On Pentecost Sunday, the day Christians celebrate the birth of the church, Bethlehem Aboriginal Fellowship in Winnipeg held its first ever covenanting service and received its first 23 members into membership. Until now, believers and seekers have been gathering as a congregation to worship God wholeheartedly but with varying degrees of commitment to one another. Now they are united in their commitment to each other and to God.

The covenanting service at Bethlehem on May 31, 2009 completes a year of transformation that began in the spring of 2008 when Bethlehem transitioned from governance by an external board to internal governance. In celebrating this covenanting service, BAF has passed a significant milestone in its history: it now a newborn church with its own members, standing alongside about 180 other Canadian Baptist congregations in Western Canada.

“The building is not the church; the people are the church,” says Pastor Dietrich Desmarais, marking the significance of the covenanting service.

Bethlehem Aboriginal Fellowship ministers in the north end of Winnipeg, an impoverished area riddled by drug and gang violence, and a place where many people live in extreme poverty. The area has Canada’s largest urban concentration of Aboriginal people and is known for its ethnic diversity. Bethlehem’s vision is to be a beacon of hope through prayer and good deeds among aboriginal people and all nations who live in the inner city so that the community experiences the church as a lighthouse in the storms of life. As their vision statement says, “Our mission is to experience and practice God’s love in a caring inner-city church community.”

As a newborn church, Bethlehem Aboriginal Fellowship needs your prayers to grow in grace and wisdom and to mature in its calling to be one people – a light to lighten the gentiles in the north end of Winnipeg. For more information, go to www.bethlehem.ca