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BMW'S
MINISTRY IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH
Though the province is not an island in the strict sense (a 17-mile-wide isthmus connects it to New Brunswick), the people do possess an island mentality. They are strong, independent, proud, generous and friendly, but suspicious of strangers and intensely resistant to change. Many towns and villages are quite isolated, and Nova Scotia's maritime history and heritage has influenced every aspect of life--from the economy to family patterns to the dynamics of local church ministry. Nova Scotia
has a population of just under a million of those "hardy souls."
Demographically, the most apparent influence is British: English
and Irish on the mainland and Scottish on Cape Breton. There are
pockets of Acadian French, and many regions boast a rich African
tradition as well, as many black loyalists arrived here during the
American Revolution as United Empire Loyalists. In addition, a growing
number of ethnic communities are thriving in the metropolitan Halifax
area.
We are seeking to expand our ministry in Canada in order to plant indigenous churches among its diverse peoples. Due to the vast distances involved, there is an advantage to focusing our attention on one geographical area, as we did in the Maritimes. However, we are now at the place where we want to move in other directions, and we are anxious to develop new ministries wherever the opportunities exist. We would like to see more churches planted not only in the Maritime region but also in cities like Ottawa and Toronto, the world's most ethnically diverse city. The vision of
our Borealis Project is to plant multi-cultural churches in the
principal cities of Canada, starting in the nation's capital, Ottawa,
Ontario. (To give you an idea of how diverse Canada is, Ottawa's
CHIN radio station broadcasts to 37 cultures in 20 languages on
a weekly basis.) These ministries would use English or French classes
as primary contact tools, as well as other practical services we
would be able to render to newcomers to Canada: liaison services
with vital people and agencies, shopping, rental and employment
assistance, etc. We would work toward worship together in English
(or French in Gatineau, Quebec, just on the other side of the Ottawa
River) and seek to provide discipleship and leadership development
in the heart languages of the people in the growing congregation.
Regular, structured interaction and fellowship between the various
language groups would be provided to encourage cultural exchange
and break down barriers.
Our goal for the Canadian ministry is twofold.
If you're interested
in learning more about the Borealis Project and in reaching Canada
for Christ please contact Rob
Heijermans, BMW's Director for Canada, who can send you the
entire vision statement. EUROPEAN PLURALISM
Canada is a pluralistic nation. In his book, The Gagging of God (Zondervan, 1996), D. A. Carson defines three stages of pluralism:
On the other
hand, Canadian pluralism provides unsurpassed opportunities for
cross-cultural ministry very close to home. Tens of thousands of
immigrants practicing every conceivable religion inhabit every major
Canadian city and maintain their languages and ethnic distinctives.
In addition, great opportunities exist among the French and aboriginal
peoples. BMW'S HISTORY IN NOVA SCOTIA
In 1980, Jim and Evelyn Hicks arrived in Canada, having spent many years as missionaries in Africa. They eventually went to Lunenburg and brought the Faith Bible Chapel (now Faith Baptist Chapel) to autonomy. This little congregation had struggled for decades, and God used the Hickses to build a thriving church. After leaving Faith Baptist in the hands of a Canadian pastor, the Hickses moved to Lake Echo, outside Dartmouth, where they helped with a new church plant started by another organization. Jim and Evelyn retired in Ontario, and Jim went to be with the Lord in the summer of 2004. Evelyn is still as active in ministry as possible. After two years
of ministry in Dartmouth, Rob and Donna Heijermans went to Yarmouth
in 1981, where they founded the Shoreline Bible Baptist Church.
