Blog Post

Fall 2019

Brian Stegner • October 28, 2019

Fall is upon us, school has resumed, and the typical September to August ministry year has launched like a rocket! :)

Here are our Support-Raising, Ministry, & Family Highlights since our last update:

Support-Raising Highlights

The big news is that my new book is out! It's available both in print and on Kindle:

The book launch went really well, over 1700 digital copies were downloaded for Kindle:

And the feedback has been amazing. My primary aim in writing this book was to help folks outside of Quebec learn more about the need and opportunity for the gospel here, however I've heard from many INSIDE Quebec who have expressed how the book has helped to crystallize their own understanding of what Jesus is doing in our province.

Thank you to everyone who has helped to share about the book. If you haven't gotten yours yet, you can locate where to get a copy in your region here: stegnersonmission.org/books (and you'll also find five videos on that page explaining more about the book, why I wrote it, etc.)

If you believe your church would be interested in our mission, please message us so that we can send you a print copy to take to your missions board or pastor.

We're still plugging away with support-raising. Between individual supporters and a small amount of internal funding from our own French & English churches that is slated to start in 2020, we are 40% funded (praise God!), and so as of October 1st I was officially added to the church staff payroll for two days a week.

It's a start, but we're still on a short runway financially before we need to make the transition to full-time. Please be in prayer with us as we seek to be fully funded, and consider if God may be calling you to join with us!

Ministry Highlights

Fall is always a busy time and this year was no exception! On top of finishing the book, here is a quick rundown of the highlights:

In September, I coordinated a massive re-orientation day for all of our volunteer leaders:

We lured them into coming early with coffee and muffins and ran them all through the complexities of setting up and tearing down for TWO simultaneous worship services in a movie theatre building. After the worship gathering, we followed up with an updated child safety training for all of our kids zone, directors, and security workers.

Later in September, we held our annual leadership retreat:

Our theme for this year was on prayer. My role related to this event was to administrate and coordinate all the moving parts, help set the schedule and manage our time, MC the event, work with the camp, etc. It was a very fruitful time for our team and has been super important in setting the tone for our year.

That same weekend, we celebrated eight years as an English church and two years on the French side of things with an all church picnic in a park near our Sunday gathering (right in downtown Montreal):

We held our first ever members meeting with our new, "larger" membership, functioning off of the new bylaws we adopted over the summer. It was a step towards a hybrid model between elder-led & congregationalism that we call 'Lead by Leaders', whereby we extended membership from just the elders down to include the leadership of our church. I'm not sure this has been tried anywhere else before so it's a bit of an experiment, but so far it's working and we've had interest from other churches in our denomination regarding this new model.

This past week, Severine and I attended the bi-annual Church Planting Canada Congress which was held in Montreal this year:

We were able to connect with leaders from all over Canada, including heads of ministries and denominations, and to hand out copies of the book to help spread the message of what Jesus is doing here.

And since August, in addition to doing monthly financial updates in the English service, I've begun doing them in the French service also, mostly translated but with the goal of slowly doing more and more of it in French (yikes!):

Severine helped organize an opportunity to serve a young single mother in our community by doing a cleanup in her home with members of our City Group.

And she helped to organize and lead a women's retreat for twelve of the wives of our pastors, pastoral apprentices, and board members (she's better at administrative work than she's likely to admit!). :)

And this fall I opened up our 'Everyday Jesus' sermon series with a look at living and ministering in 'The City'. It's available via Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.