The Pastorate Podcast

Show Notes:
Forest City Community Church
Alpha Canada's case study on Forest City Community Church
The Pastorate's City Meetups
The Pastorate Conference
The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes:
In this conversation, Jason sits down with Rob Hogendoorn, founding and lead pastor of Forest City Community Church in London, Ontario, to talk about planting and leading one church for over three decades, what it's cost and given his family along the way, and what's fueling his hope for the church in Canada right now.
Rob traces his path from a life-changing encounter with Jesus as a boy, through planting Forest City Community Church from scratch in the mid-90s, to the practices and relationships that have sustained him ever since: a renewed passion for evangelism, a decades-long peer community of fellow church planters, and a handful of ordinary, everyday encounters that keep reminding him people are hungrier for God than the prevailing narrative suggests. He shares an honest look at what his family paid along the way, and offers an invitation for pastors across Canada to let down their nets again.
In this episode you'll hear:
What Rob's adult kids told him about growing up inside a church plant,
The mid-90s "Phones for You" cold-call campaign that filled Forest City Community Church's very first Sunday with 172 people,
Why building the church's DNA around 20 percent lifelong believers and 80 percent not-yet-connected people has kept its evangelistic edge for three decades,
The visit to HTB that reignited Rob's own front-line evangelism and made Alpha central to the church,
The longtime peer group of fellow church planters that shifted from tactical survival talk to soul-level honesty,
Why COVID was the hardest season of Rob's ministry.

Partners
We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.

Show Notes:
The Pastorate's City Meetups
Jon Guerra's Music
Tyler Staton on Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
The Pastorate Conference
The Pastorate Pastors Retreat
Experience Church
ARC Canada

Episode Notes
In this conversation, Jason sits down with Jonathan Lambert, lead pastor of Experience Church in Calgary and Executive Director of ARC Canada, to talk about church planting, pioneering a church planting network in Canada and what it looks like to keep a scrappy founder's spirit through organizational growth and change.
Jonathan traces his path from leading worship as a teenager in a Pentecostal church, into a worship role at Christian Life Assembly in Langley, and eventually to a defining season in Fort McMurray. There, newly stepped away from vocational ministry and unsure what was next, he had what he describes as a wake-up call in a grocery store: a profound conviction that calling belongs to every believer, not just to a platform or a job title. That shift led him and his wife Natasha into youth ministry in a local church, and then led them to plant Experience Church in Calgary in 2012.
Jason and Jonathan also dig into how Experience Church came to pioneer ARC (Association of Related Churches) in Canada, now responsible for planting 25 churches nationally. Jonathan talks candidly about the tension of staying scrappy as an organization grows, the K-12 hybrid school Experience Church started to make Christian education more accessible, and the free summer camp they run for pastors' families on Vancouver Island.
Jonathan makes the case for consistency over leaps of faith, and for what he calls "the spiritual six pack," daily habits of word, prayer, and worship, paired with a regular rhythm of tithing, fasting, and serving, as the real engine behind a transformational life and a healthy church.
In this episode you'll hear:
How growing up in a Pentecostal church shaped Jonathan's love for spiritual encounter,
The grocery store moment in Fort McMurray that reframed calling as something every believer carries,
Why Jonathan and Natasha turned down joining a friend’s church plant in San Diego to stay in Canada and plant in Calgary instead,
What it took to pioneer ARC in Canada, and the encouragement they received from the team at ARC USA,
Why Experience Church started a K-12 hybrid school to make Christian education accessible for families who can't afford traditional private school,
The story behind ARC Canada's free summer camp for pastors' families, and why proximity between pastoral families is its own form of pastoral care,
Why leaps of faith are a subtle danger, and what Jonathan calls "the spiritual six pack," the daily and regular habits that build a steady life.

Partners
We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.

Learn More about The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship
Abbotsford Pentecostal Assembly
The Pastorate Conference
The Pastorate's City Meetups
The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes
In this conversation, Jordan sits down with Dave Funk, lead pastor of Abbotsford Pentecostal Assembly and a peer facilitator in The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship. Dave and Jordan connect about both being pastors’ kids who went on to pastor under their fathers. Dave opens up about what it has been like raising his own three teenagers in the front row of church, while reflecting on his own upbringing in the church.
From there, Dave traces his journey into pastoral ministry, including growing up assuming pastoring was "his dad's thing," a season of surrender to God’s call on his life, five years serving as his father’s assistant pastor, and then the decision to leave and pastor elsewhere rather than to succeed his dad. He and his wife, Rebecca, discerned that call together, first at Bethel Church in Penticton, a declining, aging congregation they helped bring back to life, and later in Abbotsford, where he arrived in the middle of COVID to a church recovering from a difficult leadership transition.
In the back half of the conversation, Dave discusses his leadership philosophy, that compounding health in the life of the church has the power to build a consistent and healthy congregation over time. He reflects on his experience in The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship, first as a participant, now as a peer facilitator for its second intake.
Jordan and Dave discuss:
What it's like to raise pastor's kids in the front row, and the pressure Dave tries not to pass on to his own three teenagers,
Growing up under his dad's leadership without ever sensing a gap between who his dad was on Sunday and who he was at home,
Serving five years as his dad's assistant pastor, and the bullets his dad took for him that he didn't learn about until years later,
Why he chose to leave rather than succeed his dad,
Walking into a declining, aging church in Penticton and, later, a church in Abbotsford recovering from a difficult transition,
and his return to The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship as a peer facilitator for its second cohort.

