September 30th

Student Bursary essays - Aiden Scherzinger

How I Found Myself Here...

Editor's note - the Student Bursary recipient's application essays will be the focus of the Menno Minutes for the next few weeks - read and see what Aiden Scherzinger, Kyle Wiebe and Kenai Warkentin have to say! 

Those who know me know that I was, up until I started as associate Pastor at Foothills, fully unaware of the Anabaptist faith tradition. I found myself here by what perhaps could be described as happenstance; I needed a job out of my undergrad, and I had become estranged/disillusioned from my evangelical denomination of origin, and here came a pastoral position at a church close by that just happened to be a Mennonite church. But while I was exploring the role, I met with Bill (Christieson) a few times, talking it over and generally getting a feel for if I could see myself in the role, and if the two of us would work well together. He said something in describing how he came to embrace the Anabaptist faith tradition, similarly, after leaving an evangelical tradition that resonated with me. My paraphrase of his words: “as I looked into it [Anabaptism], I realized that it named where I was already at.” It was, I would say, very easy to root myself in this faith tradition, as it seemed the spirit had already been leading me to this tradition before I found the words for it.

“Okay, Aiden, the prompt asked why you chose an Anabaptist/Mennonite institution, we meant school...” -- Well, how I got here, I think, says a lot of why I am staying. I chose to throw my lot in with my now fellow Anabaptists, and at present I am not persuaded to depart from it. I chose to pursue getting my master's at Conrad Grebel for a few compounding reasons. Firstly, it was from a recommendation to a faculty member who could oversee the thesis research I want to do. Grebel also has scholarship
opportunities that made it much more accessible to pursue than the other institutions I had been considering. And it importantly keeps me connected to this Anabaptist community in which I still feel engaged in growing and growing in.

I have, of course, been serving at Foothills as Associate Pastor for almost three years now. The Foothills community might be hard-pressed to name much that I haven't, in some form or another, been involved in (okay, I have never and will still never be leading anything musical). Beyond Foothills, I have been involved in much around our regional church, particularly in the youth and, to some degree, the young adult world. And I have also ingrained myself into the wider MC Canada world, participating in ranging activities from Creation Care cohorts/initiatives to a deep involvement in young adult visioning for the national church.