(e)mergent Voyageurs

This stage of my story has taken me the longest to write because it is the most important stage of life. Perhaps the current stage of ones life is always the most important. Be that as it may, it was the years following our departure from Vancouver that so much of my life seem to come together.

In the last few years in Vancouver, I had been in an undefined relationship with a beautiful Australian girl named Kim. I say undefined because, despite my attraction to and affection towards Kim, I did not commit to any relationship that could be called anything. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of commitment, that seemingly universal male “disorder”, as much as that I feared rejection. Subconsciously, I thought that if I could keep the relationship on the lip of commitment, I would never have to face the inevitable termination.

It was when Kim allowed me to read her journal, specifically entries pertaining to my cruel casuality towards her love for me, that everything changed. Instead of the hurt, frustration and anger that she had every right to feel and express, every line was filled with grace and love. It was in that moment I knew I would marry her- and I did, only six months later. It was the first of three weddings that spanned the globe (but that is another story).

Before the rush of the final wedding had died, we packed once again and moved to our first apartment in the inner city neighbourhood of Winnipeg‘s West End. It was from this tiny apartment that our ministry, YWAM Urban Ministries Winnipeg, was born. With our dining room able serving as our “office”, my wife had to serve the first meal she prepared for her mother-in-law on a coffee table. We all loved it.

The details of establishing our ministry, while interesting, are insignificant in the light of all that we learned through making this troubled, but beautiful neighbourhood our own. No longer were the realities of urban injustice simply a part of our job, but rather part of our lives. We could not pretend to be “professional do-gooders” bringing the answers, but rather fellow “broken Eikons” whose salvation was caught up together. With the help of an amazing local church, New Life Ministries, and their work through Lazarus Housing, we planted roots to make this community our very own.

The one hundred year old duplex had been abandon for several years following a fire started by some of the former tenants. Neighbours and police knew this building to one of the most notorious gang houses in our city, where some of the worst degradations of humanity found expression. With great care, hard work and a lot of prayer, the house was transformed into a home, where we live with our friends and co-labourers. This building, known to many as cursed, now is a centre of hope and promise of redemption.

After many years of hard work with only a very small team working with us, we are now a truly missional community, dedicated living Christ as authentically as we can. We have had the privilege of introducing hundreds of peoples to our neighbours and neighbourhood, planting new seeds of understanding and possibility for what can and should be. While we have connected in the community, this is the next stage where God is calling us into greater depth and commitment.

Through this, I have been going through a personal tranformation. After 11 years with YWAM, serving in such diverse roles, I felt as though God was drawing me into something new. It began last year with the fulfillment of a life long dream when my first book “Looking Forward: Facing the Future of Christian Leadership” went to print (having been written/editted in my early twenties). I couldn’t have been more excited.

So you can imagine my chagrin when, instead of sustained joy, I was soon plunged into periodic depression and disillusionment. After much prayer, suffering and soul searching, I realized that God was calling me to step out into that which He had specifically gifted me for and called me to. By far the most challenging year in my life, it has also been extremely rewarding as I make the (often costly) choices to move in this new direction. While still in the process of defining, it includes my passion to pursue Truth through writing, teaching and building community. The deep theme of pastoring has been a constant element emerging in this process. I am both excited and somewhat fearful of all that still lies ahead.

And so I chose the picture of the lone wolf for this post. In addition to being a beautiful photo, wolves are natures most powerful example of community, deeply informing First Nations spirituality. In this way, I feel like that lone wolf, individual with identity in community. The wolf is on the look out, looking away, looking forward. As am I.

As always, much more could be said here, including the devastation of losing our first child to a miscarraige & our inability to conceive again; including the unparalleled generousity and support of family & friend; including the continued financial struggles of living by faith in missions; including the incredible diversity of our neighbourhood, representing every continent; and even including the challenges of having neo-Nazi’s move onto the block. The fact is this: the journey is not only bigger than this space can contain, but continues every day.

