Storyline Fall 2020
A quarterly magazine published by First Alliance Church (Calgary, Alberta) in this issue we highlight FAC people telling their stories.
A quarterly magazine published by First Alliance Church (Calgary, Alberta) in this issue we highlight FAC people telling their stories.
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people and their Saviour. We must think of<br />
them when we think of and thank Ray for his<br />
great care and commitment to the people of<br />
FAC and Calgary.<br />
As I have worked<br />
alongside him,<br />
watched him<br />
love people, and<br />
have myself been<br />
ministered to so<br />
often, I find myself<br />
wanting to imitate<br />
Ray. Like the Apostle<br />
Paul who says, “follow<br />
me as I follow Jesus”<br />
(1 Corinthians 11:1),<br />
Ray has given me a<br />
practical example<br />
of what it means to<br />
follow Jesus in life<br />
and in ministry. He is<br />
a pastor to pastors,<br />
and a pastor to all.<br />
tension with an articulate faith in God’s<br />
real presence. They have to say no to every<br />
form of fatalism, defeatism, accidentalism,<br />
or incidentalism that makes people believe<br />
that statistics are telling us the truth. They<br />
have to say no to every form of despair in<br />
which human life is seen in a pure matter<br />
of good or bad luck. They have to say no to<br />
the sentimental attempts to make people<br />
develop a spirit of resignation or stoic<br />
indifference in the face of the unavoidability<br />
of pain, suffering, and death. In short, they<br />
have to say no to the secular world and<br />
proclaim in unambiguous terms that the<br />
incarnation of God’s Word, through whom all<br />
A Life Well Spent<br />
Henri Nouwen, author, theologian, and<br />
minister of the gospel, writes: “The task of<br />
the Christian leader is not to make a little<br />
contribution to the solution of the pains and<br />
tribulations of their time, but to identify and<br />
announce the ways in which Jesus is leading<br />
God’s people out of slavery, through the<br />
desert to a new land of freedom. Christian<br />
leaders have the arduous task of responding<br />
to personal struggles, family conflicts,<br />
national calamities, and international<br />
things came into being, has made even the<br />
smallest event of human history into Kairos,<br />
that is, an opportunity to be led deeper into<br />
the heart of Christ.”<br />
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