Artizo

As you know, It’s not always easy being a training church. St. John’s has invested in training future ministers for more than two decades and has certainly counted the cost. This means making space for our apprentices to learn, to practice and to fail. It means lending out the time of your excellent staff for mentorship and instruction. And it means a lot of waiting - while we look for where and how God might send and grow the seed that’s been scattered. It’s not always easy being a training church, but it does bear immense fruit for Gospel ministry. In other words, it’s worth it.

In 2022 we graduated Josh Drury and welcomed three new apprentices: Ryan Spear, Jacob Vandiver, and Andrew Hochhalter. Will Gray, Richard Sandlin, and Fiona Lee continued as our year II apprentices. All six have shown great growth and gratitude for their ministry opportunities. Each apprentice is also an enthusiastic Artizo advocate, actively sharing about the program and encouraging friends to apply. Artizo’s supporters received a dose of the same during the November “Meet the Apprentice” evening. It was an amazing evening, full of encouragement to see the next generation so clear about Christ and so articulate.

Looking forward to 2023, we continue to focus on providing the best possible training for our apprentices and expanding our training capacity. It’s been wonderful to partner with two other Vancouver churches, St. Peter’s and St. Timothy’s, over the last year to begin testing how this might work. Based on this experience, we are developing new initiatives for expanding our training capacity and building deeper partnerships with other training churches locally and nationally.

I’m continually thankful for the investment St. John’s makes in training, and the fruit God brings from it. Please continue to pray for Artizo and the apprentices who are pursuing ministry training. This is what Jesus commanded us to do. Though it’s not easy, it’s definitely worth it.