Indigenous Christian Fellowship Celebrates 40 Years

Forty years ago, Harry Kuperus followed the recommendation of the CRC in Canada that an outreach center be established in Regina, Sask., to serve the needs of Indigenous peoples there.

Named the Indian Metis Christian Fellowship and recently renamed the Indigenous Christian Fellowship, the outreach was one of three started by the CRC in Canada. The other two ministries are the Indigenous Family Centre in Winnipeg, Man., and the Native Healing Centre in Edmonton, Alta.

"I am very grateful to the church and those leaders for first looking at what was happening to our Indigenous neighbors and deciding to do something about it," said Bert Adema, who took over as executive director of the center in Regina after Kuperus left in 1992.

“I am also grateful that the CRC has recently had a very serious discussion on the Doctrine of Discovery and how Native peoples had their ancestral lands taken from them and how we tore them away from their families to put them in residential schools for generations,” said Adema.

“They were second-class citizens in their own homeland. We wanted them be like us and not Christians within their own culture. These things are the backdrop for our ministry.”

All three of the Aboriginal centers begun by the CRC in Canada have the mandate to develop a worshiping/working community through serving the spiritual and social needs of Aboriginal peoples.
North Central, the neighborhood served by the Indigenous Christian Fellowship (ICF), is home to Indigenous peoples from across the province and beyond. In 2007, because of its poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime, North Central was called "the worst neighborhood in Canada" by a national magazine.

Although many living in the area criticized the story when it came out and have worked to make things better, nearly 60 percent of young people there under the age of 18 are living below the poverty line, and some 35 percent of the homes are headed by single parents.

But since opening in 1978, the centre has been committed to changing and improving the area, regardless of the challenges, by providing a safe place for native peoples to come in from the cold in winter and to beat the heat in summer. Free coffee, a chance to read the newspaper, play games, and share lunch on Wednesdays are among the services that the Christian Reformed Church ministry offers. It also offers counselors willing to sit down and talk through problems with visitors.

"As we have grown, we have tried to respond to the needs of the people coming through our doors," said Adema. "Every morning we have a circle of prayer in which people can pray and speak about things they are facing in their lives. It is pretty open-ended." Prayers are offered and rise like sweet smoke into the presence of the Creator as a few people gather to turn their attention to God.

"We have tried to bring the blessings of God to this area. At the same time, we do our best to do that in ways that honor and support the people we work with," said Adema, who worked for what was then the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, now World Renew, in Sierra Leone before directing ICF.

Later in May, an insert will be placed in church bulletins highlighting the 40th anniversary of the Indigenous Christian Fellowship. (Inserts can be ordered from Faith Alive at faithaliveresources.org/aboriginal.) A celebration commemorating four decades of ministry will take place in the fall.

Some of the people who come to the fellowship are regulars, often from the neighborhood. Others are one-time visitors who stop along their way through the area. The morning prayer circle begins at about 9:30 a.m. and lasts for a half hour, followed by tea and coffee and bagels.

“The challenge shared by all the people who drop in is poverty,” volunteer Dolores Christoph wrote in the October 2016 newsletter for a nearby Lutheran church.

“There are personal challenges with mental health issues and addictions — and their struggles to overcome them.”

Often people have no one they can turn to as they struggle — and the center is there to lift them up and assure them they are not alone.

“There are victories and defeats — and ongoing support remains,” wrote Christoph. “Giving support to the grieving with wakes and funerals is such an important element of this ministry.”

In the Document of Discovery Task Force report submitted to Synod 2016, one section describes the work that the centers in Regina, Edmonton, and Winnipeg do:

“These three Urban Aboriginal Ministries (UAMs) have each evolved in a unique way as working and worshiping communities. Diverse programming includes or has included social and cultural support, employment services, health-fitness-nutrition, addictions services, pastoral care, drop-in centers, food banks, john schools, worship and prayer, Christian Indigenous ceremonies, microenterprise development, antiviolence, and encouragement of Indigenous artistic expression. These unique ministries have done remarkable work that is noticed and appreciated by Indigenous and community leaders” (Agenda for Synod 2016, p. 522).

In Regina, the center has been involved in larger efforts that help illustrate the emphasis it has placed on protecting, enhancing, and promoting the culture of Indigenous people.

For instance, Adema commissioned artist Ovide Bighetty, a self-taught Cree artist originally from the Pukatawagan First Nations in northern Manitoba, to create artwork illustrating native teachings in a Christian context.

In 2002, Bighetty created a series of images depicting the Easter story, known as Kisemanito Pakitinasuwin – The Creator’s Sacrifice; this series of 17 images was painted in acrylic on canvas and framed in cedar.

For each image, Bighetty, who died in 2014, selected an eagle feather to emphasize the sacred Aboriginal spirituality of the teachings.

Bighetty illustrated the Christmas story in 2007; he painted 17 images on Baltic birch plywood framed in maple. Elders and community members named this series of images Kisê-manitow Omiyikowisiwin – The Creator’s Gift.

In 2009, Bighetty created paintings illustrating Christian Indigenous prayers.

“His work resonates with the mandate of the Indigenous Christian Fellowship, which is to encourage Aboriginal people to claim, develop, use, and celebrate the individual and cultural gifts they have received from the Creator,” said Adema.

Biggetty's work continues to be shown at churches, colleges and elsewhere to help showcase the spirit and mission of ICF. For instance, Luther College in May 2017 held an exhibition of “Steps Along the Red Road: Following Christ the Creator" as a way for the school to show its solidarity with the work of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that worked to bring forth and document the voices of Indigenous people whose lives had been affected by government laws and policies.

"The exhibition at Luther College honoured the commitment made in 2010 between ICF and the Saskatchewan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada to collaborate in ministry with Indigenous people,” said  Adema. (Information about the art is available at www.imcf.ca.)

As ways to celebrate and share the “Creator’s gift of healing and forgiveness in Jesus Christ,” ICF works with a number of partners in the community: the public library, a local health center, different churches in Regina, and the police. The center also offers an afterschool program and other activities and special events for youth.

Since 1999, the ministry’s Chimatawa Bicycle Recycle Project has repaired and given out nearly 4,000 bicycles. Donations of food, clothing, and furniture are shared with the community.

All of this emerges, said Adema, from a theology that believes “the image of the triune God is in all of our neighbors in this world” and that “the image of God is too large for any language or culture.”

Loving your neighbor — all of your neighbors — is at the heart of their work.

“Churches have done some amazingly crazy things that have been far from loving our neighbor,” said Adema.”When we oppress people as much as we did for centuries, it is hard for them to see that we are followers of Christ.”

Looking ahead, Adema sees the center continuing to build a worshiping community of Indigenous peoples who have come to see that the gospel is what endures, and that the sins of the past, after repentance and the passing of time, can be set aside.

“It will happen in the good Lord’s time and not mine,” he said. At the same time, he added, “I am constantly amazed that people who have suffered so much abuse keep walking into this place. It has to be the Spirit and Christ that draws them here.”