There has been a rumor floating around that evangelist Faytene Kryskow has moved from Ottawa to Toronto. I’m happy to report that this is not the case.
But you would forgive me, perhaps, for wondering if Faytene had moved, especially since she announced, in a 2009 teaching CD, that she was going to move to Toronto. Why, she did not know. But it was urgent for her to do what the Lord said.
Some of her recent actions, I had been wondering, might be indicating a possible change of direction. In her Summer 2010 newsletter, she noted two things.
“Last fall I had clear direction from the Holy Spirit to stop taking interns & begin to restructure for a new season,” Faytene wrote, “Primarily it means that over the past months we have switched from an on-site Ottawa internship to developing a national council; of emerging reformers and revivalists….”
She writes later on that this change, and others meant some personal changes for her, as she had more time to work on various neglected projects “….& last but not least, travel to serve the Body [of Christ] through preaching (my favourite]….”
Back in 2009—perhaps at about the time she got the direction from the Holy Spirit mentioned above, she had already been saying that big changes were in store for her.
She was speaking on the topic "Media Advance" to students at an Alberta “discipleship training school” The CD message, which Faytene had been selling at her website , is no longer available as I write. I was listening to the message when Faytene says this aside starting at 58.46 of the message.
"....And so, I had moved to Ottawa after we had done an initiative in Ottawa in the summer of 2006.After that the Lord spoke very clearly to me to uproot from vancouver and I was to go to Ottawa to [make a] root and base out of Ottawa. Now the reality is, and again it is important to move in the timings of the Lord and not just question when God has made something very clear and just to go with it, even if doesn't make sense. Which is why I am moving to Toronto right now, and I don't really understand what that's all about, but here we go again, you know what I mean? God has proved himself so many times in the past that I dare not disobey."
In following Faytene, I have realized that she is adept at obeying the instructions that she feels that she gets from God. I would like to compliment her by saying that she apparently is quite skilled at living her life by faith. I have friends who carefully try to follow instructions from the Lord (as Faytene relates that she does here). So, if Faytene is able to do this, she has my admiration for being able to do something that I personally would have difficulty with.
So, given her aside to the Alberta audience, I would have bet dollars for doughnuts that she had moved to Toronto by now. There are several valid reasons why she might want to do so. Perhaps she might have seen herself as more of a mentor to a gaggle of would-be Faytene’s, doing activism as she does (and allow Faytene to move more to ministry to adults if she wanted to. Moving to Toronto would have allowed her to fly back and forth to do her preaching more effectively. A Toronto base would allow her to pick and choose which political causes she wanted to help with and allow her to center on media work if she chose. She could have more of a personal life not being right in the hub of political activity.
I would, of course, defer to Faytene’s own priorities and reasoning and discernment. I only want to say “If she moves, this could be why she wants to do it…”
Bene D, being the wise sort that he is, suggested that we straight out ask her whether she had moved and whether she had plans to change her ministry priorities.
And this is what she e-mailed back to Bene D:
Hey Bene.
Bless you!
Nope, I’m not moving to Toronto and no major changes in the ministry direction.
Take Care.
Faytene
I think that I may know one reason why “Media Advance” was pulled from Faytene’s website.
I want to be kind to Faytene as it is sometimes so hard to accurately figure out our direction from God sometimes, if we believe that God offers personal direction today.
But, given what she said in 2009 in Alberta, we must consider:
Did God change his mind and tell Faytene to stay in Ottawa? (Why would God do this?)
Did God tell her to delay her move by 5 or 10 years? (But, then, why would Faytene say that she was moving to “Toronto right now”)
Did she get it totally wrong and later learn that God had not told her to move to Toronto, whatsoever?
Faytene, like all of us trying to serve God, is human and fallible. I empathize with her in this matter.
But why mention this? Because, in that same CD, as you recall from my earlier post, she opined that reporters may need to have demons cast out of them. Moreover, bloggers are “scribes and Pharisees”.
Faytene had absolute certainty that Christian bloggers who wrote about her are not merely mistaken and not hearing accurately what God would like them to blog. They are not perhaps merely making a human, fallible error. They are willfully sinning.
I welcome her frank opinions. But does she welcome those of her critics?
Well, as we consider whether Faytene might have gotten that direction from the Lord—to move to Toronto—incorrect, she would perhaps ask that we have compassion on her difficultly in figuring out what the Lord was asking her to do. Certainly that is a fair request.
But how about the other way? Does she remain unmoved and decline to realize that bloggers may be as, well, human, as she may have proved to be when she decided not to follow what God allegedly said to her.
Some clarification please, if you will, Faytene.