Alberta News

When Maureen Chelemu left a good job in Zambia to become a missionary to Canada, she had no idea where her faith would lead her. While studying at a bible college in Regina, she was invited along on a mission trip to Brooks, Alberta. She slept for part of the journey and was awoken on the outskirts of town by a quiet voice that said “This is where I want you to be.”

Brooks Alberta, one of the fastest growing communities in Alberta, is known as the ‘City of 100 Hellos’ because of its unusually high multicultural diversity for a prairie town of 13,000 people. More than 75 languages are spoken here. Immigrants and refugees from around the world have been attracted by jobs in the meat processing plant and the oil and gas industry. It is a unique setting for Brooks International Gospel Church, one of the most dynamic church plants to affiliate with Canadian Baptists of Western Canada. We share their story of hardship and great promise as an encouragement that God is doing amazing things in our midst through those who are serving him at great cost to themselves. This serves as an example of what Canadian Baptists are about.

To read more about Maureen and Brooks International Gospel Church, click the link below.

It didn’t take long to realize that the quiet voice she had heard belonged to God. She joined BIG Church while it was a growing, multicultural church, first as an intern and again once she had graduated from Bible school. But in 2007, things began to fall apart. Francophone members left to start a French-language church and Maureen’s job at 10,000 Villages disappeared because the franchise closed. Her marriage collapsed in 2008 and more members left the church. Maureen went home to Zambia to sort out her divorce. When returned, the church was “almost gone”. It had few members, no board , no worship leaders and a large debt. It couldn’t afford to pay the rent on their meeting place or pay a pastor. The founding pastor left in early 2009. Everything was on hold. Many advised Maureen to move on but she thought, “I don’t think God has told me to move on.” She claimed God’s promise that he would never leave her. He didn’t.

But how would the church move forward? The few people left decided first that they wanted Maureen to be their pastor. Then they decided to hold prayer vigils from 10 pm Friday night until 6 am Saturday morning to cry before God and ask Him to do something. Week after week they prayed until God answered them.

The first outward sign of God’s loving grace to BIG Church was that people started coming back to worship services. After a while, they were able to pay their rent and even started paying Maureen, who was earning a living by working as the director of a daycare. Whatever the church gave her, she tithed 100% back to the church so they could keep paying the rent. “I didn’t want to rob them of the blessing of giving to me and I was blessed to give it all back,” she explains. She gave uplifting messages that attracted more people and started teaching about blessings and tithing to a congregation of refugees and immigrants from all over the world, most of whom send money back to their countries and churches of origin. She taught them that God has blessed them by bringing them out of their difficult situations in other countries and that they needed to do whatever God put on their hearts to give back, especially to their new home in Brooks. Soon, they were able to pay off the church’s debt. Today, attendance has increased to about 80 people, so many that people have to come early to get a seat. Where they once had no worship team, now they have two.

“We are having a blast in the Lord,” says Maureen, rejoicing in the fact that BIG Church has been revived to serve God in immediate, tangible ways. “I believe in practical Christianity, loving people and reaching out right here in Brooks,” says Maureen.

Indeed, Maureen and BIG Church seem to have an endless supply of energy to serve God by serving the community:

• In mid-March, they started a soup kitchen on Friday night. If it goes well, they intend to expand it to serve food 3 nights a week, and then 7.
• At the beginning of April, they will start a free babysitting service for the community, based at their rented church facility.
• They intend to re-start a ‘ladies teatime’ to reach out to isolated women, mostly Muslim, by providing them with conversation, fun and language skills so these women can have a social outlet, be introduced to Christianity and learn skills they can use to volunteer in the community.
• Even though they don’t have enough money to pay Maureen a full-time salary and she has to continue working at the daycare, the church is raising money for a woman in Columbia who needs cancer surgery, a woman in Africa who lost her legs and her family during a war so that she can have a wheelchair and start a business.
• Because the church is mostly immigrants from Africa, the Philippines, South America, Asia and Europe, many of whom are separated from their families, the church is helping pay for the families’ flights to Canada once all the immigration paperwork has been completed.
• The pivotal all-Friday-night prayer vigils continue.
• A men’s fellowship will be starting up soon.

Even with so much on the go already, they are looking to the future:

• Since Brooks has only one pre-school, they are hoping to start one of their own and run it as a business to help sustain the church financially.
• They also want to start a ministry for single fathers, a neglected community need, so that these men have social support and learn good parenting skills.
• They are hoping to raise money for a church born out of a refugee camp in Ghana.
• They wish to start a counselling service for refugees and immigrants to help them through the traumas they have faced before coming to Canada.

Brooks International Gospel Church is a little church with big dreams for God. We praise God for them and thank Him for His loving faithfulness in bringing them out of difficult times and giving them a full heart to serve others even before their own needs as a church are met. They serve as a wonderful example of a small, still-forming church is being led by God to step\ out in faith to serve Him in radical ways.