Fall 2024

Prayer Request #1: Pray for the lay leaders in our church, that the LORD would protect and guide them as they serve.

We had an epic outdoor baptism service this summer, baptizing 13 people, including both children and adult who have become followers of Jesus this year. After the baptisms we gathered around them for prayer by congregation. It's tricky to see so I circled the four groups in the image below:

Folks not in the water are regular beach-goers who are trying to understand what is happening. 😅 A few good conversations always come of these public baptism events.

We had three more baptisms just two weekends ago (indoors this time) at our all-church gathering, bringing our total for the year to 24. 🙌

And we installed two new pastors / elders:

Each of these guys spend about 9-10 months meeting with me for an "Elder Cohort" that is both a training and discernment process. Lord willing, Tim (kneeling on the left) will be going on to plant a new English congregation on the campus of McGill University (black dotted circle just below Church 21 Downtown), and Jesse (kneeling on the right) will be involved in a new Vaudreuil congregation (far left on the map below):

You'll also note that we have more long term plans for a second French congregation in the Delson building where we meet in the South Shore in English right now. Projected for 2027, we'll see what the LORD does, but the McGill and Vaudreuil projects have already started. 🚀 By fall 2025 we should be operating in English in six locations (in addition to our current French location).

We are ALSO in conversation around new church plants in Spanish and Hindi. Still early stages but we have potential guys to lead these projects, as well as people to form the core teams to plant.

"Iglesia 21" and "Charc 21" in 2027?... 🙌

Prayer Request #3: Pray for these new pastors, their families, and the projects in McGill and Vaudreuil, as well as these new-language projects.

Even as we grow geographically, we are also growing up internally in terms of our systems and processes. This perhaps veers dangerously close to being boring, but for those of you who like charts 🤓 here is a "mental model" diagram of our internal systems. Most of the blocks below link to a file or a folder with a program, ministry, partner, or other resources:

If you ever wondered what an Executive Pastor does, systems management like the above is a part of it. Good systems mean good care of our pastors, staff, members, partners and visitors, and faithfulness to the commission to share the gospel, make disciples, and present them as mature in Christ.

On Sundays we've been working our way through Genesis this fall and I had the opportunity to preach on the flood. You can catch the recording of this as it was presented at our Downtown congregation (sermon starts about the 25 minute mark):

One this is only the tip of the iceberg but you get the idea, the LORD Jesus is building his church.

This last winter we had a chance to visit family in Oregon & Washington (picture at top), including time at a big cabin together in the woods. We each shared what the LORD was doing in our lives, family by family, during the meals over the time we were there. Thankful for a legacy of faith that persists with nephew and nieces / cousins.

It's always very sad when it's time to leave, but we are thankful for the invention of air travel that makes it possible to go back once in a while, even when serving Jesus in a foreign context. (If we were missionaries a hundred years ago, we would have probably never seen any of my family again 🫣).

And of course life marches on in Canada:

Emma has just turned 17, and is starting her second to last year of school at home. She continues to draw, bake, read, and spend time with her  friends (both online and off).

She elected to make her own birthday cake this year, a delicious lemon meringue:

This fall we crossed over into new parenting territory when we took Ben to Heritage Bible College in Cambridge, Ontario, and then just left him there. 🥲 He had a chance to speak in our south shore congregation before we officially sent him off in prayer:

We miss him a lot but we're very proud of him and he's doing very well there, playing every sport they offer and studying hard:

It's been over a year now since his bike accident, his dental work has continued to go well and he's nearing the final stage of healing. The dentist and team have been amazing, and there have been gospel opportunities in the midst of the many interactions we've had.

Prayer Request #3: Thank God for protecting Ben in this accident, and keep praying for the final step of dental repair which should take place this December during the Christmas break.

Perhaps the most troubling recent turn of events is that Katie is now 20. 🫨

Her song "Star Fields" has continued do extremely well, reaching over 250,000 streams just on Spotify (and counting). 📈

She's since recorded three more songs and you can expect to see them coming out in succession over the next 3-6 months. The first of these, "Interdimensional Phone", is releasing next Friday, November 22nd:

You can always find all of her music at AloraFarenweh.com

These are all building toward an album project:

Severine has been extremely busy with her work with The Learning Tree homeschool group, which is now (after much painstaking work and translation of legalese) an official non-profit organization! 🙌 Sadly they lost access to the building that they were meeting in all these years due to the massive flooding we had in Montreal basements (which is also where our West Island congregation had the kid's ministry, so that's required a fix for that as well). However, God provided amazingly with a wonderful new location for the homeschool group to meet in that is actually better in many respects!

Since our last update, they've had another TLT drama, this time "Little Women". Kate wasn't in the show but helped with make up (pictured below putting some on Ben, something I never imagined):

Prayer Request #4: Pray for the LORD to move in a powerful way in our congregations as we seek more of his manifest presence.