June 14, 2010 issue
Pastor's favorite passage sums it up
Colossians text is MC Canada's assembly theme
By Deborah Froese Mennonite Church CanadaPage:
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CALGARY, Alta. — For Doug Klassen, Col. 3:12-17 describes in a nutshell what it means to be a Christian. It is a passage of personal significance to him.
“You want to know how to live as a Christian? Here it is. For a grasp on the Christian ethic, this is it,” said Klassen, senior pastor of Foothills Mennonite Church in Calgary.
“This text is deeply rooted in me. It is how I choose to live every day. When I get off track, it resets, recalibrates me to what I am looking to do in life.”
This scriptural passage is the theme text for Mennonite Church Canada’s annual assembly, where Klassen will be one of three keynote speakers.
Other speakers for the June 29-July 3 event in Calgary include Gareth Brandt of Columbia Bible College and Lucy Roca, a Mennonite church planter in Quebec and former Colombian refugee.
Klassen was first captured by the spirit of the Colossians text in 1990, the year before he graduated from Canadian Mennonite Bible College, now Canadian Mennonite University. At that time, graduate Bryan Moyer Suderman framed his valedictorian address around this passage, and as it drew to a close, he engaged all those gathered in a call-and- response singing of “Let the word of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”
“It was an absolutely mystical moment,” Klassen said. “His challenge was to all of those graduating to live out our faith, doing all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Later that same year, Klassen and his fiancée, Rose Retzlaff, chose the Colossians text for their wedding.
“Of all the texts we studied, we felt this was the one that best described what we wanted our marriage to be,” he said.
For Klassen, the Colossians passage guides situations from pastoring to coaching his son’s basketball and baseball teams.
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