In 2018, Jon moved to Hamilton to develop and launch Act Five. He lives here with his wife, Aimee, and their three young children, growing to love this place and be loved by the community here. For eight years, Jon has learned alongside all the young people who have come through this place as they have adventured through wild spaces, shared meals with neighbours, and imagined the fullness of life together. Jon is grateful and excited to see what God has in store for Act Five in the years to come – to see more students, residents, and our broader communities inspired by what is happening here. 

Jon was the first speaker in Act Five’s 2026 Winter Learning Series.

Stories To Begin the 2026 Winter Learning Series

Be wary of making heroes of humans.

We are walking a dangerous road when we turn the real, earthy, honest lives of those we celebrate, whether living or dead, into “pinnacle” forms of the Christian life. When we do this we risk misplacing our hope onto versions of what it means to be human that are less than the reality of what it means to be human. 

We see these stories play out all the time. Modern day heroes live in front of crowds as reduced archetypes of what we believe we need or want, showing us lives that are celebrated as good, faithful, “impactful”. Either an inevitable story of moral failure comes that seemingly necessitates his or her followers to either cancel the leader or justify the failure; or this point does not come and we are permitted to continue elevating a less-than-human form of the hero.

The problem here is beyond what this requires of the individual and what it does to his or her soul and story – though this too matters a great deal. The wider problem is what it is doing to our imaginations, shaping our expectations of the life we are meant to live. The mess of real life becomes a problem to be solved (or ignored) if the goal becomes some clean and shiny ideal. This in turn costs us our own humanness, our ability to live well together within communities and our ability to love and be loved. 

If this is what the good life should look like, then the mess of my own life, the mess of others around me, and the uncontrollable ways of God and his grace become unacceptable. 

In light of this, as I presented on the Clapham community and Arvo Pärt to open the 2026 Winter Learning Series, I feel the need to protect both of these stories from being heard and processed through the default lens of reducing them into flattened heroes. 

Perhaps some of this is semantics. If we are to use the word “hero”, then heroes must be allowed to have mixed motives and blind spots, those who likely left wounds amidst the good of their story. All of us are the same, more collections of fragments than the kind of congruent whole people we wish we were.

After all this pretext… I loved getting to talk about the two stories I chose to open our learning series this past year. I entered these stories as a learner seeking to invite others along the way with me.

The Clapham Community

I was first inspired by the 18th/19th Century’s Clapham community (or Sect) from a high school history teacher and colleague of mine. His name is Harvey and he is one of the best history teachers I know. I heard him speak of this community and was captivated.

This community that included William Wilberforce, Hannah More and many others each encountered God in moments of deep personal transformation. They saw their positions of influence as opportunity and collectively fostered a deep and wide vision that held everything from moral reform to missional fervour to their own sanctification. They imagined rivers of justice flowing among the poor, slave, woman, child, sick, prisoner and beast. Over decades of hard work, they shaped paths of education, used the arts to shape culture, and they patiently worked to change policy at the highest levels of government. 

The Clapham community was way ahead of its time, working out all they did and who they were in embodied community. They quite literally changed the world as they abolished the slave trade, started what became the seeds of free public education, reformed healthcare systems and modes of global missions against the harm of colonial bulldozing , and even started the SPCA.

I mean, if there are to be heroes, this is it. 

They of course were also flawed. They enjoyed their wealth. They experienced division in their community. They were far more for the poor than they were alongside the poor. They had harsh words for folks who sounded too revolutionary. The more you dig, the more human they become. I’m grateful for this because it means I too might be welcome at their table.

Their story matters. They tried with some real chutzpah, they gave their life to the causes the prophets and Jesus appear to take seriously, and they did so in no small part because of their communities that held them. They were humble in their daily need for a deep and real grace. 

I invite you to learn more of their story. You can find good books on Hannah More and William Wilberforce among other key members of the Clapham community.

Heroes or not, this community challenges and inspires me, leaving me with questions, hope and conviction.

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt is about as close as someone can come to being a hero of mine. I had been captivated by him since he was introduced to me by my partner, Aimee, herself a brilliant musician, psychotherapist, learner and one who sees the possibilities for the arts to shape and heal our world. 

