Spring 2026

Ministry Highlights

Jesus has been on the move! I'd like to start by reporting on several ministry items that I mentioned as prayer requests from last time, including:

Purchasing our first building,

Planting our second French church plant,

Finding a Spanish pastor,

And the Relevant McGill appologetics conference.

Brookhaven Building - As of this last Wednesday I signed on behalf of our board to formally take ownership of the building we use as our worship gathering space for Church 21 West Island.  🎉

We've been effectivelymanaging the building since April 1st, recontracting with tenants (scouts, AA, etc). and services (maintainance, cleaning), but now it's official. We even had to form a "building management committe" which is the first time I've ever had to say those words since moving to Montreal. 😅 But it is a good growth step for us, to be incarnationally invested in the community (vs. always just renting and moving around). 

As mentioned last time, we are doing a captial campgain to finish paying for the building, and to gear up for some much needed renovations. You can watch this video for more infomation, as well as a peek inside:

Prayer Request #1 - That the LORD would provide what is needed for this captial campaign, both to purchase and rennovate.

If you'd like to learn more or even get involved, you can find all the details at church21.ca/reach

Second French Church Plant - Vision and core group nights for our second French church plant have begun in the Delson building where Church 21 South Shore congregation meets (in English), with the ultimate goal of formally launching Église 21 Delson this fall:

The team is SO excited to finally be engaging with our context in Delson in French. It is a town of 6,000 people and, unlike other areas we're in, Delson is 99% French speaking. So this is a hugely important project for reaching this area with the gospel.

Prayer Request #2 - That the LORD would guide this core team as they seek to be engaged with the neighborhood around the building this summer.

Spanish Project - I can report that we're making progress on the Spanish project as well. We have a very solid canidate and are now just working through the logistics of funding the project so we can hire him / request a clergy visa. Nothing formally locked in yet so no pictures on this, but please be praying. We have so many Spanish speaking particpants in our Downtown congregation and it is a challenge to care for them well.

Prayer Request #3 - That the LORD would help us make wise partnerships for this project and for favor in the visa process (always hit or miss).

Relevant McGill - I am very happy to report that Relevant McGill was a huge success this year. It's very clear now how God's timing was working, as the existing leadership structure of this campus ministry was in the final stages of stepping back, the LORD knew to bring us back in. Pastor Tim did a great job revitalizing this week of apologetics, speakers coming in and engaging with hundreds of students (see Tim at top of this photo):

And as a follow up to contacts made there, Tim ran a weekly meeting called Exploring Jesus where Chrsitans and non-Christians alike engaged with the Jesus of the Bible, and the teachings of Christianity. From here things will wind down a bit for summer break, but then take off again this next fall as the over 150,000 university students flood back into Montreal (highest ratio of students to population, per-capita for any city in the world).

Prayer Request #4 - That the LORD brings other core team members to the Church 21 University project as they seek to reach these students for the gopsel.

Iranian Project? - A new opprutnity not metnioned last time is that we've had an influx of Iranian folks engaging with our Downtown location. We hosted an internatinal student dinner around Christmas this past December and a bunch of those who attended turned out to be Iranian students, and so then we held another dinner event specifically for Persian New Year where the gospel was preached and copies of the Gospel of Luke in Farsi were given out. Not sure what the LORD is doing but we might have to start praying about a worship service in Farsi. 😅

Inter-Church Ministry - I had the opportunity through our Movement Montreal church network to give pulpit relief over Christmas break at Hudson Community Bapist Church, which you can catch here if you want :

And I was invited to speak on "Leaving a Legacy" at Rosemount Bible Church's men's breakfast, both of which were great opportunities to reinforce our collective effort, as churches united in spirit, to reach Quebec for the sake of the gospel!

Finally, we had what was probably our last "All-Church" gathering of all of our congregations (six currently) this past Feruary, which included baptisms, and our first ever choir:

The reality is that we're only able to fit about half of our whole church body in this larger space, and it's gotten harder for us to convince those who live further away (such as at our Vaudreuil church plant) to make the journey Downtown. We'll still try to pull off our all-church beach baptisms day this summer, but might shift to "area" gatherings wehre those congregations that are closeset together meet up together a couple of times a year. This will be more sustainable as we grow from six congregations to nine or ten over this next year.

In all, we are feeling incredably blessed by the LORD's work, and so thankful for the huge team he has put together for this mission. We just had our first ever Elders (Pastors) & Wives retreat, not everyone even fits into the frame of the shot, this is only half of the group (we're all doing an encouragment exercise in this shot):

There is always more to share about ministry, but I'm sure some of you are waiting to for me to get to the family highlights, so here we go...

Family Highlights

Ben has just completed his second year at Heritage Bible College in Ontario. We had a chance to visit him there a couple months ago when we were there for a leadership conference (and it was just before Katie left to be with Gavin, so the last time all together as a family):

Ben is staying in Ontario over the summer to do pulpit fill, preaching at churches to give pastors a break while they're away on vacation and / or churches that don't currently have a pastor (a growing problem, even as we seek to plant new churches 😬).

Though it took a couple of extra months, Katelyn has finally moved to Hawaii to join her husband. It was a sad but joyful sending:

What was supposed to be two flights over 13 hours turned into four flights over 23 hours due to many delays and changes, but eventually she made it! 😅 🎉

They are settling into new life together, which has included adopting a kitten, which they have named "Star Destroyer 5000" (Star for short):

Priceless. 😂

And after MANY months of searching (and praying) Emma landed her first job outside the home at this amazing Montreal-style bagel place only a few minutes from our house:

it's a small family owned place and has been such a blessing! She wanted to do something involving baking, and now she gets to bake Montreal-style bagels as well a make a host of other goods.

Despite almost being empty nesters, Severine has kept busy with her THREE part time jobs...

1. Co-directing The Learning Tree homeschool group:

2. Leading hospitality for our regional church events:

3. Providing pastoral care to the wives of the many pastors on our team.

She also spends quite a bit of time engaged in helping her mom with errands and medical appointments.

As for me, I'm continuing to write here and there as I have time, and hope to release my next book soon... 📚

Life has been full but good, and we are thankful.

Prayer Request #5 - That the LORD guides us as we enter into this next season of life, parenting adult children, and grieving a bit as they move away.

Thank you for your faithful support of our ministry in Quebec, and your care of our family. Last time I reported that our ongoing monthly support had montly shortfall of about $300 CAD (approximately $220 USD).

Many of you responded with either a one time gift and / or increasing your monthly giving, which collectively made a huge difference, and we cleared our 2025 shortfall and even went a bit over, thank you!

As for 2026, it's still early in the year but if everything stays the same, it appears that we are 100% fully funded, praise God.

We are however still looking for new partners to help raise funds both for the Brookhaven Capital Campaign (as mentioned above), as well as raise 10,000 CAD to help replenish our "church planting warchest." WHY MORE? With three new church plants planned for 2026, we are a bit out over our skis and I've encouraged our entire team to see if they can't help replenish the warchest. We've got about another 10 years of serious church planting to do in Montreal itself before we shift our primary focus to sending French speaking teams into the wider reaches of Quebec to plant.

(That'll be another ten years, and then perhaps I might need to lie down a bit. 😅 )

Use the buttons below to jump to either giving opporutnity:

Your investments are making a real difference in this province, both in existing churches, church plants, and to help reach the lost. We've baptized over 100 people in the last five years, the vast majority of them being brand new believers. Again, Jesus is on the move!

Thank you again for your prayers and your generosity as we seek to serve Jesus here and plant more churches! 🔥

Blessings,

Brian & Severine