“I was working part time at a bookstore Christian bookstore. At that time they needed an assistant manager. I applied, I got the job. It was going to be for one year and the Lord again, had other plans. . . Well, I ended up leaving the store after 25 years for a job that I was very ill suited for. . . . For the first time in my life, I found myself without work for a few weeks. And it was in that time that the men in our church really started urging me to consider going into pastoral ministries.”
“That was a very, very pivotal year for two things. Number one is the Lord gave me a real love and desire and ability to preach His Word. . . . But more importantly, that June, our denominational assembly or gathering was being held up at Laurentian University in Sudbury, and I went up there. And at the urging of our senior pastor, he said, ‘Paul, you really need to take in some of these seminars’. So there was one that caught my eye called small church ministry by Dr. Andrew Irvine. So I went to the seminar. It was just like, all the lights came flashing on. I knew this was where God was calling me at that moment. I didn’t know where or what it was going to look like. But I was going into small church ministry and that was my calling.”
“Both my wife and I kept a pile of little three by five cards in our pockets on Sunday mornings, and we would track who we were spending time with before and after the service. And then very importantly, what we did was make sure the next Sunday we didn’t gravitate back to the same people, but incorporated everybody.”
“The church was very much dependent on the pastor, they were pastor oriented. Everything had to be run by the pastor. I was used to managing a large staff and larger business. I used to have to farm things out to people all the time. I had a lot of resistance from [having] anybody other than the pastor doing certain things in the church.”
“Most of my ministry was rather informal. As far as as plans were concerned, I discovered that very early in my time at Dundee, I could do all the best laid plans I want. But if the people didn’t like them, we didn’t go anywhere with them. So I largely let them set the agenda.”
“One of my biggest concerns, was trying to move the church from inside their four walls to outside and into a village. I had enough resistance on that. A dearly loved Deacon at that time simply said, ‘Well, you know, if people want to know the Lord, they know where to find us’.”
[In response to the question of what advice to give those considering small church ministry] “Number one, stay true and faithful to the Lord, always keep coming back to him, and letting him set the agenda for the church and for your life and for the ministry. Try not to always superimpose your own ideas, because quite frankly, they’re the ones that are going to fail. . . And then the other one is always, always just remain faithful to your calling. Don’t let the grass looking greener on the other side make you think that, you know, there’s some place that actually my ministry would be so much more appreciated.”