Pärt is an Estonian composer of the 20th & 21st Centuries who experienced both the Nazi and Soviet regimes of oppression on his people and his family, and whose story of transformation is encountered in watching how his music changed over time. He wrote with powerful conviction that gave voice to the gospel of a suffering God in the face of Soviet censorship. 

Central to his story, he found himself in an 8 year season where he encountered the depths of darkness; there, eventually, he discovered a light at the very heart of the deepest dark, where he was found by the simplest and truest form of love that transformed him. After assuming he would never write compose again, he now returned to something new in his music – cruciform in shape and gentle in the face of the full force of empire. His story is powerful and his music is even more so.

I sought to tell a piece of his story and play a piece of his later music. The recording of our piece is available for you to watch & hear; it is what it is. What I would encourage is for you to listen to the story via our podcast and then take a minute to listen to a proper recording of Spiegel Im Spiegel if you have the capacity to do so.

In some ways, this piece and Pärt’s story is a truer kind of heroism we perhaps can allow to shape our imaginations. It is the way that is low, encountering God in the dark, instead of versions of heroes that can wow a crowd and make us feel like we are winning some war we were never meant to be fighting as Christians. The piece, Spiegel Im Spiegel, can hardly be received without it moving our hearts to find rest in God while forming our loves more deeply toward our neighbour. 

Whether we use the language of hero or not, I invite us to consider what we imagine when we picture the faithful life or a life worth telling through story. My hope in offering these two stories was, and is, to move the conversation in a fruitful direction.

Continue to follow along with us as we invite you into the learning of our community. We will share more reflections from speakers of this past year’s Winter Learning Series in the weeks to come, and the 2027 Winter Learning Series is already in the works! 

To learn more of Act Five, visit us online or at 75 Blake St.

Would you be willing to support the work of Act Five? We depend on support from our broader community! Consider a one-time gift or signing up as a monthly donor here.

The post The Clapham Community & Arvo Pärt – Jon Berends appeared first on Act Five: Community Initiatives for Young Adults.

During second semester the students have the opportunity to participate in a placement  in a field that they could see themselves pursuing after Act Five. As part of Kassia’s placement, we took on an artistic project remembering the home as it was before the summer’s renovations.  

In our initial conversation, ideas erupted and we couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with the inspiration we had to catalogue the home. We landed on the idea of eight different pieces, each representing a different room in the home. We worked in mixed media, running around with plasticine to make prints of cool textures, used real popcorn and cooked spaghetti to make marks, and referenced pieces of literature, poetry and prayers that have been significant in the home over the years.

One thing I learned over my time working with and supervising Kassia on this project was that 75 Blake Street had really become my home. I knew the essence of the spaces and what happened in them, I knew the prayers and the liturgies by heart and I got to spend time thinking about where I fit in the story of the home as I thought to capture it through Art. I knew this home and I knew my place.

A quote that Act Five often refers to is this; “we cannot love what we do not know and we cannot know what we do not experience.” As I looked at the eight pieces hanging on the wall when we were finally done, it was clear to me that being immersed in this place has truly shaped me to love it.

There is real pain in pulling up the roots that have grown over the last season of my life, yet I’m left wondering what this longing means for where I go next. As I head to teachers college in September, with the goal of teaching high school Art and English, I realize that my next place needs to look different. I am so grateful and I have been so deeply blessed in this season of Act Five, and at the same time I know that it cannot last forever, it shouldn’t last forever. Hope grows in the “deathy stuff”. Sounds dramatic, but it feels true. The pain I feel over leaving sparks in me a longing to know my next place.

In giving myself to this work, I have been molded into someone who longs to be where my feet are. I used to long for the big adventures in life, yet as I sit with myself in this transition, my longings have shifted more towards simplicity. I leantowards rhythms of prayer, and walking in my neighbourhood. I’ve learned to be curious about the names of the trees that line the sidewalk and my backyard. I’ve been shaped to want to know where I am.

 My prayer as my time with Act Five comes to a close is that whatever neighbourhood and home I end up in next, that it would be a place I come to know deeply and in turn, come to love deeply too. 

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“What do you think young people need most?”

