Seven years ago I experienced the greatest grief of my life when I lost my sister to cancer. In the months and years that followed her death, I learned a lot about grief, as I stumbled my way through it. Because I am a pastor and had some training in grief counselling, I thought I…
I admit that what often holds me back from writing these days is the feeling that there is not much left to say. I mean, if you see me in person, I have lots to say (insert winky face), but when it comes to social media, it seems like there is always SO MUCH being…
When our building closed back in March, the wonderful folks who maintain it decided to do much needed maintenance. We have a child care centre that rents from us five days a week, so getting to work in those spaces is difficult. With the centre closed indefinitely, our property team went to work on a…
On June 1, I celebrate fifteen years since I started in the role as Lead Pastor at Mount Hamilton Baptist Church. (Yes, for those of you wondering, I started when I was 15…Insert polite laughter here for CLASSIC PASTOR JOKE!!!). But seriously, I started in this job when I was 27 and most days I…
When I started my Masters program, one of the first tasks we did as part of one of our courses was completing the Myers-Briggs personality inventory. One of the markers on this inventory is “Extroversion” or “Introversion.” When I did the test and met with the facilitator afterwards, I found out that I had scored…
I have the great blessing/horror of having kept very detailed diaries throughout my teen years. They are quite entertaining, but the truth is that when I read them, I spend as much time cringing as I do laughing. I have always been what you might call a “challenger.” I am the person who asks the…
When the tide turned a few weeks back and we started to see the rounds of cancellations beginning, our church, like many others, had to ask the hard questions: Should we cancel our in person worship service? How big a deal would that be? Could people manage without them? Soon, we paused our in person…
I know it may sound a little trite in light of the much more serious losses all around us right now, but I’m just going to say it: I am sad about losing Easter. Easter is my very most favourite holiday of the year. And at our church, we do Easter big. I literally started…
Week one was busy. There were so many things to figure out. There were new routines and constant processing and dealing with what was right in front of us. It was moving to our online worship time and calling everyone in church and a thousand meetings. I didn’t have much time to think about anything.…
A few months ago I mapped out the series of sermons I would preach for the next few months. I wanted to talk about a simple concept: love. Each week we would consider what love looks like in a real way. And each week we would look at parts of the story of Jesus to…
Leanne Friesen 