Southern Ontario Cooperative of ESL Ministries
On Saturday October 28, 2023, about 55 eager individuals gathered at Trinity Grace Church, Toronto for SOCEM’s annual fall training conference. Gathering XVIII was the first in-person conference since the pandemic. Those that were present were enthusiastic about learning about ESL ministries and networking with one another. After a brief devotional and worship time just […]
By CY Yan The world is in turmoil! Political tension is mounting to an all-time high, old and new conflicts are boiling over the edge. There is no end in sight for the heart-wrenching atrocities happening in Israel and the West Bank, Ukraine and Russia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and other places of the world. Innocent blood […]
By Brenda Noble John G. Stackhouse Jr. has said that the church in Canada needs to live in such a way that if any force tried to shut our doors, the surrounding community would protest that they need our presence. In other words, our worship should include service to our communities which they see as […]
By Allan Pole I felt the Lord lead me in 2016 to revisit Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4. While the disciples wanted to eat something and get out of “inhospitable” Samaria as quickly as possible, Jesus saw an opportunity to reach someone outside their ethnic group and […]
By Jenny Zhang “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 Immigration is a life-altering experience that involves leaving everything behind in the home country to seek […]
By Tom McCormick As September is often a new beginning for many, it may be worthwhile to think again on the most important things, and so refocus our hearts and lives. Summer has hopefully brought refreshment, a change of pace, new challenges and growth, as well as an eagerness to begin again. Jesus said there […]
By Albert Janzen We seldom hear of churches that teach ESL to Temporary Foreign Workers (“TFWs”), and it probably stays below the ministry radar of most churches much as the workers themselves are well below the radar of Canadian multicultural diversity. After all, they are only here temporarily, why should they need good English? There […]
By Rick Love, Ph.D. A woman we’ll call Brenda emigrated from west Asia to Canada and was very motivated to learn English. She was preparing for a professional exam and had a time limit to see her IELTS score high enough to qualify for that exam. At our church in Calgary we have created a […]
SOCEM started to offer training webinars online during Covid, from 2020. From January to May 2023, SOCEM offered one webinar per month – our third series. Here is a snapshot of the two most recent webinars: On April 18, Mae Chun from Calgary presented a webinar on “Essential ESL Skills for Aging Well: Program for […]
By Carey Jo Johnston, for the Ottawa ESL Prayer Network Team The vision for networking people in Southern Ontario who are doing ESL ministry started with SOCEM. However, since most of the SOCEM events are in the GTA area, some of us in the Ottawa area thought we might have a subset of SOCEM. It […]