By Karen Stiller. Reprinted with permission from the July/August 2003 issue of Faith Today.
“The board of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) is immensely pleased to announce that Bruce Clemenger will be the next president of the EFC,” said Paul Magnus, chairman of the EFC’s board of directors, in a recent news release.
The release went on to say: “In a unanimous decision on April 14 the board appointed the EFC’s director of the Centre for Faith and Public Life, Bruce Clemenger, to lead the EFC in its next chapter.”
“The decision is the result of nine months of prayers, searching, interviewing many people,” said Magnus. “Given the prayer initiatives undertaken throughout this search process, we believe that Bruce Clemenger is not only our choice but that he is God’s choice for this new chapter of the EFC’s history.”
Clemenger holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and history, and a Master of Philosophical Foundations in political theory. He is nearing the final stages of work toward a PhD in political theory. He has served with the EFC since 1992. He and his wife Tracy and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter live in the Ottawa Valley.
Bruce Clemenger shared his vision for the EFC; his thoughts on prayer and faith life in Canada; and what will be the best part of his new job in the following April interview with Faith Today associate editor Karen Stiller.
Faith Today: As president of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, you will be leading an organization that represents between one and three million Canadian evangelicals. What is your definition of an evangelical?
Clemenger: Evangelicals have a personal relationship with Christ, and affirm the unique role of Christ in salvation—through His death and resurrection. We adhere to the authority of Scripture. And there is a characteristic activism. We are about spreading the good news in word and deed.
Faith Today: How then do you envision the role of the EFC in the lives of Canadian evangelicals?
Clemenger: As evangelicals, we talk to others about what we believe. We are committed to live out our faith in obedience to Christ and in the advancement of the kingdom of God. At the EFC our focus is promoting and facilitating collaborative engagement among evangelicals. As individuals and families, we express our faith in word and deed to our spouses, our children, our neighbours, our communities and our nation—in other words, as an expression of our faith, we seek to engage with others.
As a national fellowship our goal is to promote collaborative engagement. We gather evangelicals together, and out of the gathering together flows conversation and then action. We seek to be the national gathering place for evangelicals and to find ways of facilitating cooperative action among denominations, ministries and churches.
As people with common goals and vision gather and connect, joint projects and partnerships often emerge. And it is the gathering of evangelicals together in a national association that empowers the EFC to speak on behalf of evangelicals to governments, the courts and the media. This is how the EFC seeks to serve the Church and its mission.
Faith Today: One of the things that makes the work of the EFC unique is the amazing breadth of issues you become involved with. How do you stay energized for what appears to be one battle after another?
Clemenger: It’s about passion and calling. We are called to be faithful and diligent. The results are in God’s hands.
Our work in Ottawa is frustrating at times, because the implications are significant. We seek to participate in the legal and political debates, advocating the application of biblical principles to deliberations on a variety of issues. Sometimes our approach is more prophetic; like the sentinel in Ezekiel who warns others of the implications of the paths they are pursuing. At other times it’s a diplomatic dialogue. And in any conversation, the tone and timbre of our voice are very important. We try to be constructive, thoughtful, persuasive, and in all that we say and do to be good ambassadors of Christ. Sometimes it’s discouraging. Other times it’s exhilarating. It is important to take a long view, which is what faithfulness requires.
Faith Today: You are now moving from your current position, director of the Centre for Faith and Public Life in Ottawa, into the position of president of the EFC. How do you feel about moving into that kind of leading and serving role?
Clemenger: When gifting and calling and passion come together, it’s wonderful. That has been the joy of working in the context of Ottawa: to pull the theoretical, the diplomatic, the missional, and my passion for collaborative engagement together. My focus will now shift, but the same elements are present. My focus will be on broadening the circle of those who participate in the EFC. And in conversation with ministry leaders, discover how the EFC can serve their ministries. I want to explore with them new ways that evangelicals can work together, while maintaining the distinctiveness of our respective ministries. We will continue to provide a clear and strong voice in national issues. I also want to continue to develop our international focus. We are the second largest national evangelical fellowship in the world and we have a responsibility to other national alliances to share with them as well as learn from them.
Faith Today: Taking the pulse of ministry leaders will be different from interacting in courtrooms on pressing issues.
Clemenger: There are many ways and venues by which we as Christians advance the gospel in our culture. The unique and creative ways in which ministries are engaging in Canadian society is to me just as interesting and important as what is happening on Parliament Hill. I am excited about helping to building the Church in Canada.
Faith Today: In the Canada Watch newsletter, in the section headlined “Take Action,” you always list prayer right up top. Why is it so important?
Clemenger: Prayer is vital. For me it’s an intimate conversation with God in which I express what is at the core of my spirit and in doing so acknowledge God’s sovereignty in my life and the world around me. It is a necessary component of the expression of our faith and it is critical in all that we do, lest we become distracted and our focus turns elsewhere.
Faith Today: As president, what do you anticipate the particular challenges to be for Canadian evangelicals in the coming years?
Clemenger: Religious freedom is something we will be diligent in promoting and defending in Canada. Our society’s common notion of tolerance is being reshaped in Canada. It has evolved from a recognition of difference to a celebration and affirmation of diverse faiths and lifestyles. In this current understanding of what tolerance and respect entail, evangelism and the belief that others should be converted to one’s faith are understood to express intolerance and a challenge of the dignity and identity of those we seek to evangelize. The presumption that someone else’s faith might be in error or that Jesus is the only way is seen as disrespectful and intolerant, and sharing one’s faith is understood as a hostile act.
There are many other challenges: the relevance of the Church to an increasingly secularized society, understanding and speaking into Canadian society, and the participation of the 20-something crowd in our church ministry. I think of Paul. He knew the philosophy and theology at play in his time. That was his entry point. There’s a way of communicating into that context. We need to learn the language of engagement for our time and in our society. Through Faith Today and our new web site, Christianity.ca, we can show how others have learned to do it. Together we can challenge the wisdom of the day.
Then there are themes such as reconciliation which lie at the heart of the gospel and which we must practice in our own community before we can be agents of reconciliation in the broader society. We have much to learn, and a great deal we must do together.
Faith Today: How would you summarize the mission of EFC?
Clemenger: Gathering evangelicals, fostering collaborative engagement among evangelical ministries and promoting and fostering constructive participation in the life of our country; this is what EFC can contribute to the evangelical Church in Canada.