• Cullen: Challenge. Challenge requires that proper support for such a challenge is in place, but ultimately challenge and people who support you. 
• Jana: They need a safe place to ask questions, to be seen, and to be asked good questions for learning that is their own. 

Having two resident leaders with different perspectives on what young people need most could seem opposing, but instead it created a culture inside the Act Five House that felt dynamic. Neither of us were wrong, but we also didn’t have a full view. We needed each other’s perspective to create an environment that allowed room for real people and a plethora of needs.

Throughout this year we have been shown some of the most authentic ways of what it means to be human through our students. 

In March it became clear that there was tension amongst the girls . Living so closely together in one room, combined with the stress of assignments and a desire not to say or do anything that might hurt each other was creating a tense environment. Their longing was to live together well and to care for each other, and yet they each were feeling the strain. What often happens in community settings was happening – they began living into a belief that if they just didn’t talk about the problems, the problems wouldn’t exist. While observing these dynamics we decided that challenging them to have a conversation was the way forward. Sitting on the floor at Benediction church, the atmosphere started out thick and uncomfortable, knowing that this was not what they wanted to be doing. Yet as I (Jana) gave them the challenge that only they could choose a way through this and that they could face it or keep living the way they were, they did choose the way through. They shared where they were each at, they acknowledged their differing needs, there was an apology offered and grace extended. This was an example of a moment that called for the hard thing to be done, and the fruit of facing that challenge allowed the girls to be able to continue their year together, with clarity and the ability to see each other through. 

Through pursuing challenges and being challenged by others, we are given opportunities to see pieces of ourselves that are most raw, and perhaps often hidden. And in those challenges we can be formed by seeing those honest, hidden and raw pieces. Not hiding them, not reframing them. We grow resiliency and self confidence and we learn to recognize that we do not need to be afraid of hard things. And when we do so in community, we can celebrate that journey together.

By our second week living at Blake Street it had become apparent that not everyone knew how to do laundry. We had told the students where the laundry machine was and that they would need to get their own soap, and this had left them with the challenge to be in charge of their own laundry routines. This was one of those moments however where a challenge failed us and quickly we realized that we would need to have some conversations about how often laundry was done, how much soap to use, and how to use a laundry machine. It meant we would have to let students know that we see their fears of trying something new, of messing up in front of a group of people they had just met, of being corrected, or of proving oneself incapable in front of a new group and having to worry about their belonging to that group. After we could properly see people we could then choose a course of action, some embarrassing stories of how we got it wrong, showing the group as a whole how to do something that in honesty was new to a few, and keep the environment considerate and compassionate. 

Through seeing others and giving them a safe space and room for vulnerability, empathy from others, grace for their incompleteness, celebration for their accomplishments, and the ability to celebrate another’s worth not even when it didn’t matter all that much to our own benefit. 

As we have led these young people this year we’ve discovered that support and challenge is not just what young people need, but in fact what we all need. We all crave a place to belong, we all face challenges and seek to find purpose. We all want to be seen and we want to take pride in the identity we have. As we leave this year the hope has always been that our students would feel prepared to live into the real world rooted in their relationship in Christ and in the places where they will go next. What we didn’t realize was how much we were also being formed, how much we too were seen and challenged and asked questions and forced to see other perspectives. So, to our students from this past year, we hope you leave pursuing challenges and wanting to be cherished and we hope you know that so many of us are after this very same thing.

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Serve & Observe is back.

101 high school students from 4 different cities have come to Hamilton in the past month and a half for 2-3 days of learning and service in the city. These trips take students into places they might not naturally find themselves – giving lunches to people living on the street with Gore Park Food Outreach, sorting clothing donations with Helping Hands, digging into a community garden with a local church or painting new tenant’s homes with Indwell. These experiences aren’t just about the hands-on experience though. Students are introduced to Indwell’s model of support, hear about the valuable work of Eva Rothwell in empowering families living in poverty, sit and eat with friends from L’arche and talk about the newcomer experience with Micah House. 

What is Serve & Observe?

Serve & Observe trips with Act Five offer high school students a meaningful 2–3 day experience of service, learning, and reflection in the city of Hamilton. Designed for high school and church youth groups, these trips aim to inspire youth and their leaders to serve others, deepen their character, and explore how faith connects to everyday life and justice.