It is out of our own stories that our true selves emerge. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Peace,
Jamie Arpin-Ricci

During my last few years of high school, my mind was busting at the seams to explore new ideas and ask real questions. I am eternally grateful for my family during this time. Few parents in rural evangelical churches would be happy that their child was devouring the entire collection of M. Scott Peck. However, they cautiously encouraged. My father would patiently listen to me share the new ideas I’d “discovered”, then remind me not to accept every idea I read. Once the reading started, nothing could stop me. Literally, within 2 months my bedroom had become a library bulging with books.

Inevitably, my growing worldview was colliding with the (somewhat arrogant) Evangelicalism that I had been taught to embody by the Christian community. This is not to say that it was all bad, but rather incomplete, especially when embraced as the whole. So, instead of making life long decisions for education and thus career, I knew that I needed to take some time to do something different, to figure things out. Having graduated not long after turning 17, a year off would do little harm.

I decided to attend a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Specifically, I joined YWAM Cambridge – Academy of Performing Arts, in southern Ontario. While the centre offered up its fair share of cheesy skits, it was also home to many very gifted artists- dancers, choreographers, graphic artists, playwrights, etc. While I had a deep love for Creation, it was here that I began to see a practice of faith of beauty. In engaging this realm, my highly propositional, intellectual faith was introduced to the importance of the heart- the emotional center of the soul.

While I had experienced this through my time with the Pentacostal youth group, those experiences were riddled theological extremes and controversies. With art, I began to realize how important and authoritative role of emotions. This can be a threatening revelation, as it presents encounters with Truth that cannot be systemized and categorized. To understand a bit more about what I mean, read my post “Recovering Iconoclast”.

My role at the ministry was administrative with the plans of working with the DTS in years to come. I wouldn’t get the chance as, within a year, the ministry was being shut down. The experience of shutting down, not only a ministry centre, but an intentional community, was a devastating and life defining event. What should have convinced me to walk away to a more secure lifestyle instead drew me more fully into this journey. I knew then that YWAM would be my community for years to come.

When the ministry centre was closed, I joined another YWAM centre, where I spent several years. I won’t go into detail except to say that the first few years there were wonderful. The people I lived and worked with are wonderful people I love to this day. However, in the last year or so, I experienced a devastating “wounding” from the leadership there that rocked me to the core of my faith. It was the closest I came to rejecting my faith, taking years to heal. The wounds still “ache” in bad “weather”. For a powerful series on this kind of experience, visit Emerging Grace starting Here.

From there, I moved to YWAM Vancouver, BC where I joined this small team of urban missionaries in one of Canada’s most beautiful cities. I used to jokingly say that it would take fiery letters in the sky written by the hand of God to convince me to move to a city, but I am glad I followed His call. My years in Vancouver are among the happiest I have in memory, a place I will always consider home.

It was in Vancouver, and specifically in the Downtown Eastside, that I was confronted with the realities of poverity, racism and systematic injustice. For several years previously, I had begun to explore these realities, influenced deeply by Dorothy Day & Peter Maurin, co-founders of the Catholic Worker. Ideas and stories became harsh reality in Canada’s poorest neighbourhood. It was my years here that I realized the need for my faith to have hands, to put the ideas & knowledge together with the zeal & compassion, inspiring purposeful and passionate action. It demanded a praxis beyond handing out tracts and convincing people to believe what I believe (and disbelieve their own beliefs).

Since that time, I have tried to live my life according the lessons learned throughout my life. Specifically an intentionality of my mind, my emotions and my will- in short the Head, Heart and Hands. A friend told me this concept- what my staff have affectionately dubbed the 3 H’s- has been around in the church for centuries. For me it has been revolutionary. If I have right understanding and right emotion, but wrong or no praxis, my well intentioned and passionate actions or inaction could do more harm than good. If I have right emotion and right action, without the in-formation of right understanding, my service lacks purpose- lacks its missional core. And if I have right understanding and right action, but lack right emotion, I become a “sounding gong” and a “clanging symbol”.

