, but not always praxis and praxis. And so it's good to get get some of that perspective. Right?

Yeah. Absolutely.

I think one of the other things we wanted to, you know, make sure comes across in this podcast is this idea that we are for the church. Right? Because I think we hear a lot today, you know, with I think with the dominance of deconstruction in our culture, it's really easy to look at different ministries or different churches or whatnot and tear that down and find out what's wrong, but that's that's really not what we're all about. Our spirit in this is is more our posture is more about celebrating what God's doing and learning from other leaders. And that doesn't mean we're gonna deny that.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, we're we're, you know, if something's going wrong, we wanna

talk about it. Yeah. We wanna be honest about the challenges and and realities and things that aren't good, but, we wanna be decidedly for what God is doing in Canada and what God is doing in the church.

That's right. Yeah. Okay. Well, hey, we've already begun interviewing some of the guests that we'll be having on the show, so I wonder if I I should maybe just give give a little bit of highlights. Some of the some of the folks we're looking at, looking forward to hearing from doctor Keith Taylor.

He's just retired from Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton. And, I I love what he's bringing. Like, he's gonna be talking about resiliency. He's talking about advice he would give to a pastor in the last 10 years of ministry. Right.

And and and on the resiliency front, it's like, how do you build a life of resiliency? Because, like, he was there, like, 30 years in this in this one church. So, yeah, there's gonna be a lot that he's gonna offer to us. Robin Waller is gonna be sharing with us. He's from, Lift Church in Hamilton.

And this is a really cool church. It's it's a multi campus church that meets on university campuses in that area. And I think they've got, like, 6 or 7 campuses that they meet at. And and and what's central about their their church is it's it's a disciple making movement. So it's not the you know, you think about young adult church, you think about it as, like, this really attractional kind of model.

And and, like, they tried that for many years, but, no, they've really, really shifted towards, they want to really create world changers, who are disciples, who will ultimately go to other campuses and start other churches, for emerging adults. So it would be cool to hear from him. And, another guy that, this one, I I I don't think everybody will know him, but he's Jeremiah Kapole. He's with Send Network, and he's in Calgary. And he's gonna be talking to us about micro churches.

So Yeah. You know, and and that's I think that's really important for us is, like, we're gonna be looking at different models of ecclesiology. Like, they're all gonna look a little bit different. But micro churches and, he gives oversight to, like, 7 different different microchurches that are we're meeting in neighborhoods throughout Calgary.

Yep.

And he's training pastors on how that they can create kind of these, disciple making microchurches in their own churches as well. So, really excited to hear, his story as as well. So yeah. I mean, we got a whole gift bag full of different types of, pastors we're gonna be we're gonna be listening to.

Yeah. Sounds great. And a great, variety of, of different context that they're doing ministry in, and I think that's I'm looking forward to hearing all these.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we've got Ontario. We've got, Alberta. We're gonna be here from our prairie provinces as well.

So lots, for us to listen to. Okay. Well, hey, final details about launch. We are going to be launching this podcast in mid September, and if you wanna know more about us, where can we go?

You can go to church in the north dot ca. Yes.

And and you

can find us out there.

Yeah. And we'll also be posting on the Barker's website, and we're gonna be streaming where?

Wherever fine podcasts are streamed.

Yes. Yep. Yep. Okay. Good.

Hey, friends. Thanks for listening in, and, we are looking forward to you joining us, in mid September. Alright. Sounds good.

Looking forward to it.

Alright. Bye bye.