The Serve & Observe model emphasizes a posture of both action and attentiveness. Participants are invited not only to do but also to notice—to listen deeply to the people, places, and stories they encounter. 

Rooted in the biblical call of Genesis 2:15—to abad (serve, cultivate) and shamar (keep, observe, protect)—these experiences are designed not only for doing, but for noticing. We hope participants can step into these communities and contexts with open hands and open eyes: offering themselves in service while learning to see, listen, and receive the stories, strengths, and needs of the people and places they encounter.

This model resists the temptation to “fix” or “solve,” and instead cultivates a humble presence—one that seeks to learn from and alongside others, in relationship. Serve & Observe reminds us that service is not just about activity, but about formation: this can be the formation of our character, our understanding of justice, our communities, and even our perception of what we have in common with others who are different from us.

Through Serve & Observe trips, students are encouraged to think about how God is working outside of the communities that they are familiar with. They are pushed out of their comfort zone and introduced to a city that is messy, but filled with God’s grace – made visible by the many organizations serving our neighbours on the margins of society. 

Maranatha Church’s Serve & Observe

Just last week, a group came from Maranatha Church and spent a Saturday volunteering with Gore Park Outreach, an organization that feeds about 1,000 people every Saturday. The students were given the opportunity to set-up, serve food and eat with the people who came. Experiences like these are invaluable for shaping compassion and inspiring youth to expand their communities. 

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Our students spent 3 weeks in El Salvador learning from our partner, Seeds of a New Creation, about their work in their communities. They listened to teachings from pastors and community leaders, explored sustainable agriculture in rural communities and spent time on service projects with different ministries. The trip was mutually encouraging – a reminder that the kingdom of God is flourishing all over the world. One of our students, Kassia, and Alyssa, a trip leader, take some time to reflect on what this partnership means. 

Kassia Beauchesne, Act Five Student

“We stood in a circle,all holding hands. Delaney, our translator, explained that everyone was going to close their eyes. Music began to play and children’s voices filled the air. The two kids on either side of me swayed out of sync, gently yanking me in opposite directions. The words were foreign to me and there were no screens or booklets to help me sound them out this time. I hadn’t been expecting to be standing there in a time of praise and yet, I felt the spirit of worship in that moment more keenly than any other time I had shown up expectant.

Sometimes, I tried closing my eyes and simply listened, feeling the presence of God in that space. I felt Him the most, though, as I kept them open, looking around the circle. To my left, at one little boy staring up to the sky as he sang, and to my right, in another child with eyes tightly closed and singing with such earnestness and sweet sincerity. I want to remember that expression of childlike devotion. The feeling of being tugged back and forth and having no idea how to sing along. The beautiful illustration of how God is in everything, even (and especially) in the unexpected places. I want to remember the washing over of peace as I felt the permission to stand there in that unexpected place, allowed to simply be and receive. 

Through so many moments during our three weeks in El Salvador, I felt convicted by the example of mission I saw demonstrated by Semillas and their partner ministries. The way they are with the people, not just in the church, but outside of its four walls. In the unexpected places, walking alongside their neighbours. Fully present, fully engaged and incarnated in community.

I saw ministries creating community gardens, teaching youth how to breakdance, helping adults complete their high school degrees, and playing with kids in market squares. Though God was at the heart of all of those ministries, many leaders expressed that others have questioned or pushed back on what they are doing. Ministering through actions rather than words and going to the places we don’t think God is at work, can sometimes go against our assumptions as Christians. 

In El Salvador, I felt a call to model Jesus, be embodied in my communities and place, and open my eyes to the ways He is moving that I might not have expected or seen before.”

 

Alyssa Zilney, Act Five Program Manager

“Our now four-year partnership with Semillas de Nueva Creación is a gift that flows in both directions. This recent trip was my third visit to El Salvador and my first since 2023. I arrived eager to reconnect, to listen, and to learn again from people I’ve grown to love and trust – and the visit did not disappoint.

