Winter 2023

Prayer Request #1: Pray for the new believers in our congregations, that the LORD would protect and mature them.

As a "regional" pastor, I was involved in helping run many "all-church" events over the course of the year, such as a Fall Leadership Team-Building evening. Leaders from each of our four congregations competed as teams against the other congregations in a series of activities:

YOU: "Wait, wouldn't that lead to disunity in the broader church?"

ME: "Ha, yes we joked about that, but no hard feelings were had, the scores were very close in the end."

Severine is usually super involved in helping me with this kind of thing, often leveraging her hospitality gifting to bless those in attendance with food & drink:

Our Annual Children's Ministry Training Day, where I handle the logistics and the legal portion of our training (safety plan, whistleblowing, etc.). This year we discovered that there is almost a congregation-sized number of people working with children & youth across our four congregations:

We even had a couple of workers from our French congregation make it, even though it was a training day in English. Awesome to have that continuing partnership in the gospel across languages. Praying for that to grow.

I served on logistics for our second ever Xtreme Character Challenge (XCC), an intense 3 day outdoor event for men. It had a huge impact on the team of guys who participated:

(Can't show you anything very significant as a lot of what logistics does at XCC is secret... 🫡)

We now have youth group twice a month, once in the West Island, and once in Verdun (which I have continued to oversee):

I taught an all-church parenting workshop in our West Island location based on my Skipping Adolescence book material:

And this fall we had our largest all-church gathering ever where we celebrated yet more baptisms:

Each year I lead an Eldership course for prospective elders. (We are constantly in need of adding new guys to our team as we seek to plant more congregations and churches, reaching new neighborhoods with the gospel of Jesus.)

And this fall we installed Peter Smith as new elder / pastor to take up the mantle of our downtown congregation:

We've been preaching through 1 Corinthians this fall / winter, and preaching from chapter 6, I covered the subject Disagreements in the Church. You can catch the recording of this as it was presented at our Downtown congregation (sermon starts about the 20 minute mark):

Prayer Request #2: Pray for unity within the church, and between our five congregations, English & French.

One painful challenge over this last year has been to wrestle through the legal and practical implications of some new laws in Canada and Quebec that essentially make parts of our jobs as pastors illegal. For example, if I pray for someone who is fighting same-sex attraction, or encourage them to fast, or confront demonic influence, I can go to federal prison for five years, and / or face fines up to $50,000 personally (and $150,000 for the church). If I recommend a book or resource on the subject while preaching, I can face up to three years in jail.

Needless to say, we've had to do some work to try to navigate the narrow space between faithfulness to the calling of our ministry and the (probably) legally-indefensible laws that have gone into effect. Sadly, they actually limit the options of those whom the laws are purportedly seeking to help.

Prayer Request #3: Pray that these laws would be amended or overturned, and for protection for our staff and other faithful pastors doing ministry throughout Canada.

After much labor over the last two years, we have (finally) received federal approval of our incorporation of Gospel Movement Ministries (yes, I had to make yet another website). LORD-willing, this is going to allow us to migrate our para-church ministries out of our church charter this next year, greatly simplifying the procedural burden on our church members (if you listen, you can hear them quietly cheering).

That is just skimming the surface, a lot more could be written, but you're probably still wondering about that family emergency (if you haven't already skipped down to read this section out of order), so I won't put you off any longer...

Ben has been working part-time at a Euro Deli shop about 15 minutes from our house for over a year now. It has been both a good source of income and provided him opportunities for the gospel among his co-workers. During the temperate months, he would usually ride his bike back and forth, as well as to the gym. In late-August, I got a call from a stranger saying that they had found Ben on the road outside their house, having crashed his bike. Lots of blood and even more uncertainty about the extent of the damage. Pretty much the worst kind of call you can get as a parent.

Ben is OK, and we don't totally know what happened (he has a memory gap) but he appears to have gone over his handlebars at high speed. He broke his arm and several of his teeth. Reconstructive surgery for his mouth is going to be a part of his life over the coming months. In case you're wondering, he was wearing his helmet but the force of impact on his jaw and teeth still gave him a minor concussion. Overall though, we are so deeply thankful that he wasn't injured more seriously, and that he has been healing up well.

He also now has a "new-to-him" used car after getting his driver's license, so no more biking for Ben:

Prayer Request #4: Thank God for protecting Ben in this accident, and pray for total healing.

Ben has been serving as the Sound Tech Lead in our south shore congregation for a year and a bit now. He's recruiting, training, and regularly serving our church in this way. And he is now planning to attend Heritage Bible College in Cambridge, Ontario (about seven hours west of Montreal) starting next fall. We had an opportunity to visit the school this fall with some friends:

Towards that end Ben has been saving up his paycheques and spent the last several months preparing for the SAT, finally taking the test just this last weekend (we have to wait a couple weeks to find out how he did). He is now very thankful to have that behind him.

We were in the area of the school because Severine's cousin was getting married in Toronto, having a black-tie wedding on her dad's (Severine's uncle's) boat, so that was a fun opportunity to get dressed up, and to spend time with Severine's brother Jean-Marc:

Ben's broken arm and face were a real conversation piece at the wedding. 🤕

Severine has been more engaged than ever with the Learning Tree homeschool group, serving on the leadership committee, co-teaching the drama class, and co-leading the annual production. This last year was an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, in which Ben & Emma had major roles and did such a good job:

This was Severine's first time to Mexico, and she was thrilled to draw even with me on the number of countries we have been to (I was in the lead, having been to Mexico before on a mission trip in high school).

Emma had her Sweet Sixteen birthday and is wrapping up her third and final year of her Wilson Hill Academy course on Integrated History, Literature & Theology. I very much enjoy discussing things like Dante's Inferno with her during our regular "Papa Time" together, but it means lots of reading for her, which she sometimes chooses to do outside in the snow, barefoot, and dressed as an avocado. 😅

Kate spent two and a half months in the UK at Capernwray Bible college with her friend Ruthie (which was an amazing experience!), and then a few weeks traveling in London, Strasbourg and Paris (just in time for some of the riots in Paris, scary times). But then she made it home safe! :)

After getting back, Kate had to get right to work on her next song. She had won a grant from FACTOR (a private / public partnership between the Canadian government and Canadian radio broadcasters) to record a third song, so it was all steam ahead to get it completed before the November due date. She worked very hard, spending a few days in Ontario recording with her producer, and then we managed to time the release with the distributor to be on November 8th, her 19th birthday. :)  It's the best one yet:

And excitingly she had one of her posts about her new song go viral on her Instagram. Normally she'll have 1-3 thousand views on a post, but one of hers is at 354,000 and counting! 😮

This has been a huge encouragement to her, as it means 3-4 people are listing to her song ALL the time now.

And she's been working on an updated shop as well, with lots of fun things from her song (tap image to visit):

We're very proud of how hard all of our kids have been working over this last year to progress in their respective callings, and we praise God for how we see Him working in their lives and drawing them to Himself and His mission. 💕