Fall 2021

Brian Stegner • November 23, 2021
(Above: Summer Baptism Party at the river, five new believers baptized!)

I've realized it is high time for another update (how the months slip by) and so much has happened since Spring. As usual I'll stick to the highlights and post lots of pictures. :)

Ministry Highlights

Praise God, churches in Quebec are able to meet with very few restrictions! All of our congregations are able to gather without having to split into multiple services. You can check out all of what we have going on at our shiny new website, which now after much labor is FINALLY finished (including the French side.):


We are also thankful that (so far) we are not required to limit entry to only the vaccinated. If you didn't know, Quebec has locked almost everyone into a vaccine passport system that makes vaccination mandatory for most public spaces (excluding only things deemed "essential" like shopping, picking up take-out, or worship services). Like everywhere, this debate has the ability to divide. Prayer Request #1: Pray for unity in the gospel and for the continued freedom to gather in the name of Jesus without increased restrictions.


In the summer we were still able to gather large groups outside and celebrated five baptisms within our English congregations (also see photo at top):



Prayer Request #2: Pray for protection over these young believers, and for the network of folks they now can share the gospel with.


In August I preached to three of our congregations on "Who do you say I am?" as a part of our series in the Gospel of Mark. You can catch the whole Downtown service here (sermon itself starts around 21:30):



In October I preached at Reach MTL for the first time, one of the church revitalization projects in the West Island of Montreal we've been involved in over the years. We had taken a pause on our Mark series in October to do a short run on "Lament & Joy." You can catch my sermon on "Joy" by tapping the graphic below (goes to Facebook, sermon itself starts around 11:00):



Over the summer and in partnership with SEMBEQ (our local, French denominational seminary) we relaunched our church planting, competency-based Masters program "Academy in Context" as Movement Seminary. I worked with Dwight and our graphic designer on the rebrand and built an all-new website for it which you can check out here:


This new seminary is going to play a huge role in bringing church planters into Quebec as they get to spend time IN churches, serving while studying and developing the specific competencies that make for successful church planting teams.


And in addition to accepting several new church planting students this fall, Movement Seminary also launched "Courses for Everyone," an eight-week, three-course program that meets once a month, in partnership with ten other churches in Montreal via "Movement Montreal" (another ministry initiative we're involved in):



Movement Montreal has also partnered in developing a network of youth groups called You(th) Church:


(Above: One of the youth from our congregation helping lead worship at the You(th) Church rally)


Launched just before COVID hit, it had a bit of a rocky start, but it's up and running, gathering all of the youth groups together once a month, as well as providing service opportunities. I've tapped into my youth ministry roots to help launch a local youth church within Church 21, and this past summer they spent a week in the city studying and serving within the homeless population and the local food bank:



Prayer Request #3: Ask the LORD to raise up the next generation of church planting teams to saturate Quebec with the gospel!

Perhaps the most fun we had this Fall was when we gathered all of our English church congregations together into a single worship gathering for the first time in TWO YEARS:


Let's just say we had a lot of baby dedications to catch up on (immediately above)... 😅


This Fall has also involved a lot of time investing in our leaders as we've sought to refine systems decimated by COVID and challenged by spreading out into multiple congregations. In each of the follow events, my specific role was to run logistics and do some of the teaching.


Lunchtime during our annual Leader's Retreat Day:



For our Children's Ministry Team Training Day we brought in a trainer to help equip us in working with kids who have experienced forms of trauma:



And for the first time since we spread out across multiple congregations, we brought together all four of our worship teams for an afternoon of vision & equipping and to bless them with food:



(The room pictured above for each of these events is Eglise Verdun, a French church revitalization project we've been involved in and who generously allows us to use their space free of charge. Our youth group nights meet there also.)


End of October, I and most of our pastoral team participated in the first-ever Xtreme Character Challenge (XCC) held in Quebec. It has been a dream for a while now to make this happen, and our hope in sending most of our staff was that we'd be able to rapidly migrate over into holding these in French within the next few years. If you don't know what XCC is, you can learn more about it here. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but the life-change we saw in the men who were there was huge. Jesus works through this ministry and we're excited to have it in Quebec:


(Photo Credit: https://victorgavino.ca/quebec-xcc/)


Just this past weekend we had our first post-XCC men's event (outdoors in subzero temperatures) where we shared about our experience and challenged the men in a number of areas, including the pursuit of brotherhood (not going into battle alone). Prayer Request #4: Pray for our men to become sold out for Jesus and the mission.