“Seeds of a New Creation,” as the organization is called in English, is a Salvadoran community development organization rooted in a vision for the New Creation and shaped by the principles of Integral Mission. Integral Mission is a theological framework articulated by Ecuadorian theologian René Padilla at the 1974 Lausanne Congress. At its heart, it insists that the Christian gospel is both proclaimed and embodied – lived out in word and deed – and that these two cannot be separated. Following Jesus means speaking God’s reconciling work and participating in God’s justice, compassion, and restoration in the world. There is no hierarchy between evangelism and social action; rather, all of life falls under the Lordship of Jesus.

Integral Mission is holistic in its reach, incarnational in its grounding in Jesus’ life among the marginalized, and deeply contextual in the way it is shaped by real places and people. Semillas is a beautiful and collaborative example of what this looks like when it’s lived-out in a particular context and in particular communities.

There is much alignment between the vision of Semillas and the vision of Act Five. We, too, long to see local churches animated by a gospel that is deeply relational, rooted in place, and generative. At Act Five, we invite young adults along on a journey that stretches their imagination for what life can look like when it is shaped by the broad, unfolding story of Scripture and the hope of new creation. Semillas does similar work with local churches in El Salvador, nurturing an imagination for a restored world, and empowering communities to work toward it on their own land, with their own people.

While this partnership is an immense gift to us – the vast amount of learning, new experiences, relationship-building across differences, and new perspectives formed – our visits also matter for our hosts in El Salvador. They get to show us the goodness and beauty of their own country, the ways they see God’s homemaking and reconciling movements unfolding in their own places. This is not small. Early in the trip, I spoke with our students about the way many countries that have struggled economically have been made to feel small or disposable on the global stage. In El Salvador, our students encountered people who love their place and are proud of it and are eager to share it. 

Getting to be the recipients of that joy, hospitality, and love, and then sharing it back in the form of curiosity, encouragement, and story is a beautiful thing. It nurtures dignity, mutuality, and hope. It reminds us that global relationships, when rooted in respect and reciprocity, can be life-giving in both directions.

And so I return to the name: Semillas de Nueva Creación—Seeds of a New Creation. The new creation is the reign of a good God made manifest on earth: integrated and whole. Therefore, the work is plentiful – it can go in any direction and has ample creative potential. Its expression is not limited to sermons and prayers and bible studies. It is realized in relationships, in ecological agriculture that heals both people and land, in work with children that interrupts cycles of violence, and so much more. It is about building a world that is exhibiting love in all directions. Through people, communities, and the local church – this kind of mission is a call for all of us.

Semillas works against the grain, against the current in their own context – even within the church it is hard to find support for this work, which requires courage, imagination, and long obedience.

This trip sparked our own imaginations for what a new creation could look like in our places. If you would like to learn more about the work of Semillas in El Salvador, you can do so here.”

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Girls vs. boys, led by their respective RLs – it became the competition of a lifetime. 

We begin with the girls. They bravely grabbed their costumes and drove off into the snow following their first clue to Niagara Falls. Many photos, videos and a failed attempt to cross the border later, they found themselves sitting in the drivers seat of a parked city bus before heading off to Port Dover for the evening. 

Day 2 dawned with the girls speeding on over to the cute little town of Elora where some strangers kindly painted their faces for the sake of extra points. Before heading to Russet House Farm for the night, they made several (failed) attempts to find a goat farm before finally sneaking into a family friend’s barn for some valuable goat photos.

On day 3 they found a 62 year old!, and fell into several lakes before finally finding there way to the town of Paisley. 

In the meantime, the boys found themselves straddled with a human sized teddy bear named Cozy Rosie. They dressed her in Santa pants and  a wreath and followed their clue to Cambridge where they put on a Shakespeare play in the park. A man attempted to heist Cozy Rosie from them and after fighting him off, they too headed to Port Dover for a service project, cooking competition and polar plunge.

Day 2 took them through Toronto, Cozy Rosie being piggy-backed by Luke through the busy streets. Again, many photos and a tearful goodbye at Union Station later, they were on their way to Russet House Farm to spend the night there. 

Day 3 finished with a frantic rush to get points before the team rejoined for a final Survivor-esque challenge: a race to build a fire hot enough to boil a cauldron of water (that naturally was collected from the swamps and rivers surrounding Paisley. Oh, is that the sound of someone falling in that I hear?). 

