Whistler Community Church welcomes new lead pastor

TIM OLSON TAKES THE REINS AS THE NEW PERMANENT LEAD PASTOR AT THE MENNONITE BRETHREN FOLLOWING THE DEPARTURE OF JON PASIUK

BY ROBERT WISLA

AT THE BEGINNING of February, Whistler Community Church (WCC), the only Protestant Christian congregation in the resort, welcomed Abbotsford’s Tim Olson as its new lead pastor. Attracted to the resort by a love of mountain biking, skiing and a desire to get out of his comfort zone, the 44-year-old Columbia Bible College graduate has taken well to the resort community, a decidedly areligious town.

According to the 2021 Census, British Columbia recently passed the 50-per-cent mark of people identifying as non-religious. The Sea to Sky, meanwhile, now ranks as the most non-religious region in the province, with Pemberton leading the way, at 79.7 per cent of its population identifying as nonreligious, agnostic, or atheist, following by Whistler (72.7 per cent), and Squamish (70.1 per cent).

Being the pastor of Whistler’s largest congregation is already a challenging task. Still, in a town growing at one of the fastest rates in the province, and with a demographic that is increasingly non-religious, it adds another level of complexity to the position.

Pique caught up with Olson to hear how he’s finding the new job at the Mennonite Brethren church and his new life in Whistler.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PIQUE: Why did you want to be a pastor in a ski town like Whistler?

PASTOR TIM OLSON: I sensed that we needed to step out into something that made us uncomfortable because, as somebody trying to follow Jesus, I felt that’s just what he wanted me to do, saying, ‘Hey man, you’re comfortable,’ and we grow when we’re uncomfortable.

For us, it was [hard] leaving home and the neighbours that we love. We had this amazing community on our street, block parties, and all that stuff. So, leaving that, leaving both sets of parents and all of our siblings in the area and picking up and moving somewhere brand new, where we don’t know anybody— although I’m starting to get to—and just seeing what happens.

Our lifestyle, as far as just living as a family, has included mountain biking for quite a few years. My wife started a mountain bike club at the middle school she’s taught at, introducing kids to the sport, and our kids grew up doing it.

When we sensed that it was time to leave and go somewhere new, [we wanted somewhere] that was still close enough to family, where we could live the life that we already lived and be around other people that are interested in similar passions and can get involved with the broader community. Because we share that love of bikes and mountains, it just seemed like a good fit.

Pique recently wrote a cover feature on the decline of faith in the Sea to Sky. What do you think of this religious decline, and why is Whistler such an increasingly nonreligious town?

A lot of churches are in decline all over the place. I think you’re seeing that many smaller churches are declining and disappearing in more suburban areas, and then a few big ones are growing. A lot of that growth is the people from the smaller ones leaving and going to the bigger ones because there are more services for them, like youth groups and kids’ stuff.

Something you get in the [Fraser] Valley or more suburban areas is more of a consumer approach to church and faith. Many people see going to church on Sunday like going to the mall. So, they want to pick whichever religious goods and services that fit what they’re looking for, then they’ll go check a place out for a Sunday and say, ‘Oh, I don’t like the music, or I don’t like the way the preacher dresses,’ and they’ve got 89 other places to go check out.

Whereas here, just because there are fewer [churches], I’ve noticed that even though the congregations are smaller, the people I met seem much more invested in faith. It seems more real to them because I think there’s more of a cost associated with saying that somebody is a person of faith in Whistler. There could be a social cost or things like that.

It might be in decline, but from what I’ve observed so far, the ones that come seem to be on the right track because it’s not the cool thing to go to church. They don’t just do it because their parents always tell them to do it. There’s a really beautiful community that forms around their shared faith, and they live it out.

Do you have to be more generalist in your sermons to find common ground between different theological backgrounds, such as the United Church, Baptists, etc., with being the only Protestant church in town?

Our church is a cornucopia of all kinds of backgrounds, not just different theological backgrounds, like you said, be it United or Mennonite Brethren or whatever. It’s a real melting pot, and also cultural diversity is a huge thing in our church. People come from all over the world, and I think that’s so beautiful.

People come from Australia, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Chile. It really is people from all nations. For many people I meet, English may not be the primary language they grew up with. As far as leading, you used the word “generalist.” I try to use language that’s accessible to everybody.

Since I was a youth and young adult pastor for years, I have also communicated in a way that young adults can understand and are engaged. So that’s a big priority of mine. The church is a big family that has young and old all together, all around the world, coming together as a community sharing faith in Jesus, and they want to live like him and love others as he did in their everyday lives in the community.

Being a pastor, some days you’re playing the role of therapist, community leader, administrator, social media ambassador, youth outreach coordinator, etc. How do you balance all those roles?

You prioritize and try not to get overwhelmed by the big picture all at once. We were talking before about being here short-term or longterm. If I saw it as we’re here for a short time, I’d like to see things change instantly, but I see it as a long game, and we can start working on different little things.

It’s not major cultural shifts that need to happen, just little micro shifts that will all add up over time to make something beautiful. The way I see it, the role of the pastor isn’t to do everything. The role of the pastor is to equip other people to do things, so my leadership style is relational. It’s relational because we’re not trying to build big programs. We’re trying to build people, which is much slower than just being hyped and trying to start something big. You want to see the deep-level work that’s going to bubble up.

Do you think the church should play any role in taking on the housing crisis or contributing somehow? Some churches are doing that throughout the province. That’s a great question. Yes, some churches [have helped build housing]. The church I was at in the valley in the early ’80s built a big apartment building for low-income housing on their church property. Over time, it got taken over by a society that now runs it as lowincome senior housing. I thought it was cool to see the church stepping up that way to help out. Here? Possibly down the road.

From what I’ve read in all the articles in the Pique and stuff that I’m trying to keep up with, the housing crisis, everybody says there’s a crisis, but it’s so complicated to figure out the solution. So, I don’t know how the church can be involved on a grand scale. But I do think that every person who is a part of the church has a role to play in our individual lives, and I do know people in the church who rent out rooms in their homes to people new to town.

Looking ahead, what are the main things you want to focus on over this next year, at the church and in general?

The main thing I hit on before about church being a Sunday service that people attend for an hour and a half a week. I want to see people leaving the building but understanding why they have jobs the other hours of the week. So, part of it is an identity shift away from church being where I go on Sunday to being a part of the church every hour of the week. So, when I go to work, I take the church to work with me. I want everybody who’s a part of our community to make that connection in their everyday life.

I want to get to know our community. I think many people don’t know that the church has a building. The church was here for 40 years but never had a building. Now that we have the building, we are looking at how it could be used as a blessing in the community, not just for church people.

This summer, we’re running a kids club, where there’ll be 40 or 50 kids, hopefully from the neighbourhood, able to come and learn and have fun and things like that in July. And then just looking at other ways that we could, hopefully, get to know our neighbours and see how we can use what God’s given to us to help the community.

I don’t want there to be communityversus-church or church-versus-community. There are probably ways you can partner on some stuff that we are not having at this point. I’d love to have those conversations with local stakeholders.

The Whistler Community Church is located at 7226 Fitzsimmons Road N. Learn more at whistlerchurch.ca. n