Location: Hudson/St-Lazare, Quebec

Organization Date: 1846 (Ontario); relocated to Quebec in 1997

Membership: 28 communicant; 24 baptized. Oldest Member: Hazel Jamieson, 88. Youngest Member: Gabriel Frattaroli, 1. The Bakkers have a baby due in early October.

Pastor: Courtney Miller (wife Barbara, 5 children)

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Our Roots

Older than Canada itself, the church was established in Lochiel, an eastern Ontario rural farming community. The Lochiel church building is now over 100 years old, finally having had electricity added in the 1950s and still without running water. After the McKelvys (1928-69) retired, the church struggled to survive without a pastor. Elder Brian Brodie, a full-time dairy farmer, was instrumental in keeping the ministry going, even filling the pulpit for more than 16 years in the ’80s and ’90s.

The winds of change began blowing in 1994 with the inclusion of the Choinière-Shields and Dodenhoff families to the church. At the encouragement of John McMillan (retired pastor) and Wade Mann (pastor of Lisbon and acting as moderator), the church made the important decision to relocate to the Hudson/St-Lazare area just west of the island of Montreal, Quebec, becoming a church “transplant.” Initially the newly-named church met in a small daycare center (the dangling octopi were a challenge) in St-Lazare (a bilingual, residential town of 13,000) and then moved to an Anglican church parish hall in Hudson (a largely English-speaking town of 10,000). Courtney Miller was installed as pastor in August 2001. Jurgen Dodenhoff and Jeff Bakker were installed as deacons on Apr. 3 of this year.

Our Labors

Besides Canada and America, the church has had visitors and members from Mexico, Romania, China, Korea, Bulgaria, the Republic of Georgia, Scotland, Ireland, and Indonesia. It has been an international ministry.

The church’s ministry focus has been on the preaching and teaching of the Word. Regular morning worship and evening studies or psalm sings have been the foundation of our work. Two Bible studies meet regularly during the week. The Young People’s Ministry has seen many participants coming from outside the church family. Children’s Bible Club draws Christian families from the surrounding communities as well as a few non-churched families. Pastor Miller has taught various classes on parenting, apologetics, and philosophy. Elder Brian Brodie preaches several times a year in a retirement center near his home. Lia Lindeman has been leading an evangelistic Bible study with a troubled family in her community. Tamar Dodenhoff has been ministering in an Ontario nursing home. The Choinière-Shields family has been driving two Indonesian families to church. Jeff Bakker and Rueben Lindeman have both been on mission trips to the Dominican Republic to work on school renovation projects this year.

This summer, our present landlord told us we needed to find a new place to worship beginning in September. We desire to have an impact on our community for Christ, but that seems especially challenging without our own facility. Even in this, God is at work. God has provided a short-term solution for us. We expect to be renting for a while, but we want to do bigger and better things for the glory of God and so desire a more permanent and useful building for the ongoing work of our church.

Prayer Requests

✧ A long-term solution to our need of a facility from which to minister.

✧ Our financial situation. The cost of a rental or mortgage payment is not sustainable within our present budget. (Our previous cost was only $15/hour!)

✧ Growing unity among the body and a greater vision for the work of our fellowship for Christ.

✧ That our young people may be thoroughly equipped to serve the Lord and build the church in Quebec. (We have four young men heading off to higher education this fall.)

✧ Opportunities to influence our communities for Christ.

✧ A boldness in witnessing the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ to a sin-hardened world in Quebec (less than one half percent of the eight million people are evangelical Christians).

✧ A strong and established English work here in Quebec to be the future support of RP French-speaking ministry.