Dear Yellowknife Vineyard Family,

On Sunday September 15, we announced more detail on the transition process of YKVC, 2024. We want to make sure that we communicate the progress and process of transition week by week moving ahead. We do this to keep everyone abreast of developments, and to avoid possible misunderstanding along the way.

A few people might be asking why more details were not given sooner. The answer is simply that the aim is always to communicate clarity rather than uncertainty. In the case of Jabin moving into the Senior Pastor role; Jabin and Jess only felt certainty of the call to that position at the end of August 2024. Any communication prior to them feeling that certainty would have been premature.

The agreed process to date looks as follows:

  1. Jabin and Jessica have been functioning as Senior Pastors from the beginning of summer, 2024. They continue in this role until October 15 2024. On that day Jabin officially becomes the Senior Pastor of Yellowknife Vineyard Church on a bi-vocational basis. He continues as the Instructor of Early Childhood Development at Aurora College. Jessica continues as a family pastor at YKVC.
  2. On October 15 2024, Melt transitions from Senior Pastor to Transitional Pastor until the transition is completed. Melt’s role becomes one of mentoring the pastors until the process is completed in early 2025.
  3. Joshua continues in his current role as Worship Pastor.
  4. On September 1 2024, Juliana was appointed as Administrative Coordinator.
  5. To share the pastoral workload when Melt is out of the equation, we will be seeking additional pastoral staff to supplement the existing pastoral team of Jabin, Jess, and Joshua.

The pastoral model being followed is a bi-vocational model that includes more staff working less hours. Observation of Church trends – specifically Vineyard Church trends in Canada – is that this would seem to be a far more sustainable way ahead than the traditional ‘single, full-time pastor’ model, which increasingly becomes a model suited to a bygone era.

Once we have clarity on what type of additional pastoral input is required to make up the whole incoming team, we will post advertisement for the same and keep the church informed.

The process that has been followed in this transition, is that Melt has been functioning as both Senior Pastor for YKVC and Transitional Pastor for New Joy Vineyard in Surrey, BC. New Joy has been paying YKVC for Melt’s consultancy for four months of 2024.

In large part, the income generated from that consultancy has been what has allowed us to make the journey toward transition by gradually bringing more staff into the team.

The remaining time needing to be given to New Joy for 2024 is that Melt and Anida will be in Surrey with New Joy from mid-October till end November. They will be back with YKVC for December of 2024.

The entire transition process has been guided by our guiding coalition, which is a group of people consisting of the PLT plus five other core members of YKVC. The guiding coalition has had two workshops to date with one more to follow to completion.

Please do make the effort of scrolling through our website to see the changes that have already been affected.

Please stay tuned as we provide regular updates moving forward.

Grace & Peace

Jabin, Joshua, Jess, Juliana & Melt (Staff)

Same message is attached to this link: YKVC Transition