| Pastor Dan Rogge |
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 In his own words: The guiding philosophy of our church is to embrace all people with God's love, levelling the 'playing field' so that everyone has the same opportunity to know Jesus. As I travel along life's highway, I am saddened by the alarming number of hurting individuals I see who are afflicted by deep sorrow or private pain. Many have felt deep heartache as a result of death, divorce, dysfunctional homes or abuse. Many have suffered physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually, or psychologically due to the trauma of past or present realities. Countless numbers of people are broken by despair, bound by discouragement and in desperate need of hope. The church possesses the good news that God can work good out of tragedy, that there is hope for tomorrow and that even if a dream has been shattered, an individual can arise and dream again. Knowing God is a liberating experience! Even as our church boldly proclaimed this amazing truth, we came across members of our society who were missing the message, not because they weren't interested but because they couldn't hear. We realized that few were reaching out to the deaf/hard of hearing in our community. Consequently, we broadened our scope of ministry to provide for and embrace this group of people. Initially, we opened a Deaf Church, which meets in a portable building on our property and conducts services in American Sign Language (A.S.L.) However, we soon came to understand that more was required. Wonderfully, the Lord sent a dynamic court reporter/captioner our way, Pat Gardiner. Through her concentrated efforts, sheer determination, charisma and her willingness to empower others, she birthed Canada's only captioning ministry to the deaf and hard of hearing. We have successfully provided this service for more than a decade without interruption. It is only through the faithful, selfless dedication of captioning team members that we have been able to build this vital bridge of communication and establish credibility with the Deaf community. We anticipate that this outreach will continue to grow in the years ahead, that the Lord will multiply our efforts as we continually seek to reach out with God's love. Dan Rogge, Lead Pastor, New Life Church |