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“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

                                                                                John 21:25

Of all the gospel endings, I love this one the best.  It shapes my imagination as a storyteller: how can we become trustworthy gospel narrators to a story that is TBC?

In the winter of 2015 I took to the stage at Mill’s Hardware, to share a personal story with Steel City Stories, a local storytelling guild. They’d partnered with The Good Shepherd Centre for three shows in celebration of International Women’s Day. I shared about teaching adolescent girls in the advent of smartphones, when the images they shared with their crushes backfired, derailing their education and ability to show up in real life. I shared my feelings of inadequacy at helping young women, my own shame about my complicity in the beauty industry and the lack of solutions I had for life with technology. This led audience members to open up to me afterwards and share their struggles with teen bullying, self-image and not having the answers in a quickly shifting technological reality. Not having “a moral of the story”, opened a conversation about how we improvise in community. 

From then on, I became the person who searched for other people’s stories, and brought them on stage to share. In asking folks to dig deep and discover the stakes of their own story – what would have happened if they didn’t take that risk, call that person, stop that bus etc etc. I was asking them to be vulnerable, to let go of their agendas, to let go of needing to leave the audience with a conclusion tied-up in a bow. Together we practised receiving the stories and trusting one another.

In the past ten years, I have coached hundreds of people to tell personal stories. In the church we have a tradition of sharing testimonies about what God has done in our lives, and these testimonies continue to be a blessing in faith communities. Where testimonies sometimes let us down is when they turn into sermons. When a story turns into a to-do list for someone else’s formation. When Jesus solves every problem immediately. If we’re honest, many of our stories are stories in progress, and we can’t see where it ends yet. There are libraries yet to fill.

 I love working with young people, and helping them to craft their stories and consider what is at stake in their lives. What happens if they don’t take a risk? If they don’t step out of their comfort zones? If they don’t discover their gifts and passions? 

But the stories young people need to hear? They aren’t the stories about the whirlwind success of a thirty year old billionaire. They need the stories of those who’ve had a few wilderness journeys and can remember the disorientation, the suffering and also the faithfulness of God in the wilderness and as he leads us to the other side.

I’ve seen firsthand how people often change their minds, and repent, when their hearts are touched by the stories of others. In scripture we see how God’s story challenges us to pay attention to the temptations of empire and choose shalom. Throughout the year at Act Five we celebrate stories of people working out their faith and wrestling with God along the way. We consider our rhythms of life and the possibilities of living our days faithfully. At the same time, we explore the many streams of Christianity, the gifts that come from different denominations and traditions, and the role imagination plays in expanding human capacity for empathy and compassion. We are story people, living out our calling to imagine the unwritten canon in the overflowing library of the things that Jesus is still doing.

So even if it terrifies us, we get up and share, and in the remembering we see the miracles of what God is doing.

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Each year the Act Five Gap Year Program begins by pushing canoes loaded with students into the water. They disappear into the wilderness, led by their RLs and the Coldwater Canada team. When they return, it is with stories of resilience, meeting God and seeing their community grow closer. This year, Cullen Vandeburgt, one of our RLs, tells the story of the canoe trip along with some student reflections:

The Story of a Canoe Trip

“Our trip began with a challenge issued by the Coldwater director to Lean in to the experience and invest ourselves. He challenged us to Trust those around us; to Be Ourselves and allow ourselves to feel our emotions. We are to be open with others, and allow both the good and bad of ourselves to be seen and known.

Next thing we knew we had left technology and most signs of humanity behind and we had subjected ourselves to one rhythm. Wake early, cook, devotions, paddle, paddle, paddle, portage, paddle, portage, portage, paddle, set up camp, sleep. Repeat. Physically we had our work cut out for us. The goal of each day was quite clear: work hard and lean into the discomfort of long and full days.

“God met us in these places and wrote His strength over our weakness.”

The truth underneath this though is that there was a lot more going on than this simple goal. Through some combination of being stuck in the wilderness as a small group with only each other, having endless time to get to know each other, and beginning the day with God, the physical work that we were doing was made smaller, and the spiritual, relational, and personal conquests became bigger. One of the students upon reflection of the trip put it this way, ‘I expected to canoe lots and have some moments of God time. Instead I got to spend lots of time with God and canoe in-between.’

