Calgary’s Southside Victory Church is pioneering a model for civic engagement it hopes other churches will follow. .Pastor Craig Buroker said the impetus started five years ago when sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) educational materials were welcomed into Alberta schools..“That was what motivated me to say, okay, how can I use the influence that I have with my church, to get people to engage and vote for good politicians and begin to become active as school board trustees or begin to be active as city councillors or whatever?”.Buroker invited his congregation of 400 to attend a meeting if they were interested in social issues. Twenty-five showed up..“What I said to them was, ‘I don't really have an agenda, but I have a need. I need people to find information on what's going on, what's happening, who is being elected, and what do they stand for? What are we facing in our city and in our province and in our nation right now that that we can actually do something about?’.“We didn't really know what we were doing, but it worked. People began to put together information and we began to inform the church,” Buroker said..Soon a proposed federal law and Calgary by-law to ban conversion therapy got Buroker’s attention. Both passed, but not without some church members making their concerns known to elected representatives..“Nobody hardly knew anything about it. But because we had been soft of ahead of the game, we got connected with people that knew this conversion therapy ban was going to seriously affect the churches. I found out that if we were going to counsel someone who had unwanted same sex attraction, that we could go to jail for that. That law federally has now passed.”.A steering committee meets monthly to help coordinate “research, action, and communication” through Southside Victory’s Citizen Action Group. Volunteers man a booth in the foyer for those who want more information before or after service. An email in the first week of the month updates people with three “need to know” points, and speakers are booked for the fourth Sunday of most months. .Past speakers have included Calgary MP Tom Kmiec; John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms; Doug Sharpe of Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC); Faytene Grasseschi of My Canada; local MLA Miranda Rosen; former MPs Derek Sloan and Jeff Watson; former MLA and current publisher of the Western Standard Derek Fildebrandt, and current premier Danielle Smith..Sharpe occasionally highlights Buroker’s Citizen Action Group story on CFAC’s “National Leadership Briefing” zoom call. The church offers a three-page primer to those interested in forming similar groups, and Buroker offers some advice..“The first thing I tell them is that they don't have to do it [themselves] because most pastors that I know are busy enough. And it was the same thing when the Lord was putting this on my heart. I said, 'God, I'm not a politician. And I'm not called to be a watchdog ministry for the nation. I don't have the time or the inclination or the skill.' So the first thing I tell them is that. .“The second thing, though, is that there's people in their church who can help them. In every community of any form of believers, whatever's on God's heart, there will be a group of people in that community that it's on their heart [also].”.Buroker guesses “one or two” households decided to leave the church after the Citizen Action Group was formed. However, he believes being “the salt of the earth” includes this kind of involvement..“Christians have to engage in the political, in the social issues and processes of our society instead of being focused on the Church. [Jesus] said, ‘Go into all the world and share the Gospel.’ Go into all the facets of society. That's what we felt we needed to do,” Buroker said..“We were at a conference in Eastern Canada, and we ended up sitting at the same table as Stockwell Day. Stock said that if the Christians in Canada ever got together, we could put anybody in or take anybody out of any constituency in the nation, if the church would just begin to rise up and stand together. But my part is, we look for people [of] honesty, truth, justice, and those sorts of things.”
