Rob Chartrand (00:01.557)
What we are so happy to have on Church in the North, Rick Love. He is the founder and director of Love New Canadians and he's located in Calgary, Alberta. Rick, welcome to Church in the North. Let's start with a quick summary of what this Love New Canadians thing is, this organization that you're part of. Let's say you're in an elevator, you're going to the top floor, a tall building, you got a chance to tell somebody all about what you do. How would you describe Love New Canadians to that person?
Rick (00:13.068)
Hey, so good to be here, Rob.
Rick (00:31.758)
Sure. Well, Love New Canadians helps churches develop pathways to Jesus for immigrants in their neighbourhood. We do that primarily through coaching, through seminars and curriculum. So we're really good at holding hands. We help churches figure out next steps. Wherever they're at, what's the next step? We can help. We've made so many mistakes, we can help churches avoid some of the mistakes we've made.
Rob Chartrand (00:53.185)
Yeah, mistakes are experience compacted. You learn a lot through that. Yeah. Okay, well, we're gonna go deep into the organization in a moment and talk about that, but I wanna talk about you for a minute. Talk to us about your journey into ministry. When did you first have the idea that God was calling you into his work?
Rick (00:56.14)
You know it. You know it.
Rick (01:13.634)
Well, honestly, I think it was in high school. Like I was attending a great church, Fodale's Alliance is where I grew up. And my parents started going there when I was like three years old. So I was I was I just had a great church experience when I was a teen and I wanted to be a pastor and.
Rob Chartrand (01:21.856)
wow, okay.
Rick (01:36.906)
Everyone told me I had to go to school when I finished high school, which looking back, I wish they wouldn't have told me that. I wish they would have taken me on somehow and just throw me in the deep end in ministry when I was 17, 18. I think that would have been the best thing for me. But I did what I was told to do and went to Bible school.
Rob Chartrand (01:52.351)
Went to Bible school, is that like CBC in Regina? Since you're an Alliance guy? Yeah, yeah, okay. So, I mean, obviously this led you to working cross-culturally, et cetera, et cetera. talk about that, talk about how God birthed in you this vision, say for world mission and for working in cross-country, cross-culturally while you were in school.
Rick (01:54.818)
Yeah, I to Canadian Bible College. That's right.
Rick (02:15.438)
So I thought I'd end up as a pastor. And then I heard a guy named George Verwer speak, Operation Mobilization. And so I signed up and I went to France for a summer. And while I was there, it was a difficult summer for me. I loved being in the countryside because people were very receptive to talking in rural areas of France and cities, not so much. And I remember
Rob Chartrand (02:22.963)
Nice, yes.
Rob Chartrand (02:38.827)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (02:44.514)
walking along one day, praying. I can picture the exact spot where I was. It was on a country road and I was just, I don't know, praying slash complaining about how hard this was. And it's like God spoke to me. I know that sounds really subjective, but that's how I felt. It's like God said, how would you like to do this for the rest of your life? And my immediate response was, no, not me. I'm not smart enough. I'm not skilled enough. Get somebody else to do it. I'm very much like Moses, right?
Right from then I knew that I had to serve God in a cross-cultural way. And so I've been pursuing that ever since.
Rob Chartrand (03:18.303)
Hmm. Okay. So when you got to CBC, you weren't in a missions program. Did you have to change your degree then?
Rick (03:26.062)
I was in a Bachelor of Theology, so I just stayed in the same program. Then eventually went to Master of Divinity and I focused on missions courses when I was doing that.
Rob Chartrand (03:29.779)
Okay, yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (03:36.115)
Okay, yeah. So, you know, for our listeners who maybe aren't Christian Missionary Alliance,
background, talk to us like the Alliance had some very specific hoops. If you wanted to go into international work or global missions, you had to go through a few hoops to get there.
Rick (03:54.744)
Sure. They're looking for certain kinds of education, successful pastoral experience, like in a local church. And I remember the psychology tests. I had to all these psychological Okay, I'll be honest. It's like, I know how you're supposed to take a psychology test when you know that if I fail, I don't get the job, right? So, I don't know. Maybe I didn't do the best at answering the questions, but they let me in.
Rob Chartrand (04:16.299)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now, do you had to like for the Alliance pathway with it wasn't it like you needed a masters you needed two years in a local church? Yeah. Did you do all of that?
Rick (04:28.78)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, my wife and I did, yes. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Rob Chartrand (04:35.433)
Okay, where did you meet your wife?
Rick (04:38.382)
At a Bible study that we were part of when we were in doing our undergrad studies. Yeah. She was, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (04:41.213)
Nice. Okay. Okay. Was she at the school as well? Okay, so Canadian Bridal College lived up to its name for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So where did that eventually lead you then once you got into this kind of pathway?
