Small Town - Busy Pastor

RAINY RIVER, ON CANADA (April 16, 2002) - The community may be small, but Mark Mast still may qualify as one of the busiest pastors in the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Mast is co-pastor at the Rainy River Evangelical Covenant Church of Rainy River, Ontario, along with Gordon Armstrong. The two have shared the position since September 1997. Mast is also a home missionary for Canadian Sunday School Missions (CSSM), having worked under CSSM for 15 years. Mast leads Bible clubs at six public schools, runs a canoe trip and other camps in the summer, and does other outreach and Christian education events in and around Ontario.

While a student at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, Mast became acquainted with Canadian Sunday School Missions (CSSM) through service at a summer camp in Michigan. There, he met a pastor who asked him to do ministry at his church the following summer. Mast agreed and the next five summers he worked through CSSM as a pastor in Chetwynd, Ontario.

Mast earned a Master of Bible Theology at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, in 1987 and decided to work for CSSM full-time in Rainy River, a town of 1,000 located in western Ontario. He soon discovered that, unlike the United States, the separation of church and state wasn't as pronounced in Canada and he could start Bible clubs in public schools.

"When we arrived, the Canadian Education Act had mandated religious instruction to all students (two 30-minute periods per week)," said Mast. "For three and a half years, I went to all of the public schools and was the Bible teacher."

Canadian church and state legislation changed in 1991, and Bible clubs are no longer as prominent in the public school system. However, Mast has managed to make the most of his ministry both in local schools and in camping and Vacation Bible School ministries that he runs each summer.

Mast and his wife, Tina, have plenty to do in raising five children. However, Mark still has found time to aid his community in a variety of ways. When the church's pastor left five years ago, he and Armstrong, the part-time mayor of Rainy River and a shoe storeowner in town, were asked to share the pastoral duties for the congregation of more than 100.

"Our previous pastor, Doug Stapleton, had been here for 11 years and when he left it was obvious that there would be no one immediate to take over the reins," said Mast. "At our quarterly business meeting, it was suggested that Gordon Armstrong and I serve as part-time interim pastors. We went for a while and the church was active in seeking a pastor full time. But they were very pleased with how things were going between Gordon and myself and they've sort of dropped the 'interim' part. We renew our lay minister licenses every year with the Covenant church."

When he's not doing church ministry, Mast spends time in volunteer work with his town's ambulance service - 35,000 hours so far. During the past year, he and another Covenant pastor, Scott Christensen of the Evangelical Covenant Church in Baudette, Minnesota, found a way to help another denomination's ministry. They currently share the pulpit for an area Evangelical Free Church congregation. Christensen said that Mast's bass voice was a big hit at the local Christmas concert last December.

The Evangelical Covenant Church of Rainy River is one of five Covenant congregations within a 60-mile radius. The Baudette Evangelical Covenant Church helped the Rainy River Covenant congregation start its ministry in 1946 - the two towns are U.S./Canada border towns located one mile apart. The others include Off Lake Covenant Church in Emo, Ontario; the Evangelical Covenant Church of Fort Frances, Ontario; and the Evangelical Covenant Church of International Falls, Minnesota.

For more information about the church and its ministries, call the church staff at 807-852-3873.

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