Connect Ministry – Journey together!
We are never meant to journey alone! At Willingdon church, each person is encouraged to discover their identity in Christ and they belong to the family in Christ. The Connect Ministry is here to help all newcomers (no matter what life stages or faith journey they are in) to know that they belong to Christ and Willingdon church family. We connected 159 people to other ministries, with over 30% of them being seekers and 69% between 20 and 39 years old.
– Nicole Yang (Pastoral Intern)
The Connect team met Afshin at the connect table in Feb. 2022. He came from Iran and grew up in a Muslim home. He was a BCIT student and lived only 2 minutes away from Willingdon church. He found out about Willingdon church through a BCIT school event. He knew no one at Willingdon church yet he longed to make friends in Vancouver. At his first visit at Willingdon church - the Connect team gave him a Farsi Bible, and when he opened up, he found the book of Ezra; he was so surprised that he recognized his home cities in the Bible. He asked many beautiful questions about who Jesus is – eventually he joined the alpha group, discovery classes and even life group. Praise God after a year at Willingdon church, he was baptized in Feb. 2023! Afshin is also a wonderful and dedicated volunteer in the café ministry! God is faithful and good! He is drawing this lost sheep back to Him - the Great Shepherd.
Events and Café Ministry – A faith journey!
The Events & Café ministry is a vibrant ministry that serves all other ministries by providing a hospitality service and facilitating an environment that fosters strong fellowship. This is often an entry point for those who are new to the church family, or for those who are still searching on their faith journey.
Our volunteers play a crucial role in creating a warm and welcoming place for everyone. While doing so, they also get nourished spiritually, and further in their walks with Jesus through the fellowship with other volunteers, and believers, and through the bonds of teamwork and friendship we have together. In the year 2022, we’ve celebrated six of our regular Café volunteers on their new journey with Christ through baptism, in unity as one church family and the Café ministry. We pray that this ministry will continue to be a welcoming place for everyone, regardless of where they are in their walks of faith and stage of life.
– Ingrid Hopkinson (Manager)
Lydia has been volunteering with us in the Café and Food Services ministry for over 12 years. She is a loving mother of two, cares for her children so much that her sole purpose of being in the church was for her son. She believed this is a good place to help her son in becoming sociable by interacting with others. At that time, she was a faithful Café volunteer that would show up with her son every Sunday, but nothing more. Through these years in the church, not only that we have witnessed her son’s growth, we have also witnessed many of God’s faithful servants leading and caring for Lydia. Lydia became curious about the Gospel, started to attend Discovery classes and learned about the truth. Through the leading of our Chinese Ministry Pastor, Lydia accepted Jesus as her personal Saviour. In March last year, together as a church family and the Café ministry, we celebrated Lydia’s new life through her baptism ceremony. Please continue to keep Lydia and the many new believers like her in your prayers. Praying that they can come as they are, finding Jesus in His perfect time. May all the glory be to God alone!
Communications and Systems – behind the scenes for Jesus!
Most communications and IT systems work at the church are invisible on Sundays, but there has been lots of activity “behind the scenes” to provide new, easy and exciting ways for you to connect with the church, others and Jesus.
Systems – In 2022 we saw our church congregation embrace new technologies that have helped modernize our administrative work at Willingdon Church. Thank you to everyone who has been patiently learning and using Church Center, online giving, and text to church.
- Managed 113 events with thousands of attendees who registered and/or paid through Church Center
- Introduced Text in Church as a method for our Connect team to communicate and meet with new visitors
- Built a dedicated Live Stream Service Media Block for the website
Our graphic design team created and designed compelling images for all ministries all year round from sermon series to new ministry initiatives to special presentations like Easter and Christmas. This year, special attention was paid to the consistent branding of our new logo (launched in 2020).
– Janis Chan (Manager)
Social Media – 2022 Takeaways
Our Communications team continued to build, post and created compelling content to draw people to take action to attend a service, watch a service online, engage in the community, attend a gathering or find out more about our church family. 2022 was a more successful year overall; reaching more people, running more successful ad campaigns and finding what kind of content engages our congregation and others better.
- We are reaching 12% (100) more accounts per post across both platforms than last year
- Our Instagram following increased by 19% and an average of 9658 accounts were reached per month
- There were a total of 29,640 engagements in 2022, a 60% increase from 2021
- Our communications team, posted over published a weekly newsletter for our 1500+ weekly subscribers
– Nathaniel Wong (Social Media Coordinator)
Building Maintenance – Caring for God’s House
The church has always been committed to an ongoing maintenance program to ensure the facilities are in sound condition, functionally and esthetically. We truly feel that it is a reflection of who we are as believers. For the past three years, due to the idling of the facilities during Covid, the elders approved the opportunity to accelerate our maintenance program and attend to some of the repairs/replacement projects which would normally have been very disruptive to our normal ministry demands on our facilities. The funds needed to carry out these maintenance projects were set aside in prior years as a result of our unified church budget disciplines. This resolution and discipline resulted in the completion of multiple substantial projects, on time, and within budget.
A few projects included:
- Completing a new roof over the main sanctuary
- Replacing HVAC equipment over the main sanctuary
- Paving the parking lot
- New windows and skylights in the older east wing
- Painting the entire exterior of the building
- Interior renovations, including painting the 1st floor, t-bar and lighting throughout hallways, 3rd-floor washrooms, carpets and paint and relocated all staff to one office area for better use of space and team camaraderie.
Meet our newest team member - James (and Maki) Buss (Senior Accountant)
From 2016 to 2022, Maki and I were serving missionaries in Japan. While in Japan, we would occasionally watch the online Willingdon worship services, primarily for me to be able to hear instruction from God’s word in my first language. In spring 2022, we saw a new worship pastor, Jerry Skaggs, and went to the Willingdon website to find out about him and his role at Willingdon Church. During that visit to Willingdon.org, I saw the church’s job posting for a senior accountant – it had been uploaded just 4 or 5 days earlier. Because of my training as a CPA and previous focused experience with Canadian registered charities, this immediately caught my attention. However, I reasoned that God provided for us to be in Japan, therefore the ministry in Japan is where my focus should be. As Jesus said in Luke 9:62, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” I purposefully dismissed the Willingdon Church accounting position from my mind.
About 4 weeks later, in May 2022, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from Penny Fuchihara, Executive Director at Willingdon, with a copy of the senior accountant job posting and asking if I would consider applying. Maki and I were both surprised, but after a few minutes of discussion, we agreed that we should pray about this. We asked 2 pastors in Japan and about 10 supporters in Canada to pray with us for a week, after which we decided to apply.
Before going on missions, a sibling shared with us “There is nothing mysterious about going on Missions. If God wants you to go on missions, He will provide the necessary financial support; if He does not want you to go on mission, He will not provide.” Into early 2022, God provided more than 100% of the financial support needed for us to continue in missions. However, during spring 2022 our financial support suddenly dropped by more than 25%. Because we were busy with summer outreach activities at Aomori Christian Centre, we were not aware of this until part-way through the interview process with Willingdon Church! God was showing us that our time in Japan was coming to an end.
By the grace of God, we’re now in Canada and serving at Willingdon Church.
