Nathan Taylor and his wife, Emily, always imagined serving God together in a gospel-needy place, but they never imagined ministry could look like this.
“Canada? Yeah, I was pretty sure there was just ice and people who play hockey up there,” Nathan laughs. “Shows how limited my knowledge was.”
Then, there was the nursing degree he didn’t expect to use after completing seminary.
“Nursing was something to do in college so that I could have a degree and have something for a job while I was in seminary,” he admits.
If Nathan and Emily could have gotten a glimpse of their current life and ministry just a few years ago, they would have probably been surprised to find themselves just outside of Calgary, Canada, as Nathan completes a church planting residency and prepares to plant a church covocationally.
It turned out that Canada isn’t just a place covered with blankets of ice, and working as a nurse in a local hospital opens the doors for Nathan to connect with people in need of gospel hope.
“God is using my nursing role in ways that I couldn’t have imagined initially,” he says. “It allows for a very natural conversation into spiritual things. I’m able to talk to a different person about spiritual matters almost daily.”
Finding missiological opportunities in his workplace is just one of the benefits Nathan has discovered in covocational church planting, which is having a primary vocation while also having a clear calling to plant a church.
In Canada’s spiritually cold climate, where many might not view ministry as a “real job,” Nathan has found that his profession as a nurse garners trust within his community.
“People work hard for their living around here. It’s a farming community where people work night and day trying to raise their cattle and crops,” he says. “When I share that I work as a nurse at a local hospital, it brings a lot of respect and trust that flows into other conversations.”
Working as a nurse gives Nathan eyes into his community, helping him understand the everyday struggles of the people around him in ways that he wouldn’t see if he were in full-time ministry.
“People appreciate that you are still doing regular daily things like working, raising a family and that you believe enough in church planting to do it on top of all that,” he adds.
Of course, planting a church while working full-time in the marketplace presents challenges, too. The most common, Nathan says, is time management and constraints. He advises covocational church planters to consider a longer runway to launch a church — something that he is doing by completing a residency at his Sending Church — Southwinds Church in Calgary.
“A Sending Church is a game-changer. If we didn’t have that church with those people, I feel like we would have already been going back home by now,” Nathan says.
The Taylors connected with a local Sending Church through Send Network. Now, they can’t imagine moving from Louisiana to Calgary without the support and affirmation of their calling they received from the Send Network family in Calgary.
“The ability to be part of Send Network has really been crucial in the success that we’ve had so far and any future success we have,” he says. “It allows us to connect to a larger, broader scope of people than we would have been able to on our own, and it brings resources, talents, and wisdom.”
To learn more about covocational church planting and how Send Network can help with resources and support along the way, visit SendNetwork.com/Covo.
Published August 23, 2024