The last day of the trip came with an opportunity to say what we had seen grow in each other.  One of the students remembers that moment: ‘This is the day we’ll arrive in civilization, when we’ll canoe to the takeout point. Full of anticipation, we have paused, mostly packed, ready to go, in order to fellowship. It’s time to affirm and strengthen one another. In the next half hour, each of us will both affirm and be affirmed by one another. We hear praises and truths that overwhelm us with joy. We pray for each other, and few eyes remain dry. Finally we finish off with a trust exercise, each of us being held in turn, by the others. We are stronger and more joyful for it. It is a fitting end to our trip.’

The trip was filled with moments of yelling at trees for existing, watching each other turn into puddles of exertion, and – what I found most inspiring – seeing the willingness to meet challenge in others’ eyes. People hurt at times and there were moments we needed to ask for help or take a break. Yet over and over I witnessed one and then the next rise to the challenge. Self-doubts and evil narratives were broken. Through the seemingly simple concept of carrying a bag, maybe two, or a canoe through the forest, God met us in these places and wrote His strength over our weakness. He showed us our beauty where we saw a corner of us we’d rather ignore, and filled us with hope and joy where we couldn’t see endings.

Over the course of 9 days we ended up traveling 160 kilometers and portaging 16 of those kilometers.”

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Act Five has been working with Coldwater Canada since our beginning. There is a shared love of the wilderness between our organizations, and beyond that, a shared desire to help grow resilience in the young people that pass through our programs. Jess McLean works as a Wilderness Instructor and Communications Coordinator for Coldwater Canada. She believes strongly in the growth that challenge can offer to a person. Here she shares a little bit of her own story with the wilderness and reflects on the necessity of challenge. If you have ever wondered why Act Five sends our students on long camping trips to the middle of nowhere, Jess’ words here offer an answer to that question.

“Education must enable young people to affect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, despite mockery from the world or the emotions of the moment.”

Kurt Hahn, Founder of Outward Bound

Jess’ Story

“From as early as I can remember, the wilderness has been a significant part of my story. As a young girl, I remember the feeling of freedom as I rode my bike through a campground and swam in open lakes.

As a teenager, I took on bigger and longer adventures. I would venture out on canoe trips and always try to beat the accomplishments from the year before. There were longer portages. One trip portages. Longer distances paddled. More portages per day. More of this. Less of that. Every portage left me feeling more empowered, and every morning spent by a lake brought a new sense of clarity.

By the end of high school, I recognized the wilderness as a place of empowerment, freedom and clarity. I could not get enough time in the wilderness!

Wilderness Classrooms

Attraction to the wilderness is what eventually led me to develop the courage to go on an adventure with Coldwater Canada. Through that experience, I realized that the wilderness is much more than a ‘special place.’ It is a classroom where God develops our trust in Him and shapes us to be more like Jesus. This realization created breakthroughs in my understanding of my identity in Christ, and I developed a desire to see others experience God through wilderness adventure as well. 

I then decided to be trained as a Wilderness Instructor in order to learn more about experiential learning and using the wilderness as a classroom. I soon realized that the element of ‘challenge’ in the wilderness is an intentional part of God’s design.

Pursuing Challenge

It does not take much life experience to recognize that challenge is an element of every person’s life–but there is a difference between the presence of and the pursuit of challenge. When we choose to intentionally pursue challenge, God develops necessary skills and traits in us for facing the challenges of life that we do not get to choose.

Over the past 3 years, I have had the privilege of leading 7 wilderness adventures for Act Five with Coldwater Canada. From hiking up steep ascents with heavy hiking backpacks in Virginia, to traversing through deep mud with a canoe on their shoulders in Temagami, to waking up on a cold morning in a quinzhee in central Ontario, I have seen Act Five students develop resiliency and strength through the pursuit of challenge. 

This resiliency has carried each student past the mountain tops and valleys of the wilderness and into the depths of the learning and serving at 75 Blake St and beyond. I am confident that the students’ trust in God and confidence in their abilities developed in the wilderness gives them the courage to have difficult conversations and engage in new learning throughout their gap year program.