There is always more to include than is reasonable, but just a few additional bullet points:


  1. In September we successfully completed the 2022 budgeting process, which is always a massive project, including gathering all of our members into the world's most challenging Zoom call. 😅 
  2. Still working with our corporate lawyer to set up a new legal charter to separate out our parachurch operations which are set to massively expand (see notes on Movement Seminary & Movement Montreal above). Now looking like this will be mid-2022 to launch.
  3. I'm wrapping up the Eldership process with four candidates and should be presenting them to our congregations as potential Elder / Pastors in January.
  4. We're continuing to press the fight with MindGeek (parent company of PornHub), protests are now monthly outside of their building. By having them less often, we anticipate being able to involve more churches and have a bigger presence. Prayer Request #5: For government pressure / regulation to increase on this industry.



(Photo Credit: Jessica Bernier Photography)




Family Highlights


Despite the "lost months" of COVID we have much to be thankful for as a family. In the last six months we've celebrated three birthdays, Ben turning 15, Emma turning 14, and Kate turning 17 (and us feeling all the older for it!). 

Kate continues to create brilliantly entertaining games:


And yes, she is still working on her music but there have been several false starts in terms of production relationships. She's back to self-producing but working with a friend and enjoying that a lot. We (like you) eagerly anticipate her releasing more songs, but in the meantime are enjoying the world-building she's doing around her forthcoming album (e.g., the game pictured above is actually related to her music).

Ben is nearly as tall as I am now, and has become a weightlifting partner, which is very fun for both of us. Despite COVID, he's managed to maintain a significant number of friendships through online gaming, which he squeezes in between school, chores, and work:


Emma continues to be our baker and reader. If she's not doing school or work, she's often reading or crafting something in the kitchen. I failed to get pictures before we ate them, but she recently tried her hand at a couple of French pastries: Madeleines & Macarons.



And this past summer we were (finally!) able to make a visit to family in Oregon & Washington. Thank you so much for those of you who prayed for us on this request from our last report, very shortly after we asked for prayer, Air Canada refunded our Canadian tickets which we had been unable to use for two years, which allowed us to find tickets from within the U.S. (Boston to PDX) and that made it possible to go even under the COVID travel restrictions, praise God for answered prayer!


We would have liked to see more people but out of respect for my parent's health we pretty much stuck to family activities, such as disc golf and a beach day:



In addition to managing our home & the children's education, hosting dinner guests, ministering to women / pastor's wives in our church, AND helping run the homeschool group we're a part of, Severine continues to find a bit of time to paint and has had some new "patrons" find her on the Gallea marketplace:


And I continue to write (or re-write in this case):

Support Raising Highlights

2022 Funding Update:

As always, thank you for your faithful support of our ministry in Quebec! 

As of now, we are fully funded for 2021, praise God. He has been faithful to provide and kept us in His hands.

Looking ahead to 2022, we anticipate receiving approximately 25,000 CAD in support (give or take depending on the USD/CAD exchange rate throughout 2022) based on our current support team commitments.

I have worked diligently over the last two years to adjust our organizational structure to become more self supporting, and are closer to that goal than ever before. COVID-19 has made a few variables harder to anticipate with certainty, such as the timing of new church planters joining our team and their own fundraising efforts (part of which feeds into our organizational overhead, in addition to the shared congregational overhead between our six congregations and various parachurch ministries). On paper everything adds up but making the assumption that one or more of these elements will fall short in some way, I project a general operational shortfall of approximately 2,500 CAD (or about $2,000 USD).

As an exercise in wisdom and a hedge against a shortfall outcome, we are making it our goal to raise an additional $2,500 CAD for 2022.

*If each member of our current support team increased their 2022 donation by 10%, this shortfall would be immediately covered.*

And if you would like to help with a one-time donation, just tap the button immediately below.

In terms of being bi-vocational, our family business still supports a portion of our income, however it has continued to decline bit by bit over the last year. It may be related to the general challenges facing the U.S. economy right now, but regardless the LORD is sovereign. Prayer Request #6: That the LORD would cause our business to stabilize at just the right level.

Thank you for all your prayers for us, and please let us know how we can be praying for you!

Blessings,

Brian, Severine, Kate, Ben, & Emma :)