ECBC's Next Great Adventure: Rev Milne Accepted

The Milne Family

At the ECBC special members' meeting today, the vote on the motion to accept English pastoral candidate Reverend Dennis Milne was passed. After over six months without a permanent English pastor, the vote heralded good news to the English congregation as the full-time pastor will be able to continue in the same direction that Reverend Tawa Anderson has left. During the past half-year, various guest speakers have filled in the pastoral void while the search committee continued to select a suitable candidate after the would-be successor Dr. Joseph Hama was not able to take the position.

Before Reverend Dennis Milne, 43, applied for the employment opportunity, there were already ties with the Milne family and ECBC. His father Rev. Pat Milne was the pastor of Dovercourt Baptist Church, in which ECBC was one of their church planting projects. Dennis Milne was already starting on his preaching abilities during the early days of ECBC. Looking at Milne's career, he attended school at Oklahoma Baptist University and was soon a pastor at Mountainview Baptist Church. After a short stint at Faith Baptist Church in Saskatoon, the family moved back to metro Edmonton where the pastor led the youth ministry in St. Albert's Grace Family Church, a member of the CNBC. Milne then took a position at the inner-city Lighthouse Baptist Ministries before moving to his last position serving youth at Jasper Place Baptist.

Pastor Dennis' wife Ardell has also been very involved within the church ministries in the past. Along with his wife of almost 25 years, the family also consist of son Alexander and two daughters Andelina and Madeline. Alexander and his wife Ashley have a baby daughter named Audrey, and Andelina is engaged to be married to fiancée Paul this May.

Pastor Dennis Milne should receive the official offer letter sometime in the next week on the associate pastoral position at ECBC. The position will be an opportunity to lead the congregation of 40-60 members. The pastor has delivered sermons to all three congregations at ECBC earlier this year and spoke of ECBC as the family's next great adventure that God has opened the door to.

Eighty were registered in attendance for the special membership meeting with . There were three absentee ballots cast for the vote. Some members were not eligible to vote because they were under 18 years of age. In attendance were 17 baptised members of the English congregation. For the motion to approve Rev Dennis Milne as term pastor, there were 76 votes for agree, with the remainder of the 78 votes cast either disagree or void.

There was also a separate vote cast for approving Pastor Shuquan Nie for his third year as Mandarin pastor at ECBC, which allows his role to be a permanent position. For this motion, there were 76 votes for agree, with the remainder of the 76 votes cast either disagree or void. Other agenda items included a rental subsidy review and income statement presentation for 2008 and proposed budget for 2009 (49 votes for; passed).