A Little More About SIM

John is at his second job interview with a church as I type. On paper, this position at this particular church is a really good fit for him/us. It's interesting because John's applied for other job postings from different churches and many of them asked questions like, how many people the applicant has brought to the Lord, and how many hours he spends praying and reading the bible everyday. But this particular position John's applying for today asked for different things. They wanted someone who would find ways to reach out to the community where the church is located. The interesting thing is this church has a Canadian "caucasian" congregation and a Chinese congregation and the position John has applied for would work with both the children of the caucasian congregation and the second generation Chinese Canadian youth and young adults.

I don't really want to talk too much about this position at this time just in case John doesn't get this position but I'm mentioning it because I wanted to explain how John getting a job at a church affects our ministry with SIM.

Unlike the organization we were with before we joined SIM, we are able to get a ministry job here and still remain SIM members because they have a legitimate ministry in Canada. We really like this aspect because it takes pressure off of having to completely rely on generous supporters for our livelihood. We would receive support through individuals, churches and through the pay we would receive from whatever ministry job we get as well. All the finances would be funneled through SIM. Ideally we want to find a job that could be integrated with SIM's ministries so we can be SIM missionaries but if we get a job that is unrelated to ministry due to unforeseen circumstances, our membership would be limited (meaning we wouldn't receive all the benefits, CPP etc.).

If you get a chance to glance over SIM's website, you will see that this is an organization that does church planting through relief and development work as well as Bible translation and various forms of evangelism i.e. through medical and aviation for example. We like the fact that SIM as a unified body, is aware that they need to be creative in finding different ways to reach out in changing times. They're not stuck in their ways; they're always open to doing out-of-the-box things if it means it will help bring people to Jesus. Not only that but they focus on meeting the needs of the whole person, not just their "souls".

SIM's Canadian ministry is called CCX or "Cultural Connexions" and it's focus is on reaching out to different cultural groups in urban communities across Canada. There are quite a few CCX ministries in Eastern Canada (Ontario and Quebec) and a couple ministries in B.C. It will be interesting to see what context we'll end up in and I guess we'll see soon enough whether John gets this job.