Pastoral Calling Reimagined: Recognizing the Spirit’s Abundant Invitation in Canada

Friday, May 1, 2026 1:00 PM 13:00
Saturday, May 2, 2026 4:00 PM 16:00

Hampton Free Methodist Church 2930 McClocklin Road Saskatoon, SK, S7R 0A1 Canada (map)

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Pastoral Calling Reimagined

Recognizing the Spirit’s Abundant Invitation in Canada

May 1, 1:00 pm - 9:30 pm (SK time)
May 2, 9:30 am - 4:00 pm (SK time)

Saskatoon, SK & online

Hampton Free Methodist Church
2930 McClocklin Rd.
Saskatoon, SK, S7R 0A1

Across Canada, congregations are searching for pastors, while many gifted, faithful leaders go unnoticed, unsupported, or unseen.

Pastoral Calling Reimagined is a two-day gathering for pastors, denominational leaders, theological educators, and lay leaders who sense that the Spirit is already calling people into vocational pastoral ministry, even as our traditional models often struggle to recognize and support them.

Rather than responding with fear or scarcity, this conference invites participants into a hopeful and grounded reimagining of pastoral leadership shaped by real Canadian contexts.

Drawing on the new book Pastoral Calling Reimagined: Celebrating the Spirit’s Abundant Invitation, we will explore how pastoral calling is emerging today through:

Mid-career calls into pastoral ministry
Multivocational pastoral leadership
Shared call and leadership between clergy and lay leaders

This is not simply a book launch. It is a working gathering designed to help pastors, churches, denominations, theological institutions and leaders learn how to notice, name, and nurture the pastoral gifts already present in their communities.

Together, participants will:

Gain language for recognizing pastoral calling beyond traditional pipelines
Explore practical practices for mentoring and discernment in local congregations
Reflect on how structures, expectations, theological education and imagination must shift to create a culture of openness
Discern where you and your community fit in the future of pastoral leadership in Canada

Presenters include contributors to the book: Gordon T. Smith, Karis Le, Amy Caswell Bratton, and Clara King.

Whether you are discerning a call, supporting others in leadership through a denominational role or theological educator, or responsible for forming and mentoring pastors, this gathering offers wisdom, community, and practical insight for what comes next.

Join us in Saskatoon as we Reimagine Pastoral Calling together.

Presenters:

Featured

Gordon T. Smith

Gordon T Smith is the Executive Director for Christian Higher Education Canada (CHEC) and a Teaching Fellow at Regent College, Vancouver. He is the author of a number of publications, including Welcome Holy Spirit: A Theological and Experiential Introduction (IVPress, 2021), Your Calling Here and Now: Making Sense of Vocation (IVPress, 2022), and In the Meantime: Living in Light of the Ascension (Cascade, 2025). He has for many years had a particular interest in the question of vocation, work and career. Gordon is married to Joella and together they have two adult sons and six grandchildren.

Amy Caswell Bratton

Amy Caswell Bratton is the Director of Operations & Publishing for the New Leaf Network and the project manager for the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project and a chapter contributor to Tentmakers: Multivocational Ministry in Western Society, (2022). She lives in Saskatoon, SK, on Treaty 6 land, with her husband, Tim, and their sons, Oswald and Ira. She is a lay leader at Riversdale Neighbours church and an Adjunct Professor with Rocky Mountain College in the area of Spiritual Formation. She writes and speaks about the history of Christian spirituality, with a focus on the early Methodist understanding of Christian maturity known as “perfect love.” Read more from her in her book Witnesses of Perfect Love: Narratives of Christian Perfection in Early Methodism, (2014).

Clara King

Clara King is an ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Canada (M.Div '08, Vancouver School of Theology), with experience in urban, suburban, rural, and regional ministry. Since 2018, Clara has taught leadership for clergy and lay leaders in a variety of denominations in Canada and the United States. She is a teacher and mentor in the Leader’s Way Program for clergy at Yale Divinity School, and a PhD candidate in Practical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. With her husband Michael, she has two adult step-daughters, two characterful horses, and a Border Terrier named Jonah. They live in Calgary.