St. Luke’s, Pembroke
Global Mission Projects: St. Luke’s, Pembroke, ON
- Archdeacon Tim Parent
We at St Luke's are involved in missions to the wider world in various ways:
1) Missionaries
We support a number of Missionaries:
a) Norm & Audrey Henderson, an IT guy & a nurse, working in Angola through SIM in hospital work and church planting. They are members of ANiC from the Ottawa area, and we are often able to have them visit in person but continue to support them year round by email, prayer and finances. They recently did a couple of online presentations which we incorporated in our recorded services. One of our young women went and spent a month helping Norm and Audrey for her own mission experience.
b) We also have had a direct connection with Madagascar orphanages and training centres through the work of another local ANiC member, Mary Sherwood and her team. Mary has visited St. Luke's on numerous occasions and we support the mission again through prayer and finances.
c) We now have a retired Missouri Synod Lutheran priest {Hank Young) worshipping with us who worked in Sudan for years. We have supported him in the past, and he is now setting us up to partner with an orphanage there in dire need.
d) Andrew Bailey is a Pembroke native active in his own church (Pentecostal I think) whose work in South Africa we support--he's currently home because of Covid and working with our town's outreach centre for those in need, The Grind.
2) Companion Parishes:
We have 3 companion parishes outside of North America with whom we correspond and have a prayer partnership.
a)Bishop Don Harvey linked us up with Christ the Redeemer parish in Recife Brazil. We have had two attempts to have in-person short term missions with them: on one occasion we wanted to send a team of about 8 people to Recife from St. Luke's, and on another we tried to have the Brazilian rector's daughter (aged 22 at the time) come to spend a month with us. Both attempts were thwarted by our respective governments who would not grant visas. We were however able to have their former rector visit us and participate in a service when he traveled with Bishop Don. Contact has been more spotty the last year or two but we continue to lift them up in prayer. We have sent them a banner, and they have sent us a missal stand which we use on our altar.
b) St. Paul's Rakaia in New Zealand. While at GAFCON in Jerusalem in June of 2018 I met The Rev. Al Drye who was contemplating, along with other New Zealand clergy and churches, to follow in ANIC's footsteps in stepping out of their liberal Anglcian church to form a new jurisdiction within GAFCON. We hit it off and I was able to share with Al our experiences at St. Luke's and coach him a little (although I am sure he has coached me just as much. By November 2018 St.Paul's was born and is now thriving. I meet with Al online every couple of months for an hour, we pray for each other as churches and share news. We have sent their parish a banner and a communion set when they were getting started. Al was to have spent a week with us just after Easter last year but unfortunately covid killed that. We have used a recorded sermon of Al's and have sent them recorded material also, and we did do a joint prayer meeting online once.
c) Also at GAFCON I made a friendship with The Rev. Philip de Gray Warter who has since formed Anchor Anglican Church in Cornwall England. We have not had as close a connection as with St. Paul's, but we have prayed for each other, sent them a communion set, and sent supportive videos to each other. I have an Anchor banner hanging in my office, and we were able to pray together with Bishop Charlie, Phil and 2 of his lay people at the ACNA Assembly in Dallas in 2019 just before they launched. Again I feel we at St. Luke's have gained more than we have given through this partnership.
We are hoping to send some members on a mission trip in the next few years, as the Lord leads, hopefully in partnership with our companion parishes or missionaries..
3) ARDF
The Anglican Relief and Development Fund Canada is regularly brought to our attention and our Outreach team helps us remember and respond to different requests for prayer and finances, local and global, For those who use offering envelopes, each month there is an envelope for donations to ARDFC.
4) Israel
We have a friendship with The Rev. Jess Cantelon and were strong supporters when he tried to launch a church plant in Israel - we were glad to host him as guest preacher on a Sunday and to hear of his work. Though not as involved now, from time to time we keep in touch with his Israel video project and hope to renew this partnership in the future.
5) Samaritan's Purse
St. Luke's has strongly supported Samaritan's Purse shoebox ministry each year.
6) Relief
We have supported occasional special relief and missions requests from time to time over the years.
Parish contact: Wendy-Lou Morency <wltorell@gmail.com>