Artizo has had an exciting start to a new year of training in 2025, with growth across the board. We’re thrilled to welcome six new apprentices into our Vancouver training cohort, bringing us to nine total in training [...]
I am so excited to be joining the Artizo Institute as the Assistant Director of Training. In this role, I’ll be serving as a coach, mentor, and trainer – working alongside Ben [...]
Praise God for his ongoing blessing of the Artizo Institute! Under God we celebrated 25 years and 150 graduates this last year. And this fall we have six Artizo training churches [...]
I wondered how God would knit together my past with what was to come as we relocated to Vancouver in 2021 to start my studies at Regent [...]
Someone once told me that “there’s no better place in the world to learn how to preach than Artizo.” I found this to be true! And I also found much more: Artizo is a wonderful program to prepare for a life of vocational ministry in the local church... [...]
Watch video clips from the Meet the Apprentices evening at the VanDusen Floral Hall... [...]
Then, two wonderful people (Hosea and Sarah) asked to meet with me. They had just started attending our church and they wanted to apprentice at St. Peter’s through Artizo! They wanted to learn to be leaders at our church! They wanted to serve God at St. Pete’s! I was beyond excited. I had so many questions: What is Artizo? How do you pronounce Artizo? What would it take to be a training base? [...]
Andrew Hochhalter, Ryan Spear, and Jacob Vandiver have finished the Artizo program and are moving into new ministry roles. Ryan and Jacob will each be serving a one-year curacy at St. John’s Vancouver, while Andrew will be moving with his family to Vancouver, Washington to pursue further training in hospital chaplaincy [...]
When my wife Kim and I embarked on this church planting adventure, an experienced planter joked to us, “You might not sit together in church again for years!” We’re one year in and I’m not in the pulpit every Sunday. How did we get to this point? We committed to becoming a training church. [...]
Artizo is expanding. We welcome St. Peter’s Fireside, St. John’s Richmond and King’s Cross as our new Artizo Institute training churches. This expansion is vital to our mandate to train and equip people for the ministry of God’s word across the country. They allow us to expand the number of interns we can train at one time, and help us in growing other training bases to widen our scope. This is an exciting time for Artizo. [...]
Artizo is expanding. We welcome St. Peter’s Fireside, St. John’s Richmond and King’s Cross as our new Artizo Institute training churches. This expansion is vital to our mandate to train and equip people for the ministry of God’s word across the country. They allow us to expand the number of interns we can train at one time, and help us in growing other training bases to widen our scope. This is an exciting time for Artizo. [...]
When I started with the Artizo Institute five years ago, I was given a mandate to refresh and renew our curriculum and training methods. We wanted to reinvigorate our ministry and ready ourselves for another twenty years of successful training. To use a building metaphor, this was the work of firming up the foundation that we were building on, and clarifying the blueprints we were working from – making sure our training methods were top notch and our training outcomes were gospel-driven leaders... [...]
Will Gray...
Meet Richard Sandlin...
Meet Ryan Spear...
Meet Fiona Lee...
Meet AndrewHochholter...
Meet Jacob Vandliver...
[...]CURRICULUM PROGRESS The vision of Artizo is “to fill Canada with the sound of God’s word”, and our strategy for accomplishing this is to train gifted young men and women for gospel ministry. But after twenty years of training, it became clear that our program needed to be refreshed and refocused. In particular, our curriculum [...]
MEET THE 2021 NEW APPRENTICES FIONA LEE My name is Fiona Lee. I was born in Canada and raised in Hong Kong. My major is Traditional Chinese Medicine focusing on Herbal study. I researched in related areas for three years after I graduated from the university. Prior to this, I went on several mission trips, [...]
September 2021 – UPDATE Dear Friends of Artizo, “Be present, O merciful God, and protect us… so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may rest in your eternal changelessness.” With the world swirling about us, we can find great solace in the constancy of God. During COVID, [...]
June 2021 – UPDATE Dear Friends, This May marks my third full year as the director of training for the Artizo Institute, and the move to refresh and refocus our training program. We’ve pursued this by consolidating our training within St. John’s Vancouver while developing and strengthening our curriculum. After three fantastic years of growth, [...]
Daily Office – Morning Prayer & Compline The daily office is part of our Anglican DNA. Simply put, it’s corporate prayer and Scripture twice a day. But more deeply, it represents the Anglican vision of Christian formation. In 1549 the first draft of our prayer book was prepared by Thomas Cranmer. He took the voluminous [...]
Preaching from the Bible – Getting it right The work of preaching and teaching God’s word is a listening work before it is a speaking work. In the book of Isaiah, the Servant of the Lord gives us a window into the heart of his ministry: The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of [...]
At Artizo’s 25th Anniversary Meet the Apprentices event, David Short explains how Artizo began 25 years ago. [...]
