By Lloyd Mackey

Dan Watt now pastors in Vernon

How to keep a church a growing organism – rather than just an organization – in times of rapid change?

Dan Watt, the new pastor of First Baptist Church, Vernon, has had a fair opportunity to think about both subjects recently, as he and his wife, Sharon, dealt with both issues.

The Watts – fairly recent empty-nesters, as their three adult sons are all involved in various Christian ministry situations – were making the move in mid-December, to their new home.

Just five weeks before, having been confirmed in a unanimous call by the Vernon congregation, the Watts drove to the Okanagan city to try to nail down purchase of a property they had been eyeing from a distance for several weeks.

That same weekend, their Victoria realtor had an open house set up for the place they were hoping to sell.

A few days before, the college age home group they host had prayed with them that they would receive some direction from God about the house matter.

The Watts offered successfully on the Vernon place, sensing that the $40,000 drop in asking price over the previous weeks was perhaps one of the signals they had been looking for.

As they headed back to Victoria, Dan and Sharon received a cell phone call from their realtor, following the open house. There were four offers.

“He told us there was a bit of a feeding frenzy,” Dan quipped.

One of the four offers was completely clean and for the full price. They accepted.

In some ways, for the Watts, the sale and purchase represented rapid change – and the need for both guidance and clear decision-making during such times of change.

Watt is returning to leadership of a congregation, from several years’ denominational responsibility for church planting and congregational health, in the Baptist Union of Western Canada. The move will give him a chance to test some of his recent experience on the ground, so to speak.

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First Baptist, Vernon, is 100 years old. It is one of five Baptist congregations established in the Okanagan a century ago, in a period of mission development and ministry renewal at the beginning of the 20th century.

Watt sees the challenge in churches like First, Vernon, relating to such matters as the “recognition of the lordship of Christ and Christian discipleship – and the ability of the church to become mission-shaped.”

Part of the test, he says, is encouraging the church to recognize itself as “much more organic, a living organism.

“Latent within the church, God has equipped it with a DNA that can make it adaptive to a changing context,” Watt says.

He maintains that need for a God-guided ability to adapt grows out of the societal move from slow change to rapid.

Communities need churches that are alternatives to big box or seeker-based congregations, he points out – cautioning that he is not attacking other church models, but simply encouraging the options.

First, Vernon, has had five pastoral changes in the past decade. That situation has left its toll, Watt suggests.

Particularly difficult for the congregation was the sudden death, two years ago, of Wes De Zeeuw, a strong and experienced pastor who was in the prime of life. He had been at the church for only a year and a half.

Watt also suggests that a move in the winter, from one ministry to another, seems difficult – perhaps “the worst possible timing.”

But he also believes that, in this case, it is God’s timing, because it brings congregation and the new pastor together, “in what might be seen as the darkest time of the year.”

In working at encouraging good spiritual health in a church, Watt speaks of a “Christ-centred theology.”

And he agrees with psychologist Larry Crabb, who writes of “a deepened encounter with God that leads to genuine transformation” in life of the congregation. And that, he says, would hopefully lead to “transformation in the rest of the community.”

January 2008