By Roger Armbruster
This is part 2 in a 3 part series titled Becoming a House Of Prayer for All Nations and All Generations. Check out part 1, A House Of Prayer For All Nations, and part 3, First Nations & Filipino Connection in Winnipeg.
I believe that many times we miss the supernatural because we are looking for the spectacular. Jesus did not say that His Kingdom would come with outward show or with observation that initially looks impressive but then fizzles out to nothing. Rather, His Kingdom would begin as a tiny seed, and would grow from there until it becomes the largest of trees.
Transformation, or the healing of the nations, does not come like a big bang that then diminishes, but it comes gradually and progressively, from one degree of glory to another, When does a seed become a mighty oak tree? It is through a process that is so gradual that you can miss it if all you are looking for is instant, immediate or sudden change.
When does the light at the crack of dawn become the full light of the noonday sun? Again, it is a process of increasing light that is so gradual that it is almost imperceptible at any given point in time as to when the light of dawn was transformed into the light of the noonday sun.
I say this lest any suggest that I am making any grandiose claims for Manitoba, or that I am making claims that we have in any sense “arrived” at a destination of full healing between the First Nations and the other “ethnos” or “ethnicities” of Manitoba. However, I believe that we are seeing the beginning, in seed form, of a movement that is seeing change, and that ethnicities that were islands unto themselves are now eager and willing to connect and to worship together with other ethnicities, and without fearing that they will lose what is in their culture that is precious and valuable.
Let me just highlight, from my own personal experience, some of the services that I have participated in since May of 2015 in which I see a coming together and a reconciliation between Native and Non-native believers. I am sure that it is happening in many places, but I particularly see it within our FCA churches in Manitoba, and there is a greater and greater desire to be more connected, unified and reconciled.
May 1 and 2, 2015
On Friday and Saturday, May 1 and 2 of this year, our local church of Maranatha Niverville organized a 27-hour Burn event of non-stop praise and worship, and we were privileged during this time to host both a First Nations worship band as well as a Filipino worship band.
Previously, on April 19, 2015, I was speaking at the First Nations Family Worship Centre in Winnipeg, and I called to the front a Filipino pastor in the city of Winnipeg, Mercedes Coronia, from the Amazing Grace Ministry. Both the First Nations Family Worship Centre and the Amazing Grace Ministry are FCA churches in the city of Winnipeg.
Later in the service, a well-known Native ministry from the Peguis First Nation, Irvin Wilson, called me to join hands with him and Pastor Mercedes along with one of her Filipino church members to covenant to walk together as First Nations and Filipinos. The First Nations were overjoyed to see the Filipinos joining them, as they have been moving in a direction where they were longing to see a greater connection between the First Nations and Filipinos as well as other ethnicities.
So we joined hands together, and agreed that this was the beginning of a new journey together. Alisa Tina Mason, the main worship leader at the First Nations Family Worship Centre, later said on her Facebook page: “A mighty connection took place this evening with the Filipinos, a Filipino pastor came to church and Roger was there as well. What a blessed powerful evening!”
Subsequently, the worship teams from Amazing Grace Ministry and the First Nations Family Worship Centre flowed together at the 27-hour Burn event hosted by the congregation of Maranatha Niverville. As Cindy Jacob’s prophecy declared a year earlier, “I’m going to cause a partnership to come with the native and the non-native churches.” The unique relationship that each of these congregations have with the FCA was definitely a catalyst to help facilitate these connections.
This is significant and notable inasmuch as these ethnic churches come out of a background where they were pretty much an island unto themselves, with little appetite or inclination to join together with other ethnicities, other races, other cultures, other nations, other languages, other people groups. Yet, this has been changing ever since our 2012 National Convention of the FCA in Canada which prophetically proclaimed this message:
What is this “new thing” that would “spring up” out of the earth that some may not initially perceive or be aware of? “This people whom I have formed for Myself shall declare My praise” (Isaiah 43:21).
In the end-times, this praise will spring forth from within and before all the nations of the earth!
Worship Evangelism in Central Park, Winnipeg on Sunday, September 20
Here I am on Sunday afternoon of September 20, at the Central Park in Winnipeg along with Terry Thiessen, the director of the Teen Challenge of Central Canada Choir. The headquarters of Teen Challenge is right across from the Central Park in Winnipeg, and Terry Thiessen is also a recently ordained minister with the FCA in Manitoba.
This Worship Evangelism Event brought together the Followers of Christ Fellowship, a Filipino congregation pastored by Randy Casillan, who brought their anointed Praise and Worship Band to this open air worship festival in the heart of the city in the heart of the continent along with the Youth from Maranatha Niverville. While anointed worship music was playing, many of the Youth went seeking for people to pray for, and pretty much all of the Youth came home very excited, and shared testimonies that evening of how God had used them to minister life and healing to those that they prayed for.
There was a sense of the need for even greater ongoing connection between the FCA ministries that were involved at the Central Park that afternoon—including Maranatha Niverville, Teen Challenge, and the Followers of Christ Fellowship.
Roger Armbruster has served as a minister in the FCA and as an elder with FCA Canada. He is an Elder Emeritus, serves on the FCA Media Board, and is the Founder of Canada Awakening Ministries and the Lead Pastor of Maranatha Good News Centre in Niverville, Manitoba.
