June 6th, 2020

To our Northview family:

COVID-19 has meant enormous change for many institutions including churches. In times like these James 4:13-14 takes on new significance: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.”

As with many other organizations, this season has been hard for our church. It has required us to change our approach to ministry dramatically. It has affected how we meet, the types of programs we offer, and the team needed to best do ministry in the next 12-18 months. We used to have four campuses and 13 services in large auditoriums. We are now completely online. We are looking to creatively and carefully add in-person gatherings in groups of less than 50 in order to comply with provincial guidelines which will be in effect for longer than we had hoped. Our leadership team and staff are hard at work planning what this could look like. We look forward to sharing that vision as soon as we have a well thought through plan.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we made a number of temporary layoffs based on lower giving and jobs that require face to face and large group contexts. Like our government, we were hoping that this crisis would be over already. Unfortunately, it is not and as a result, we have needed to make some of those layoffs permanent. 

Our staff team is an integral part of our ministry at Northview, but as our ministries have changed significantly in this pandemic, so too have our staffing needs for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, we are saddened to announce the departure of 14 staff members. We desire to care for those individuals as best as we can through this transition in their lives. They have been a significant part of our Northview family – some for many years and others for a shorter time – but all of them have played a valuable role in their time with us.

These have been considered over the past couple of months with the mission of Northview clearly in focus. Building and multiplying healthy local churches has remained the same even though our methods have needed to change.

If you would like more information, please reach out to our Moderator, Darryl Kropp (dkropp@northview.org) or Personnel Committee Chair, Jeff Gamache (jgamache@northview.org).