CALLING LAKE 2025 (AGM 2026)

Our Calling Lake ministry continues to bear fruit. Our Calling Lake Church building is continuing to be used by Big Stone Wellness for Addiction Counselling, Family Counselling, and they also use it for heritage activities, like drum making.  We truly wish to be a community church to Calling Lake and beyond.

We were very blessed to have a 27 (16 youth and 11 adults) member mission team come from the Drayton Reformed Church in Drayton, Ontario for one week in August.  They ran a VBS in Calling Lake, helped out at Camp Living Water, worked at the Good Samaritan Mission, and began the process of finishing the basement in our Calling Lake Building.  The week concluded with a very well attended BBQ and praise and worship service in Calling Lake, complete with a baptism!

After the team left, thanks to a couple of very generous donors, Kevin Meyer was hired to finish the basement project, and Chris Chamberlain volunteered his electrical skills there too. I am so pleased to report that the basement is almost done now.  The plan is to paint both the sanctuary upstairs and the basement too.

Pastor Nathan finished up his ministry in Calling Lake in Mid-October.  We were able to recognize and publicly thank Nathan and his family at a worship service in our church on Sunday, October 18. We thank Nathan for his hard work and wish him God's blessings as he moves on in ministry, as a chaplain at the Royal Alec hospital in Edmonton. 

We currently have a Calling Lake Ministry Visioning Team determining continuing steps in that ministry.  Team members are (Elder) Sandy Krawec, (Deacon) Jeff Schweer, Ross Manosa, Wally and Paula Rude, and myself.  We began advertising for a new pastor in September.  In mid-January, a couple from Kamloops – Steve Forman and his wife Sharla – came out to check out Calling Lake and our congregation.  Steve preached a sermon at a special worship service in Calling Lake on Saturday, January 17, and introduced himself to our congregation on Sunday, January 18. 

Steve has a pretty extensive history in First Nations reality, as he grew up in a community that was adjacent to a reserve.  Steve also spent some time living on the streets of Edmonton before coming to know the Lord.  His most recent ministry work involved pastoring at Living Water Fellowship in Kamloops, which is a ministry to those living on the streets, and many of those folks are Indigenous.

The good news is that Steve very much feels called to serve as our Outreach Pastor in Calling Lake. Consistory has approved both the call to Steve Forman (who will come with his wife and 5 kids) and the purchase of an acreage in Calling Lake for the Forman’s to live at (providing the Forman family a “manse” instead of paying Steve a housing allowance).  For all this to happen, our congregation will have to affirm these proposals at our AGM in March.

A final piece of good news as far as Calling Lake Ministry goes, we paid off the debt on the Calling Lake building as of December 31, 2025.  We bought the building for $120,000, renovated it extensively, and paid it off in only 4 years.  Thanks be to God for His generous provision.

Calling Lake Ministry continues to be funded not only by our congregation but also by generous churches and individuals from outside of our own congregation.  We are very thankful to God for the faithfulness of so many from across our country, who give generously to support this ministry.  The Regional Synod of Canada and the Classis of the Canadian Prairies have been very generous to us as well.

We look forward to the continued growth of the ministry in Calling Lake, with a pastor who will actually live in that community.

In Christ,

Pastor Al