Everyone's come to Jesus moment looks different and for Riverwood's lead pastor, Todd Petkau, it started as a teenager. "It was probably in the back of a chemistry class in grade 11 leaning up against the radiator."
As he sensed the Lord speak to him that he was going to go into ministry, "I went to Capernwray for a year and then Winnipeg Bible College, which is now Providence and the rest is history."
It wasn't smooth sailing for Petkau, "I graduated from Bible College with my wife and applied for my first youth pastor job but was royally turned down. I went into the plastics industry for a year and a half and finally got the courage to apply for a youth pastor internship and I think that's where I began to dip my toes into ministry. It was really a growing thing."
Now Riverwood Church has grown more than Petkau ever imagined. "The rule in doing multi-site is don't go anywhere closer than a 20-minute drive and we're about a one-minute walk. We have six buildings and all of them, but one are recycled historical buildings in the community and we've got multiple services in those different buildings."
Using the multiple buildings has been an intentional choice for Petkau. "We were outgrowing our initial space, which is called the factory. It was an old commercial door factory and for about four years we were knocking on Heaven's door like, 'God, how are we going to grow this thing?' The only way I knew to grow a church at that time was to build a 12 to 1500-seat auditorium," he says. "But we are committed to the Elmwood community and didn't see anything in that area that could handle a space like that."
Petkau says he went to a conference in San Diego with his wife, and while the conference was good, it was the stories that changed everything.
They had a church of about 2,000 people and had purchased a piece of land. They were going to build a 2,000-seat auditorium and the community rose up against them. Saying, 'We don't want your mega-church in our community.' So for four years, they blocked them, but this church grew and four years later the City Council finally came and said, 'OK, you can now build your mega-church 2000-seat auditorium. And they said, oh, no, no, no. We've grown so much numerically, we no longer want a 2,000-seat auditorium. We want an 800-seat auditorium.'"
The change didn't make sense but Petkau says that the pastor said, "We've learned that leaders like it big, but people like it small. So what they ended up doing is they ended up building 6 worship venues on their one campus and none of them bigger than 800 seats."
Bringing that back with him, Petkau wanted to implement that into Riverwood. "We came home and realized that there was a fire hall right around the corner from where we were for sale, and there was a warehouse at the same time for sale too. So we managed to buy both and we decided to do this model where we would have multiple services within a block that would keep us in the local community, but keep all of our services small so that people could get to know each other."
While he admits that he loves big churches, he also says, "There are many times when I wish we had a 2,000-seat auditorium, but God hasn't called us to that. Every church has its own thumbprint of God on it, and this just happens to be ours. Not that one is better than the other."
"This is where we're setting up shop and this is where we're staying," he says.
Located in the heart of Elmwood, Petkau is excited to see how God is going to use the church in the community. "Whether it's the food bank, our vulnerable mom's abuse program, support groups, whether it's our kids clubs in the community, sometimes we do cooking classes. I think that's one of the things where we really want to serve people in our community without necessarily getting anything back."
"I know it's kind of a buzzword, but we would consider ourselves pretty missional, pretty driven by the mission that God's called us to," he says.