Apprentices discuss the value of Artizo training and value of preaching at an ANiC church every Sunday. [...]
Willie Shain-Ross is training for a lifetime in pastoral ministry. Interested in the challenge of week-to-week ministry, he took on the task of delivering the daily office each Friday. It has all the elements of rigorous ministry: pastoral care, Bible study, a homily, and the daily office itself. [...]
Willie Shain-Ross and Tom Douce Graduate! From Artizo’s Director of Training: I am grateful to God and very excited to announce two more graduates from the Artizo training program this year: Tom Douce and Willie Shain-Ross. And yet, I have to acknowledge that their graduation is bittersweet. The aim of Artizo is to help our [...]
Artizo alum Rev. Ger Jones planted the Vintage Church in 2011. The Vintage Church now has four locations and serves over 1,500 parishioners. Ger had been a practicing lawyer in the UK for 10 years before obtaining his M.Div. Degree at Regent College. Ger and his wife Lizzie, and three children Amy, Naomi and Sam, [...]
Kimberley Graham talks about how Artizo gives lay leaders time and space to practice under experienced leaders. [...]
Rev. Allan Tan: I had a sense of a call to pastoral ministry many, many years ago. But it was not clear to me how I was going to go from a sense of call to actually being ready and equipped to go. Artizo gave me a path and a concrete plan. As I went [...]
Joel Strecker re-enacts the training experience of how Artizo interns receive training in preaching. We follow Joel as he prepares a sermon, wrestling with the passage, presents it to the Artizo group, receives criticism and direction, and close with him formally preaching the sermon. RELATED ARTICLE Preaching from the Bible – Getting it Right. “The [...]
During the last 20 years, 100 Artizo apprentices have graduated from the training program. This is a significant milestone for which we give much thanks. We estimate that our more than 100 Artizo graduates are now regularly preaching and teaching to over 10,000 people across North America, and themselves helping train others to follow in [...]
MEET THE 2020 NEW APPRENTICES VIVIAN LEE Hello there! My name is Vivian Lee. I was born and raised on the Prairies in Calgary, Alberta. I love reading, painting, and marvelling at mountains – especially the ones you can hike up! 🙂 Over a year ago, I left my job as a lawyer, moved to [...]
November 2020 – UPDATES We’ve had a fantastic year of training and growth despite the challenges and disruptions of COVID-19. So far, we’ve been able to meet together in-person every week (with appropriate physical distancing measures) which has been invaluable for our cohesion as a cohort and ease of feedback and training exercises. From a [...]
Artizo Residency – Going Deeper Artizo is committed to church growth. The Artizo Institute Residency Program equips Artizo graduates in a supportive environment at a participating church. ‘Growth’, in this context, is threefold: growth of the graduate as they hone their abilities in leadership, growth of the church in their scriptural role of supporting and [...]
Rev. Sean Love talks about the power of Divine multiplication. For the past 20 years, Artizo has been equipping ministers to proclaim the Gospel with comprehension and quality. The curriculum falls under three categories: Character – embodying the character of Jesus Christ, Conviction – the Gospel conviction, and Competency – we give apprentices the competency [...]
Deacon Marion Karasiuk at ANiC church plant Christ The King Church in Toronto. [...]
MINISTRY IN JAPAN Insight from Andrew Buchanan, Artizo Graduate There is great potential for the Gospel to take root in Japan, even as there are also great obstacles. The Japanese are a refined society with a strong national identity. Being a collectivist culture, it is difficult to step out of line. While the Japanese will [...]
ARTIZO ADAPTS With the pandemic changing seemingly every aspect of our lives as we search for a “new normal”, how is Artizo affected? We asked four Artizo interns how their ministry has changed over the past year, what gains or losses there have been as a result of changes in ministry formats, and how this [...]
“OUR CHURCH LAUNCHED ON EPIPHANY OF 2019 WITH 175 ADULTS AND 80 CHILDREN Artizo profile: Rev. Tripp Prince Years at Artizo: 2008-2010 Status: Pastor, Trinity Anglican Church (Northside), Brookhaven, GA REV. TRIPP PRINCE “There’s an old Greek proverb that says, ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall [...]
In our training, we continue to train for growth in conviction, character, and competency. Over the last month, the competency we’ve focused on is our apprentices’ rhetorical skills. Practically, this means giving them weekly communication challenges to do in front of our group, speaking both with prepared materials and off-the-cuff. It may sound silly to [...]
Artizo pastors and church planters Rev. Josh Wilton, Rev. Jonathan Ellis, and Anna Spray share their stories. [...]