Partners
We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.

The Pastorate’s Lead Pastor Fellowship
Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
Hope Church NYC
Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful by Drew Hyun
A Grace Disguised by Dr. Jerry Sittser
Water from a Deep Well by Dr. Jerry Sittser
The Pastorate Conference
The Pastorate's City Meetups
The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes
Today’s episode is part three of our summer series exploring our pastoral formation cohorts here at The Pastorate. This episode features Drew Hyun and Dr. Jerry Sittser, profiling their time spent with last year’s cohort of The Lead Pastor Fellowship. 
Drew Hyun is the Lead Pastor of Hope Church NYC and Executive Director of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Drew shares the unpolished version of his own story: growing up a pastor's kid in a Korean immigrant church that split twice before he hit middle school, watching his father go from a harsh, at times violent man at home to a celebrated Christian author and speaker in Korea, and the gap that opened up between his own public ministry persona and a private life marked by hidden addiction and unprocessed rage. He traces how a chance internship exposed him to Pete Scazzero's "iceberg" picture of discipleship, the ten percent above the surface and ninety percent buried beneath it, and how that encounter became the seed of emotionally healthy discipleship in his own life. Drew confesses that it's entirely possible to do ministry for God without God, and that the deepest work of leadership is letting Jesus into the deepest and darkest parts of our hearts. 
Following Drew, Dr. Jerry Sittser, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Senior Fellow at Whitworth University, teaches on pastoral care through irreversible loss, the kind that permanently changes the landscape of a life. Drawing on his own experience, losing his wife, mother, and daughter in a single car accident, Dr. Sittser rejects the idea of "stages of grief" and other neat recovery paradigms in favor of learning to carry loss for good, being transformed rather than finding resolution. He offers pastors concrete counsel: resist rushing to answers, know which biblical text fits which moment, help people ritualize mourning instead of just enduring it, and help them build a community of people who can shoulder their burdens.
In this episode you'll hear:
Drew's story of growing up a pastor's kid inside two church splits, including a church fistfight that the LAPD had to break up,
An exploration of the phrase: "Jesus may live in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones,"
Why it's entirely possible to do ministry for God without God, even while seeing real spiritual fruit,
Pete Scazzero's iceberg image and how it became the seed of a discipleship model that goes beneath the surface,
Dr. Sittser's own story of catastrophic loss, and why he rejects "stages of grief" in favor of integration and transformation,
How to discern when to speak and when to sit in silence with someone carrying irreversible loss,
Practical postures for walking with people through suffering. 

Partners
We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
If you are seeking ways to guide your congregation into the next step of their faith journey, we welcome you to explore the Canadian Bible Society’s Ministry Toolkit. The Ministry Toolkit is designed to help your church or ministry deliver online or in-person Bible-based programs for the special audiences you may serve.

Show Notes
Learn More about The Emerging Leaders Lab
Coastline Church
The Pastorate Conference
The Pastorate's City Meetups
The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes
On today's episode Jordan sits down with Laura Liira, campus pastor of Coastline Church West Shore on Vancouver Island and participant in the 2025-2026 class of The Emerging Leaders Lab. Laura was born in Victoria into a nominal Catholic home, and was reintroduced to Christianity though her teenage years. During a gap year in London England, she encountered Jesus in a new way and committed to serve him for the rest of her life. Laura’s story is one marked by saying yes to whatever service opportunity was in front of her. She talks honestly about God-given dreams and the time they take to mature, and the journey from church intern to Campus Pastor.
In the back half of the conversation Laura and Jordan turn to her year in the Emerging Leaders Lab, where she was the only woman in a cohort of male pastors with Keith Taylor as her guide. Laura reflects on how that band of brothers received her, prayed over her, and still meets together in a monthly rhythm. She reflects on women in ministry across the Canadian church landscape, the grit of pastoring a mobile church that sets up and tears down a middle school gym every Sunday, and she shares about what is filling her with hope right now.
In this episode you'll hear:
How a gap year in London, meant for partying, became the year Laura met Jesus,
How saying yes to the next thing in front of you is a simple act of obedience that can open doors to opportunity,
The dreams she buried with her husband and how God dug them up in his own timing,
Being the only woman in a cohort of male pastors, and the "red rose" word that welcomed her in,
The unique challenges of a mobile church,
Why the fire she sees in young people across Canada has her so full of hope.
Laura's story is a reminder that the most formative work in ministry rarely happens on a stage, but that it often happens in obedient acts of showing up and saying yes to what's in front of you. We trust this conversation will encourage you right where you are.

Partners
We couldn’t do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and ⁠give⁠ towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.