I am grateful to get to be a part of the deep impact Act Five sees in their student’s lives, and I look forward to seeing how God continues to use the wilderness to shape His people.”

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Matt Buikema – Year 1

“This past spring I finished a 4 year undergrad degree in social work at Redeemer University. 

Through a social work internship with Redeemer, I’m now in the process of starting to work at an organization that provides transitional housing for men coming out of prison.

Before Act Five I thought that I’d end up working in the trades in some capacity. As a student in Act Five, I did my placements with 541 Eatery and Exchange and with the Barton Business Improvement Area. Through these placements and the classroom and experiential learning, I engaged with challenges like poverty and homelessness that disadvantaged people in Hamilton face From this, I realized that I have a passion and gift for working with people. This led me to my social work education at Redeemer, and I haven’t looked back since.

Act Five also continues to inspire lot of questions around how I feel I should involve myself in a community. It has also prompted me to think about which communities I want to put my time and efforts towards. Because of my passion for Hamilton as a city, and for the wide variety of people residing within, I have been attending Streetlight Christian Church. We are located in the Beasley neighbourhood. I also participate in their programs that run weekly during the school year. These programs cater to children and youth from nearby neighbourhoods.”

Ryan Vroom – Year 2

“I am working as a Diesel Mechanic for Kooy Brothers in North York. I’ve been working there for about two and a half years. I live in Schomberg with my wife Abby, who is another Act Five alumni from 21/22. We just married in mid July!

After Act Five I went to college for small engine mechanics. Finishing that, I then worked for Coldwater Canada for a summer before starting work in my field. I met Abby while we were both working for Coldwater. While working there, I had a cool opportunity to lead that year’s Act Five trip. It was a neat experience to be a part of leading a trip that meant a lot to me when I was a part of it only 2 years prior. Next, I began working for a small engine shop in Innisfil before switching to Kooy Brothers in North York.

I think Act Five had a big impact on my life. During Act Five was when I gave myself to Christ and embraced my adoption from my Heavenly Father. It was also a time that emphasized the importance of community and also of prayer and its power. Covid affected much of my time at Act Five, and because of that, we spent a lot of time together in Hamilton. This led to a deep sense of connection and community with the others in the house. I realized that the Christian walk with Christ isn’t something to do alone. We are meant to be surrounded by other believers who encourage us, pray for us, and bear our burdens with us. This has led me to being more involved at church, knowing the good that can come out of community.

Another way Act Five has impacted me is in how I use my phone and manage my screen time. I struggled with giving up my phone as a student in Act Five. Now, I would gladly hand it over, knowing the deeper connection and relationships that can be made in person without it.

Act Five taught me a lot, a lot more than I can say here. Heading into Act Five, I already knew what I wanted to do. Act Five didn’t change that. But Act Five changed me. It changed how I think about things, how I interact with people, and how I’m committed to my local church. It sparked empathy in me and helped me connect with others more deeply. I’m so grateful for that. I still often think about the time I spent at Act Five, the songs we sang at evensong, the experiences I had, the connections and real friendships that formed.”

Nina Pasma – Year 6

“My name is Nina Pasma and I was part of the Year Six cohort at Act Five. I just started my first year at Redeemer University, where I will be studying English writing, Theology and Art.

Part of the reason that I went to Act Five was because I had no clue what I wanted to do after high school. A big eyeopener for me at Act Five, was learning that I don’t have to have it all figured out. If I don’t feel placed in whatever I am doing, I am free to switch it up. Before Act Five, applying to school or planning my life felt like a huge life altering decision. I felt that if I didn’t get it right on the first try, I’d be doomed to live a terrible life, which is simply not the truth. My anxiety over life decisions hasn’t disappeared, but it’s definitely eased over the course of Act Five. Now when I plan things, and pray over them, I know that plans may change, and that’s okay.”

Final Thoughts

When students come to our gap year program, they are committing to an intense year of personal and community development. Knowing that what they learned in Act Five is still shaping their lives after the program is such an encouragement. Please keep our alumni in your own prayers as they continue in their own journey. And we will continue to trust that God is with them wherever they may go.

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