“You guys wanna play some soccer?” I asked.
They were standing around in groups of two, five, eight.
Four of them said yes; three girls and a boy. Well, they were young women and men. Well, they were teenagers; that category between categories. Gracie, Chloe, and Taylor. I forget the third girl’s name. They came and played some pick-up soccer with us on the field which makes up part of the large front yard of our church, which used to be a horse farm.
We’ve been playing on Thursday afternoons for the last few weeks, thanks to the initiative of the Fraser family. They’re missionaries. They’ve been at our church for about 4 years, quietly sowing goodness, gospel, and grace, and making a deeper impact than most in our church realize. The fruit of their presence has been good, but now they are leaving to go lead an even smaller and struggling church in need of revitalization about an hour away in rural Quebec. They’re the kind of people who are drawn to hard places.
The teenagers are missionaries too, sort of. They’re part of the youth group from a large church in Kitchener, Ontario. They braved 8 hours in white vans on the 401 to come to help us here in Quebec, a whole world away. What kind of church can afford white vans? Not many of those in Quebec. They’re here to run a Vacation Bible School program for a week at our church.
A Life-Giving Gospel Partnership
Now maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but that’s not how we see it. We see it as a life-giving example of gospel partnership.
At this point, you might be wondering why we aren’t just running our own VBS. “All our dogs have been run hard all year. They’re bone tired.” That’s how our pastor, Josh, described the state of our volunteer base. He has a gift for metaphors. And like the Frasers, he and his family are drawn to hard places too, moving here from Georgetown in the dark nadir of Covidtide when greener ministry pastures were available.
To be a Christian in Quebec is to live in a spiritually dry place with a few lovely oases scattered about. It is a place that has known gospel revival before, as many thousands of spiritually curious young people turned to Christ in the wake of the Quiet Revolution.
“He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle” (Psalm 107:35-36).
Since that time between the 70s and 90s—when one denomination saw a tenfold increase in attendance, baptisms, and membership—the challenges have been many. And while the Francophone churches rightly get most of the attention, for they serve the vast majority of the population, the English churches in Quebec have not had much of an easier time. They tend to be weak, small, isolated, and stagnant. Short on human and financial resources, they have a hard time attracting and retaining high quality ministry and lay leadership.
“We’ll take care of everything,” they told Josh a few months ago. And so they did. They brought all the materials, all the volunteers, and all the energy. They paid for everything, even gas for the white vans. Some of our own youth joined in leading the VBS, forging friendships and enjoying such a warm welcome that it amounted to a miracle if you know anything about how teenagers tend to socialize.
On the Sunday before the start of VBS, we arrived at church like normal only to find that things were not normal at all. Instead of the usual two or three people leading the musical worship, the stage was almost spilling over with their six musicians. They had picked songs from our repertoire, practiced them, and now they blessed us with a fullness of music that we rarely enjoy.
At the end of the VBS week, which two of my own kids attended and loved, we had a BBQ where all the families were invited to stay and hang out. We realized that among the crowds of families were pastors and leaders from six different churches. That probably wouldn’t happen in too many other places, but here, when a church in the area is running a VBS, it’s a regional attraction.
Two Ingredients for Success
When the visiting group’s ministry leader, Tim Mudde, asked me what I thought about this kind of initiative, I was enthusiastically positive. I asked pastor Josh for his thoughts, and he summed them up neatly by saying he felt the visit “epitomized gospel partnership.” Tim likewise thought the week had been significant for his crew, both for their individual maturity and their group’s cohesion. Thus it was declared a win-win for all involved. Two key ingredients in that success seem worthy of mention.
First, the churches must have significant theological and methodological alignment. If we had found ourselves cringing at the lessons being taught to our kids or objecting to the content of the songs, it would have left us with reservations about the whole endeavor. Notice I didn’t say anything about the style of the VBS songs, which ranged from what I’d call techno-hymn anthems, to Mumford and Sons-style acoustic folk rock, to a kind of high velocity pop-punk which used to be edgy but now reminds me of the Paw Patrol theme song. But I digress. The kids loved the songs.
Second, the group needs at least a critical mass of people modeling humility and a willingness to serve. These traits don’t come naturally to any of us, perhaps especially when we are teenagers. But good leaders model and foster exactly these traits, and the resulting team atmosphere can be really lovely. And that kind of attitude is exactly what our people encountered again and again.
The group from the sending church, Grandview Baptist, also stayed for our Sunday service at the end of the long week. Tim preached an excellent sermon from Colossians 2, and we had our second highest attendance as some families from the VBS joined us for the first time. After some cake, coffee, and fellowship, our new friends piled back into the white vans and waved goodbye, honking as they left.
To the watching world, nothing much happened. Some kids came for a few days of camp; a couple white vans pulled out of our long driveway and headed back up the hill to the highway onramp. But we know things look different from an eternal perspective. Seeds were sown, soil was tilled, and already we see signs of growth and fruit that will endure.
Beyond that, there is the swell of encouragement and edification that washed over our little kingdom outpost, one spiritual oasis in an otherwise dry land. For these reasons and more we find ourselves freshly aware of the power of gospel partnership.