Rick (04:50.334)
It worked for us. Yeah.
Rick (05:00.629)
So I finished a Master of Divinity Studies and then was serving as a youth pastor at Rockyview Alliance here in Calgary. And people always told me I should be a professor and I kind of ignored them but I found I really enjoyed teaching, I really enjoyed studying and I thought I really, I think I needed to go further study. So after serving for a while at
Rockivue, went to, did PhD studies in Old Testament. And with, I went to Trinity Evangelical Unity School, which recently like it just closed in Deerfield, Illinois. Yes, yes. So I did a PhD in Old Testament with the plan to teach cross-culturally, teach Old Testament. So that's what I did. My wife and I ended up, we moved to the Philippines and I taught at, it was the Alliance Biblical Seminary.
Rob Chartrand (05:29.855)
Hmm. Where'd you do them?
Rob Chartrand (05:37.535)
Yeah, it's moving. It's moving to Canada.
Rob Chartrand (05:47.093)
Hmm. Hmm.
Rick (05:56.619)
training pastors, community development workers, counselors, people serving in various ministries in Metro Manila and beyond.
Rob Chartrand (06:06.433)
Okay, did you have to do some language studies before you went there?
Rick (06:09.902)
While we were in the Philippines, my wife and I both studied Tagalog.
Rob Chartrand (06:13.985)
Okay, wow. And how long were you in the Philippines?
Rick (06:17.986)
We're with the mission 11 years.
Rob Chartrand (06:20.669)
Okay. And did you have your, did you, do you have kids?
Rick (06:25.528)
We have four children, three were born in Canada and our baby was born in Quezon City in Metro Manil.
Rob Chartrand (06:32.618)
wow. So that means you brought them with you to the Philippines. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. So 11 years in the Philippines. And then let's fast forward to today. did you, did the, know, give us a real skip across the ocean journey of the Philippines to your work today. Because I mean, you're the founder and director of Love New Canadians in Calgary, but you're also
Rick (06:36.02)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (07:01.033)
Intercultural Ministries pastor at Foothills Alliance Church. So you're it's kind of a dual role here you're wearing. So explain that to us. How did that happen?
Rick (07:07.8)
So we were like all good international workers. We were working hard to replace ourselves. And so the mission was trying to nationalize every aspect of the ministry. And through that, we ended up leaving the Philippines in 2005, came to Canada, taught at seminary, I teaching Old Testament for eight years. And meanwhile, my wife, can I tell you a little bit about her story? When we were in the Manila,
Rob Chartrand (07:15.573)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (07:25.863)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Rob Chartrand (07:32.627)
Absolutely, we want to hear that.
Rick (07:37.634)
We had a number of students from other countries and the Filipino students were pretty good in English, but some of those from other countries like Indonesia, Myanmar, various Asian countries, they were weak in English. So my wife was asked to teach English. And so she started doing that and right away she realized she needed help. And so she went to school, did a master's in teaching English language and literature at Ateneo de Manila University and was having a great ministry.
Rob Chartrand (07:50.539)
Hmm.
Rick (08:07.244)
While we were back, we were back in Canada once and we ended up going to a district conference, like a meeting of a bunch of pastors and the bishop or the district superintendent, he said something like, you start to think out of the box. What is something you could do that we haven't done before? And she thought, and I remember we were driving home and she said, you know, if we came back to Canada, I would love to be working with new Canadians in a local church. And, you know, me being the loving
Rob Chartrand (08:34.07)
Hmm.
Rick (08:36.77)
husband that I am, said, well, no one would ever hire you. Now, obviously my wife is eminently qualified, skilled, personable, but I'd never heard of a church hiring someone to do that. And like we heard of music, worship pastors and youth pastors, but at that time, at least I'd never heard of anyone doing this ministry. the Spirit of God was working in the heart of our local lead pastor, again, at Foothills.
Rob Chartrand (08:39.691)
You
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Rick (09:04.386)
He was at a big grocery store, like that's literally like 20 meters from our church building. And he noticed that the people in the church, in the school, or sorry, the people in the grocery store look different than the people who going to our church. He thought, this is not good. Like what's the future of the church if we don't look like the neighborhood, right? So both my wife, Patricia, and our lead pastor, Ian Trigg, they're on the same page. And so he asked Patty to come on staff and she was the pastor of intercultural ministries.
Rob Chartrand (09:15.743)
Hmm. You're right.
Rick (09:33.056)
at Fodial starting in 2006.
Rob Chartrand (09:34.891)
Wow. So was that a part-time role at the start? Yeah. And then it grew. Yeah.
Rick (09:37.418)
It was. It started working 10 hours a week and started with surveying. Patty did a lot of research just to see who were the people in the neighborhood. And not surprisingly, we found that there was many people looking for help learning English. Many were looking for help to get a job. But what surprised us is the number one need expressed by our new Canadian friends was social connections.
