Emmanual Anglican Church, New York, NY
Rev. Jim Salladin

Not every Artizo apprentice starts out with the idea of planting a church in a city they have never lived in. Rev. Jim Salladin would have been quite happy staying in Vancouver or in London, UK. Instead, he found himself planting a church in Lower Manhattan. Jim was an Artizo apprentice from 2004 to 2006. He then served as the evening service leader at St. John’s Vancouver for 4.5 years before moving to London to write his PhD at the University of St. Andrews. While in London, Jim served as the associate vicar at St. James Muswell Hill. Through a tumultuous five years while two successive vicars suffered from illness, Jim helped lead the parish with another associate vicar and the church staff.

St. James Muswell Hill was constructed the same time as the neighbourhood. We were everybody’s church that they didn’t go to. But almost anybody in the neighbourhood would tend to come to St. James if they had a spiritual question. The conviction that Artizo instilled in me to deeply trust the on-going exposition of the Bible really bore out wonderfully there. It was remarkable to me how just teaching the Bible and proclaiming the Gospel from the Bible text as much as possible ended up addressing both non-believers and believers in what I found to be an utterly delightful way.
About the time when the vicar returned, we heard about a group of 30 Christians in Lower Manhattan who wanted to be a church. They didn’t have any resources or building, nor a great deal of reason to think that establishing a church would work. We began talking with them and fell in love with them. It felt like God was asking us to do what really felt like a crazy and frightening thing. We moved from London to Manhattan in August 2016 and worked our tails off. It was a huge upgrade to our faith. The LORD has been really kind and has added to our number.

Taking up the cross is where you really are able to taste the faithfulness of God and are able to testify to it in the long haul. While the first year of church planting was painful and frightening, evangelism happened easily. God decided to save many people in that first year and that was the best thing that happened. We baptized a lot of people, some of them international students. We’re not entirely beyond fear. We are seeing the kindness of God. In September, we were over drawn, and it felt like the whole thing was going to tumble down, but by the end of the month, we had recovered and had the best month ever in giving Artizo was extremely helpful to me in many ways. Firstly, commitment towards God coming through in preaching. The absolute fundamental way David Short mentored was by proclaiming the Gospel. Over time, I found that I was less impressed with him as a preacher and more impressed with Jesus. God allowed transparency in David’s preaching so that when I heard him preach, the main thing I was thinking about was the text, and Jesus who he was describing to me through the text, rather than about the wonders of David’s oratory.

Secondly, in the Artizo meetings, David allowed us to ‘go backstage’ and watch how the software is made. He would often come to the meeting with his exegesis notes right in the midst of not knowing what the text meant. We were able to watch him angst over the text but not be really ready to preach it yet. That was really helpful to see him ‘not arrived yet’ and then listen to the sermon on Sunday.

Thirdly, this glimpse of the exegesis process allowed us to have an expectation that preaching the Word of God includes a wrestling with the text and a certain degree of powerlessness.Finally, watching David’s faithfulness in the long haul, and particularly faithfulness through suffering. That helped show me what confidence in Jesus looks like. It’s a long obedience in the same direction – we’re going to keep preaching the text, we’re going to keep obeying God. I found that extremely helpful because that’s where long term potency and power comes from.

Artizo’s strength was to say to us “the gold is in the text, mine the text, not your experience.” I was preaching on 2 Corinthians 4 as evening service leader at St. John’s and I was trying to figure out what the heart of ministry was. And now, over the years, I’ve come to realize that the gold is Jesus Christ himself. I use the term “describe the beauty of Jesus”. When we describe the beauty of Jesus to Jesus, that’s called worship. Describing the beauty of Jesus to other believers, that’s called discipleship. And describing the beauty of Jesus to non-believers, that’s called evangelism. And as Jesus presents himself in scripture, you see the beauty of Jesus. Artizo played a fundamental role in helping me faithfully teach and preach God’s word to describe the beauty of Jesus, and entrust it to others.

At Emmanuel Anglican Church, we love working with Artizo grads because there is a shared vision for ministry and theological background. We knew Clint and Laura at St. John’s Vancouver Church, and Clint was my apprentice while he was in Artizo. Clint and Laura have long felt called to New York City, and they joined Emmanuel last summer. Clint is not on staff, but he recently joined the church council. He works for an organization called Street to Street – it reaches out to urban youth through organizing basketball tournaments. He is an ordained deacon in our diocese. Clint and Laura are a treasure to Emmanuel.”