This church became autonomous when the Heijermanses moved to Atlanta
in 1998 to work in Biblical Ministries Worldwide's International
Office. CANADA - MAMMOTH AND MISUNDERSTOOD
Americans look north toward their Canadian cousins and are often puzzled and perplexed by a people who can simultaneously seem so similar yet somehow strangely different... South to north, Canada stretches almost 3,000 miles, farther than New York City to Los Angeles. Regular passenger jets soar above southern Canada heading north. They touch down six hours later still 800 miles from the end. They pass over land almost the entire time and hardly see a community of more than a few hundred hardy souls. They pass over city suburbs where bands of coyotes threaten household pets, over lakes and bays larger than entire states, and over a forest six times the size of France. They pass over herds of wild caribou so numerous they take a day to pass one rock. They pass over, if anyone has ever counted them all, more than a million lakes, streams, and rivers carefully containing 30 percent of the globe's entire freshwater supply. They pass over immense weather systems spawning storms which a week later rage out of the sky to paralyze American cities and entire regions. They pass over long lines of marauding thunderstorms that rumble across the countryside for days and never soak a human. They pass over towering waterfalls frozen in mid-plummet, a score of mountains more than two miles tall, and spectacularly scenic sites that go nameless and unseen. And then their airplane, looking somehow smaller than it did at takeoff, lands in a desolate, forever-frozen place called Resolute in territories constituting 40 percent of Canada that remain largely unexplored, untamed, and unincorporated 118 years after the country's birth. It is Canada's North, one and a quarter times larger than India with fewer people than a New York Yankees baseball game."
If you're interested in helping BMW expand its church-planting ministry in this amazing country, please contact Rob Heijermans, BMW's Director for Canada. |
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MINISTRIES WORLDWIDE Site
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All
of BMW's church-planting efforts in Canada have been in the east-coast
province of Nova Scotia. From 1978 to 1998 we were involved in three
communities: Dartmouth (the twin city of the capital, Halifax),
Lunenburg on the South Shore, and Yarmouth on the southwestern tip
of the peninsula.
THE
BOREALIS PROJECT: 
As
we assemble our first church planting team, we are especially interested
in multi-lingual members, as well as those who can teach English
or French or have cross-cultural experience. Canadian citizenship
would be an asset, though it is certainly not a requirement. 
Spiritually,
Canada can be compared to Western Europe. Despite a rich spiritual
heritage,
secularism has displaced the formerly high regard
for the Scriptures and those
who seek to live by and proclaim
them. Apathy and materialism--both philosophical and practical--characterize
the spiritual climate. Combined with the inbred resistance to change
and widespread transience due to economic instability, this has
made church planting here a challenge. Historical fundamentalism
of the sort which still exists in the United States is virtually
non-existent in Canada, except where it has been imported by Americans.
Canada,
for the most part, has already achieved philosophical pluralism.
While the United States has long been considered a "melting
pot" of many cultures, Canada might better be likened to a
stew pot--everything is in the same container and simmering in the
same broth, but the various ingredients maintain their distinctive
shapes, flavors, and textures. In Canada, these distinctives are
maintained at great expense by the public purse, and failure to
acknowledge or respect them is viewed as decidedly un-Canadian (not
to mention unlawful.) In reality, Canada has gone beyond Carson's
third stage and entered a fourth, which we might call, "legislated
pluralism": "We will not allow it to be any other way."
The implications of this policy for Bible-believing Christians may
be far-reaching in the days ahead, as the
Biblical
Ministries Worldwide began church planting in Nova Scotia in 1978.
David and Lois Daniels founded the Open Bible Church in the city
of Dartmouth and were joined in 1979 by Rob and Donna Heijermans.
This church eventually merged with another baptist church in the
area. The Danielses, no longer with the mission, now minister in
Ontario.
"It
sits atop the Western Hemisphere, a brooding geographic colossus,
immense, hostile, forbidding, and unforgiving of those who ignore
its natural rules of survival. Canada's population of more than
25 million is puny by most international standards. The wild country
that the Canadians inhabit is not. It is the second-largest in the
world, a distorted parallelogram of almost four million square miles
of land and water stretching far beyond the average citizen's scale
of belief. East to west, it spans 4,545 miles and one-quarter of
the world's time zones. Scattered across this area like a few specks
of pepper on a huge freezer-room floor are the people, huddling
together along the porous border with the United States.
Correspondence and support funds can be sent to our Canadian address:
BMW
CANADA
P.O. Box 4273
Station Main
Woodstock, N.B.
E7M 6B4
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