God at Work in Rural Canada
Andrew and Ashley Pilkey have been lead pastors in Englehart, Ontario, for three years. Englehart is a quaint, centrally located town in the District of Temiskaming. It was incorporated as the Town of Englehart in January 1908 as a halfway divisional point between North Bay, Ontario, and what became Cochrane, Ontario, where the T & NO Railway met with the new Transcontinental Railway line. Englehart is a progressive, family-oriented municipality.
Where are you seeing God working in your context?
We’ve seen some really cool things happen in the last few months that we’re really excited about!
Since Christmas ‘22, we’ve seen a slow increase in new people from the community who began attending regularly/semi-regularly. And there has been a noticeable increase since Easter. We’ve been seeing people respond in services and hearing stories that God works in people’s lives.
A few weeks ago, we introduced next-step cards to create a tangible way for us to connect with people and hopefully capture what God is doing.
We had 46 people respond.
4 adults gave their life to Jesus. Two are friends of my wife who she has brought out to church; another man’s Dad gave him a Bible ten years ago, just before he passed away and had become a Christian, and he found Jesus reading it this year after picking it up for the first time; the 4th person’s partner came to faith two years ago, and we have been praying for him since.
Several kids also gave their lives to Jesus as well who have started coming to our kid’s program. One comes on their own without their parents (biking to church with parents’ permission).
10 are interested in baptism.
13 want to start serving.
13 want to start giving.
7 want to join a small group.
19 committed to reading their Bible and praying more intentionally.
8 wrote something different.
Also, on Sunday, June 18, 2023, I felt led to share something I’ve overcome in the past during the response time. A friend of my wife, who has started attending, spoke with me after wanting to know how I knew what was going on with her husband (who I’ve been building a relationship with the last few years and have been praying for an opportunity to share with him).
For context, our average attendance last year was 48; since Easter this year, our lowest attended service is 51. Most of the new people joining us come from years of building intentional relationships and serving in our community.
Salvation Testimony
A woman from our community began attending before the pandemic through a mom-and-tot playgroup, which then led to attending Sunday mornings. My first time leading communion in person as the lead pastor after the first lockdown, I goofed and used old crackers that had gone bad. Talk about embarrassing as people were struggling to decide if they should spit it out or suffer through it. After that service, the lady came to me and asked if she could make the communion crackers from scratch. (She has a home food business). She said, “I’m not sure I believe this Jesus stuff, but I believe in this community.”
A few weeks later, she stopped me one day and said, “Hey, I just realized you guys believe Jesus is God. I don’t know what to do with that.” We had a good conversation, and then a few months later, she asked me how she could start reading the Bible, which led to her joining an online small group, giving her life to Jesus and being baptized a year later.
Lessons Learned
The biggest lessons I am learning are the value of a long-term investment in people, particularly the next generation and giving people space to hear the Gospel and process it over an extended period of time while being welcomed into the community.
Our church tries its best to combine a welcoming next-generation focused culture with the clear teaching of the Gospel and intentional, ongoing service in the community.
Seven years ago, the Lead Pastor I served under (Jamie Nelson) launched the church’s first Sunday children’s church program when we had six kids in the church and four youth. Now 1/3 of our attendance is regularly under the age of 18.
Our church has a long history of coming to our community with an open offer to serve. Looking for ways to be a blessing without any strings attached. For nearly two decades, the church has held an annual Christmas Dinner free to the community that fed 350 people yearly. We pivoted during the pandemic to giving boxes of groceries to make your own Christmas dinner, which is now reaching 500 people each year. We also host an annual Easter egg hunt, lend out a cotton candy machine for free for community events and provide all of the materials.
Over time this has built trust in the community and opened doors for pastoral staff to coach and serve in our local elementary and high school and sports programs. Beyond the staff, we have members of the church who serve our community in a myriad of ways. We just ask how we can serve you and then do it, and if they don’t have anything, we ask again when another opportunity arises.
We work hard to build friendships with people in our community and enter into their space. After a recent service, two friends of my wife who have recently given their life to Jesus told me how grateful they were for our investment in their kids and that we built real friendships with them outside of church and welcomed them in before they believed. One of the moms had set a reminder on her phone every Sunday for over a year to come to church and showed it to my wife during a hockey tournament this year when we stayed late to spend time with the team parents who were partying.
We have received invaluable help from our District Regenerate Process, with Mark Collins helping us chart our way through the pandemic into the future. The resources, perspective and coaching have been a big part of helping us prepare for the season that God is bringing us into.
Join us at the Church Vitalization Online Summit on August 29-30, 2023, from 11 am - 1 pm. Registration is free.
Pastor Andrew Pilkey, Living Way Church, Englehart, Ontario
Andrew and Ashley have nine years total on staff - 3 as lead and six as youth/assistant; they became leaders in May of 2020; the population is 1500, approximately 3000, including surrounding villages.
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