Again, much more could be said here, including the significance of sharing a house with an amazing family with great kids; including the healing and passion from my inclusion on the centres leadership team; including the mentorship from amazing men, like Paul Martinson and Randy Parizeau. As I have said before, not everything can be said here, though I would love to share it all.

My next post in this series will talk about getting married, pioneering an inner city ministry and pursuing my identity.

I recently realized how very deeply I was drawn to the ideas that within the emerging journey long before I had ever heard about it. This got me thinking about how much my own history predisposed me to the ideas. So, at the risk of being self-involved, I thought some of you might be interested in how I got to where I am in the first place.

It seemed like I was born in liminality in many respects. Living on the Canada/US border, I was born in the US to a Canadian family. While many dismiss my dual citizenship as mere legality, I have always been deeply appreciative of both citizenships, something I have intentionally chosen not to relinquish. Though I have spent most of my life in Canada, embodying many of its cultural elements, I hold firmly to the fact that I am equally a citizen of the United States, drawing from both in my identity.

Additionally, my father, an Anglo-Italian married my mother, a French Canadian*. Therefore, my childhood memories are filled with bi-cultural and bi-lingual treasures that deeply inform my sense of appreciation and sensitivity to culture. When my parents experienced a personal faith encounter, they left the Roman Catholic Church for an evangelical congregation. Do not understand here that I am saying that authentic faith cannot be found in Catholicism, but rather that in the case of my parents, they hadn’t. I am deeply grateful, therefore, that despite the attitudes of many in my childhood church, my parents allowed me to attend Mass with my Mémère (grandmother) on many occassions.

The church I grew up in was a fairly conservative, evangelical congregation, part of the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada. While Brian McLaren has said the ECC in the US is best poised to explore the emerging church conversation, my home church would not have exemplified this. They reflected typical rural, evangelical conservatism, though, I must say, at its best. They modelled loving community, solid commitment to Scripture, active participation in missional movements (to their best undestanding) and much more. They continue to love and support me today.

My father, a teacher, took a position at a local Christian school the first year I entered school. The school was run by a very conservative Mennonite community, where many of the girls didn’t go past the 8th grade. When “the English” joined (teachers like my father and students like myself), several of the more conservative families pulled out. While those who remained were still quite conservative, I attended a school that helped expose me to some of the best of Anabaptist theology, something I had never even heard of.

Additionally, the school became the place where students from many different demoninational background and cultures attended. It was through fellow students, combined with that fact that most small rural churches couldn’t afford a youth pastor, that I began attending a youth group in a neighbouring town. The group was made up of kids from many churches, but was part of the local Pentacostal church. Here is began my first exploration of the charismatic tradition, with both its beauty and flaws. It was through youth at this church that I first heard about Youth With A Mission (YWAM), but that is for a later post.

My unique cultural & national heritage, combined with my fairly broad exposure to Christian traditions, predisposed me to consider a broader view and question some of the assumptions many people take for granted. It has been something that I feel serves me well in dialoguing across cultural and traditional/denominational boundaries. However, it also serves to distance me for any singularly defining heritage, something that can be lonely and even confusing, something I hope to explore in my next post.

Much more could be said here, including the significance of living in a remote house in a naturally beautiful region, surrounded by nature; including the importance of a very close immediate family on both sides; including the deep importance of the women in my family to me (not to suggest the men were not important); etc. Each are important in who I have become.

Should you have any questions or even observations, they would be very welcome.

My next post in this series will explore my decision to join YWAM and my early years of involvement in the organization.

*I have recently learned of distant Metis heritage. I don’t mention it in detail for lack of pride in it, but rather from not wanting to claim a cultural identity I had little to no defining contact with. I would take great pride to call myself part of the First Nations community, but feel it would be inappropriate and selfish for me to do so.