September 16, 1937 – September 17, 2019 Merv Hanson, a long-time Director of The Artizo Institute, supported Artizo’s vision whole-heartedly and faithfully. Merv was an amazing mentor to Artizo’s young apprentices and believed strongly in supporting their apprenticeships at St. John’s Vancouver and other ANIC Churches. We will miss Merv’s infectious and constant sense of [...]
ARE YOU A PERSON OF PRAYER? Recently, I attended a small church where I knew very few people. As the service ended, I turned to introduce myself to a woman with whom I had just passed the peace. I expected to engage in one of the usual conversation topics among strangers. Instead she looked me [...]
Dear Artizo family, If you are like me, since the beginning of COVID-19 you’ve heard from almost every organization, business and individual you have ever had contact with. Everyone seemed to want to tell me how they were managing COVID-19. While this note from Artizo may seem a little late, I hope it won’t get [...]
“WE’RE NOW 1,500 PEOPLE ON SUNDAYS, WITH FOUR CAMPUSES ACROSS LOS ANGELES – JUST EIGHT YEARS AFTER THAT FIRST EASTER SUNDAY Artizo profile: Rev. Ger Jones Years at Artizo: 2004-2006 Status: Rector, Vintage Church, Santa Monica, CA REV. GER JONES I attended Regent College with the aim of doing general pastoral ministry. Part of the [...]
THE NEW TESTAMENT IMPERATIVE Artizo profile: Canon David Short Executive Director, The Artizo Institute Near the end of the New Testament era the Apostles wrote to local churches shaping them as incubators and greenhouses for growing Christian believers in all kinds of ministry. The foundation for the flourishing of spiritual gifts and growth into the [...]
“I WAS TRAINED HOW TO EXEGETE SCRIPTURE, TO BE CONFIDENT IN IT, TO TEACH IT, PREACH IT, APPLY IT, PASTORALLY CARE WITH IT, LEAD A CHURCH WITH IT, PRIORITIZE IT, AND TRAIN OTHERS TO TEACH IT ALSO. In our 21st year, Artizo celebrates the graduation of our 100th apprentice. In this new series of articles, [...]
IF A CHURCH IS NOT A TRAINING CHURCH, IT IS A DYING CHURCH. IF WE DO NOT EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATION TO CONTINUE IN GOSPEL MINISTRY, THEN THE MESSAGE DIES WITH US. An Artizo apprentice receives training and mentorship from Artizo Trainers as well as from the rector of the training church. In this article, [...]
Dear Friends of Artizo, I would like to share with you some exciting news, The Artizo Institute and St. John’s Vancouver wish to announce the appointment of a new Director of Training, Ben Roberts. This comes after extensive review, consultation and prayer and it represents a strategic fresh start for the Artizo programme. Ben will [...]
When I first entered the Artizo program, I had three primary goals in mind: to gain experience in preaching, to become more familiar with the duties and dynamics of Church ministry, and to discern whether entry into the Anglican clergy would be an appropriate response to God’s call over my life. After a year and [...]
During my internship at Artizo, I have had the chance to preach both in St. John’s where I am an apprentice, as well as in other churches. This experience has been one where I have seen growth, not only in the art of preaching itself, but personally in my own character and walk with God. [...]
Before I began Artizo, it would be fair to say that I was lost in many ways. I didn’t know it at the time, and neither did those around me. On paper, things looked great. I was 32 years old when I began Artizo, and had received a call to full time ministry at the [...]
Eric Thurston has been Director of Training at The Artizo Institute from 2004 – 2017. While a lot has changed in thirteen years, Eric gives four reason for Artizo Canada. Why does anyone do anything? We all have our reasons, but thirteen years ago, I decided it was time to return to Canada from Australia [...]
Where are you from? What is your family like? What’s your life like these days? I am from Vancouver, where I’ve lived essentially my whole life. I grew up at St. John’s, went to UBC, and to Regent after that. I’ve been married for a little over six years. My wife and I have a [...]
Dear Friends of Artizo, I am writing to you to update you on what is happening with The Artizo Institute. First of all, I am happy to report that we had a very successful “Meet the Interns” Fundraising evening November 6th with twelve of our Artizo Interns in attendance. We also heard how Artizo is [...]
One of the key things Artizo strives to do is to help young men and women develop their ability to teach the Bible so they will grow as ministers of the Word of God. Training in teaching the Word happens in many contexts for interns; from teaching kids in Sunday school to working with a [...]
Opportunity: A 2010 80-question mail-in survey of 420 Canadians by Carleton University Survey Centre and the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies found 30% agreed with the statement “I know God really exists and I have no doubts”, 20% acknowledged they “have doubts” but “feel that I do believe in God”, 10% answered they believe in [...]
“Every 1:1 is different. This is because the interns and their lives and ministries are different. We will talk together about what has been happening during the last week, in particular what has been happening in the ministries the interns are involved with. We will sometimes talk through a sermon the intern has given in [...]