By Gerry Taillon
Reprinted from the June, 2017 CNBC Horizon
Change has been a constant in the CNBC for many years. We seek to develop the best possible initiatives to serve our Lord and His churches. While I have served as the CNBC national ministry leader we have seen many changes and transitions.
The Lord has blessed us with a well-developed church planting strategy. Our church planters have been assessed, trained and supported, and there has never been a time where we have seen more successful new churches. Across Canada we have partnered with the North American Mission Board to work with more than 15 church planter catalysts and Send City missionaries. The CNBC church planting team is strong and effective.
Although the regional team for church planting is well developed and serving across Canada, the same cannot be said for the team that serves existing churches. In the past that team all resided in Cochrane and worked out of the national office. This of course has been inadequate given the distances from sea to sea, but was all we could do with existing finances and structures.
Two things have changed that have permitted us to begin to provide a solution to this problem.
The first is that our churches have continued to give more and more through the Cooperative Program. The increasing generosity of CNBC churches and the growing number of new churches giving has enabled us to address this critical need.
The second change is the CNBC restructuring that is being implemented across Canada with our regional associations. We have restructured our relationship with regional associations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the Atlantic Provinces. Beginning in 2018 we will extend the restructuring to Quebec and Manitoba, leaving only British Columbia which is in negotiations right now.
One of the key elements in the restructuring is the creation of a new position to minister to our existing churches. The new position is called regional ministry leader and is shared by both national and regional entities. CNBC national leaders and CNBC regional leaders cooperate to minister to our existing churches helping them to address their needs and connecting them with available resources. Today we have four regional ministry leaders and soon we will have five (Northern Alberta is currently searching for a candidate). They are: Dwight Huffman (Southern Alberta), Steve Fish (Saskatchewan), Jason McGibbon (Ontario), and Derek Jones (Atlantic). In 2018, we will add two more regional ministry leaders for Quebec and Manitoba.
Although virtually all our regional ministry leaders are part-time, I am excited about the possibility of having CNBC ministry closer to our churches and their leaders. Along with a strong church planting team we are deploying an effective existing church ministry which will enable us to address the needs and concerns of all our churches right across Canada.
None of this would be possible without the generous giving of our churches to the Cooperative Program. When you give, you partner with churches all over the world who are willing to give themselves away to advance the Kingdom of God.
| COCHRANE—After seven and a half years at the helm of Bow Valley Baptist Church, Dwight Huffman has returned to what is a new position with the Canadian National Baptist Convention (CNBC).
Huffman, who was on the CNBC staff from May 2000 through July 2009, first as a catalytic missionary for Western Canada and then as the national team leader for church planting, was called in 2009 as Bow Valley’s pastor. He is returning to the national convention in a new role as regional team leader. |
