MEET PHIL BAUMAN SIM’S NEW GLOBAL DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVE ANSWERS KEY QUESTIONS
How did God lead you and Andrea to SIM? After getting married, we allowed ourselves a year to adjust to married life and for Andrea to adjust to Canada. Then we began to explore whether God was calling us to use our professions in global missions. Four years later, we headed to Ghana with two little ones to live among the Sisaala of northern Ghana. What key things do you hope to achieve in your role with SIM? My prayer is that SIM will continue to be committed
MAY 2020 • VOL 2 ISSUE 2
What is your favourite Bible verse? One of my favourites is 2 Cor. 5:17: ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ What piece of technology could you do without/ never to without? My phone and my computer have a role in almost everything I do. I can survive without one or the other, but not both!
Q&A with an SIM leader New harvest workers
Tell us a little about your background. to accomplishing our purpose as we engage I was born in Ontario, Canada, to Christian parents communities with love and pursue kingdom and grew up in Waterloo Region, an area well known outcomes. May we focus on our purpose, our ‘why’, as Mennonite. Our family attended a gospel-centred and think creatively about accomplishing it, rather church with a strong mission emphasis. I came to than being defined by ’what we do’ or ‘how we do it’. faith at an early age, but it was This way of thinking is the core of easy in my environment to ‘do’ ministry focus and the reason for Christian things. Synergie. May we focus on our In secondary school, my COVID-19 is impacting SIM purpose, our ‘why’, and relationship with God became more in ways we can’t determine yet, real and personal, and I grew in and accelerating changes in our think creatively about my faith. I went to university to environment. I pray that as part accomplishing it ... study engineering. My programme of the Ministry Advancement interspersed academic semesters Task Force, I can serve SIM by with employment. This was a recommending adjustments to challenging but growing time. Friends and others current practices, explore new ways of doing things challenged me about my life’s direction, and I chose and pursue purpose-driven ministry strategies. to take one of my ‘work’ terms to explore missions. What inspires you when life gets difficult? I ended up at Mukinge Hospital in Zambia to assist Two key things inspire me in times like these. The with a hospital expansion. My time in Zambia gave first is that he is faithful. Andrea and I can look back me a whole new perspective on life, faith and love … on many times when we have seen God carry us Tell us a little about your family. through. The second is that God has called us into While in Zambia, as a good engineer, I consulted the what he is doing, to follow him. From an engineering nurses of the paediatric ward I was helping to design. A perspective, God choosing to use sinful humanity to lovely British nurse headed up the paediatric ward, so I accomplish his purposes seems very inefficient. But sought her advice for what the new ward should be like. not to God. That is humbling and inspiring. I consulted her a bit more than was necessary, and she figured that out. Thankfully, Andrea became my wife, the What do you do when you’re not working? mother of our kids and a wise counsellor to me. We were Andrea and I love to go on walks. We are most married in the UK, then Andrea emigrated to Canada. We refreshed when we can enjoy the beauty of are blessed with three kids: Kieran, Liam and Cara. God’s creation.
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