Who wants to be conventional anyway?

I started praying and praying intentionally. I said to God, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do with whatever time I have left on earth. The answer I got was simple and clear… “Go do what you love and do it to help people who are going in a different direction in life and who need a second chance.” I’ve been a tattoo artist for 29 years and I truly love creating art to illustrate people’s stories in tattoos.

What is God Calling Us to Do?

How do we faithfully answer God’s call when we don’t know how to hear it? This 7-step process may start your church on the road to discerning your unique mission.

Five Favorite Ways to Nurture Your Faith and Care for Yourself

This summer, The Advocate has been highlighting resources – our Top Five Favorites to support and sustain faith formation and ministry. We close this series thinking about self-care. How do we nurture our own faith? What activities have nurtured our soul in this past year? The four of us at the Advocate share our self-care and faith nurturing, and we invite you to fill in Number 5. What has been the thing that has nurtured your soul? 

I’ve Always Wondered…

I’ve Always Wondered… About how we are really formed in the life of the Christian faith About how faith is nurtured and supported About who among us has gifts for spiritually being with children and youth I’ve been thinking and writing about this for a long time...

Simple Things: A Story Journey

“We’re doing a Story Journey tomorrow to go along with our church’s yard, garden and bake sale. We’re featuring Laura Alary’s book, What Grew in Larry’s Garden. We’re so excited.” My good friend, Laura Duggin, minister...

Simple Things: A Pre-School Tweak

If there is one thing we’ve learned as Christian educators during this pandemic, it’s that many of our parents were ill-prepared to take on the role of being faith-formers at home when our church buildings closed and our church programmes were shuttered. And, it...

Won’t You Be My Neighbour?

Happy Mr. Roger’s Day! It is not only a beautiful day in the neighbourhood, it is a beautiful day to go out and meet our neighbours. Mr. Rogers was above all else a good neighbour; more important than being a teacher and entertainer of children (and even their...

What Will We Tell the Children?

by Tori Smit It was a Good Friday service I will never forget. I was perhaps eight or nine years old and since children in my church rarely joined the adults in the sanctuary for any part of worship going to worship on Good Friday was a very big deal for me. I wanted...