“I believe in the priesthood of all believers. And so one of the things that I have stressed ever since we’ve come there, and after I got my doctorate and beyond, I’m never to be addressed as the Reverend Dr. Glenn wooden, Dr. Glenn or Dr. Wooden, because in church, I’m a believer worshiping with others. So our congregation has a wide variety of people, we go from people who are in social assistance up to there’s one guy who has a PhD in Old Testament. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah. But we have nurses, business owners, people who are in government. So it’s a small church. . . Mostly since COVID, I’m also the tech guy. So I record all of our services, and I put them up on YouTube. And I’m also the help with music. So I’m one of the music leaders. So if there’s something to be done, basically, I get to help doing it.”
“It’s been the culture of Acadia Divinity College, that people who are faculty have to be rooted in a congregation. That is one of the things that is a requirement for us. Shouldn’t have to be, but it’s sort of is. I think of it as it keeps us rooted in ministry. Because my specialty in Old Testament is Septuagint studies. And we can get very, very esoteric, and they can have absolutely nothing to do with anything to do with theology or ministry. And we don’t really want that as we’re teaching people going into ministry.”
“What my studies and my place as a professor of Old Testament languages does is it keeps me reminded that there’s nowhere in the Bible that God says, we have to be big. In fact, one of the themes scriptures is ‘You think you want to be big. Let me show you how small you can be.’”
“God doesn’t have to get things fixed right now. And what seems like nothing now can become something major later on. So God has this long time view, and I don’t need to worry. . . . I tell my students God doesn’t care how big we are. And God doesn’t care what resources we have. And hey, guys, as you know, I know, I own all of the gold everywhere, and I can shake that out. And if you need money, I would get it for you. You just be faithful with what you’re doing. And that’s what we read in Deuteronomy. When he tells him you, I didn’t choose you, because you know, you’re great, or you’re large, I chose you because I chose you and you just need to be faithful. And if we’re faithful, God takes care of the rest.”
“But the basic focus of ministry is the same in all contexts, large and small. Um, I think we’ve got to get over some of our, our modern ways of thinking, okay. And by that, I mean, as, as the church in North America, and in Western Europe, we are very materialistic and scientific in our understanding of what we need to value in the world. . . . and I don’t think that’s helpful. So in a small church context, I think we need to stop doing that, which is hard. Because we’re part of the society, we need to stop counting, we need to stop comparing. So we like to compare, you know, balance sheets and record attendances. What we need to be focusing on is Who do we have? and What has God gifted the people we have to do?”
“So if we can be happy with who we are. I think that’s really important because we can be then free to do what God has gifted us to do. We can be free to evangelize with the small number of people that might be around. And if God adds to the church, God does, if God doesn’t, we’re happy doing the ministry that God has given to us and being faithful in that.”
“For many, many years, I’ve told people the first thing they need to do when they’re called to a new ministry, whatever kind, but especially small churches, they need to exegete the context. . . . there’s the official structure, and then the work that gets done out in the parking lot or in somebody’s living room. So you need to know what the structures are, you need to know who the real decision makers are. And I encourage students to get stats Canada, information on your community.”
“Don’t make any big plans for your first year. Don’t come with your, you know, your five steps for how you’re going to solve this Church’s problems so that in five years time we’re going to triple in size. Come and listen and hear where the people’s heartbeat is, and see what the community’s heartbeat is before you do anything. And I think we need to assess giftedness. I really think we need to be looking at what are the natural gifts, but also what are the spiritual gifts people have.”