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WHEN the leaders at Crofton Community Centre were
searching for ways to reach out to the younger people in their growing
community of 2,500, a few years ago, they looked to nearby Camp Qwanoes for
help.
The camp, a long-established facility owned by
Fellowship Baptist churches on Vancouver Island, was able to provide
summertime help But several Qwanoes leaders sensed that, on a year-round
basis, the community needed a more permanent Christian presence
Meanwhile, Scott and Tammy Carruthers were living in
Parksville. He was discipleship minister at Parksville Baptist Church.
Scott had a degree in organizational development from
Spring Arbor University, a Michigan Free Methodist institution, and had
been an outreach pastor in Michigan.
The people who wanted a church invited the Carruthers
to move to Crofton, a pulp mill town a few miles northwest of Duncan.
On January 14, 2007, Warmland Community Church held its
first service in the community centre. Some 20 months later, average weekly
attendance is close to 200.
Scott is pastor; Russ Smith (formerly of Hokus Pick),
Steve Gieger (also called Stevie-G) and Tammy Carruthers serve respectively
as music, youth and children’s leaders.
Just four months after the church started, a reporter
from the Cowichan Citizen turned up to see what was happening.
“We were in the middle of a series on the theme
‘Hockey is life; the rest is details,’” Carruthers
recalls.
To the reporter, Lexi Bainas, the “church”
looked like a hockey arena, “as parishioners dressed in their
favourite team colours, or referee black and white.”
Carruthers told Bainas: “We are trying to think
outside the box when it comes to church. Our belief is that there’s
nothing wrong with the message of the Bible.
“The principles are eternal. They’ve always
worked and always will work. We want to make it practical, so that people
can walk away understanding very clearly what the message was, and they are
able to put it into practice in their life.”
Carruthers has developed several different series, some
based on biblical books, like St. Luke’s Gospel. And they talked for
a few weeks about the seven deadly sins.
One series – about marriage, home life and
raising children – was cleverly titled ‘Desperate
Households,’ a takeoff on the popular TV series, Desperate Housewives.
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‘Warmland’ is an English abbreviation of
the aboriginal word Cowichan – meaning ‘the land warmed by the
sun.’
“We are designed to reach people who normally
don’t go to church. We usually begin with a secular song that ties in
to the message,” says Carruthers. The sermon comes at the beginning
of the service, preceding the worship music.
“When people first come in, their minds are
fresh; they are ready, and you have their attention,” the pastor
notes.
In addition to the Sunday services, a big emphasis at
Warmland is on the mid-week Life Groups. There are five groups of around a
dozen people each, meeting three weeks a month for study and getting
involved on the fourth week in some kind of community service project.
And the baptismal services are a little different, as
well.
“There have been 37 baptisms since we started,
most of them in the community pool,” notes Carruthers. “We call
it a ‘pool and DQ party’ – because we bring in ice cream
afterward, to celebrate.”
And the leadership envisages the day when the several
under-churched communities in the Cowichan Valley might spawn Warmland
‘satellites.’
The pastoral team has been keeping in touch with other
longer-existing churches in the Cowichan Valley, both to draw on experience
and to see where Warmland’s unique approach fits. The monthly
ministerial meetings provide one such opportunity to maintain contact.
Carruthers says Mark Buchanan, the well-known author
who pastors Duncan’s New Life Community Baptist Church, has been open
and helpful. In both 2007 and 2008, Warmland rented a school bus to take
Crofton children to New Life for vacation Bible school during the summer.
Contact: warmland.org.
September 2008
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