Rob Chartrand (10:07.019)
Hmm.
Rick (10:07.63)
So we started a ministry that was focusing on those things, those three things. And when we started, had at Foothills, had two students and every week we weren't sure if anyone was going to show up. And I'm sure many of you know what that's like. You start a ministry like that and you're not really sure where it's going to go. And we just kept working at it year after year. And over a course of a number of years, we started to see more and more new Canadians coming to class. We tried different things, different kinds of classes. And
Rob Chartrand (10:23.509)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rick (10:37.838)
Churches started to ask for help. They said, what can we do? And so Patty was trying to help them. And by 2014, we realized we really have to do something about this. And so we decided to start Love New Canadians. You may have noticed last name Love, we got Love New Canadians. We didn't come up with a name. It's one of our friends who came up with the name. Love New Canadians, we emphasize the verb rather than the noun. It was not, but...
Rob Chartrand (10:48.747)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (10:52.736)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (11:00.545)
Okay, okay, so.
So it wasn't a nod to your family name.
Rick (11:07.478)
And we heard the name, yeah, this will work. so we honestly, Rob, we just didn't have faith to know how to start this. We couldn't figure out the money part. And then I read this book, The Cause Within You. I started the Dream Center in LA and I was just so motivated and encouraged by that book. I thought, we're just gonna start this even if we have nothing figured out. And that was a really good thing to do. It worked out extremely well.
Rob Chartrand (11:34.059)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rick (11:36.462)
Right away we started connecting with churches and figuring out what can we do to help them make the next steps to connect with their new Canadian neighbors.
Rob Chartrand (11:44.385)
Okay, so what, you know, obviously the beginning of the work started with interconnection relationship, but I'm sure that as you got into relationship, needs were exposed and your ministry evolved. So what types of things were you doing as well in addition to connection?
Rick (12:06.894)
So we focused on ESL classes as sort of like our foundation.
Rob Chartrand (12:10.505)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Rick (12:15.48)
Can I tell you like our strategy, what we figured out as we were moving forward on this that maybe helps explain? So we started asking, we kept asking ourselves, what can we do so we can have a conversation with neighbors, new Canadian neighbors that we never met with, that we've never met before. And out of that, we started to just figure out ways to serve. And we thought like, what are things that people at our church do? What kind of hobbies do they have? What are things...
Rob Chartrand (12:19.221)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Rick (12:45.368)
that would be natural connections with our neighbors. And so we started with the ESL classes and then we just started to add classes over the time. We did a homework club. We did classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced. We did pronunciation, we grammar classes. Some of the church were helping refugees adapt to life in Canada. We did a citizenship class. We did an employment class and
Other churches would do things like tax preparation. We did crafts. We did a kids' game night. And then we started doing a lot of parties, banquets, sports, field trips. We did a ping pong club. We did badminton. it's just like anything we could think of that someone in our church would be comfortable leading. We started doing specialty classes. So we did ESL for music. We got a musician that could explain various...
Rob Chartrand (13:30.888)
Wow.
Rick (13:44.106)
English, sorry, music genres. And so people learn English by studying music. we just, we just yesterday, we had a class ESL for gardening and it's like we have, we've found some stellar gardeners who pretty much know everything there is to know about gardening in our part of the world. And they teach about that. They teach about their specialty and then people are learning English and
Rob Chartrand (14:06.539)
So that is, I mean, that's a diversity of opportunity and connection. it sounds like, I mean, you weren't just this little ministry over there that the church was funding and, you know, it came up in the annual report once in a while, there must've been a real support network coming from the body at Foothills as well. So you must've had some good support from Ian, like from your senior pastor.
Rick (14:30.798)
Absolutely. The church leadership were on board. Honestly, the church as a whole took a little while for them to adapt to what's going on. And that's okay because the church started to change, right? And whenever the church starts to change, that can be a threat. Well, we started to have a bigger diversity of people coming to the church. then
Rob Chartrand (14:38.645)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (14:49.867)
change in what way.
Rob Chartrand (14:56.449)
Right. Yep. Wonderful.
Rick (14:59.222)
Wisely, that led to diversity in the worship and diversity in the worship leadership and diversity in the church leadership board and diversity in the staff. And that leads to just different ways of thinking. And I think it's incredibly healthy, but anytime a church starts to change, people go, hey, what's happening? My church is changing, right?
Rob Chartrand (15:09.441)
You
Rob Chartrand (15:20.703)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's great to see that kind of that wave of support that you're receiving from different people in the church.
Rick (15:27.278)
So we ended up with the church was financing my wife, is the pastor doing this. I was, of course, a stellar assistant volunteer. But really this ministry grew because we just kept finding volunteers who were able to use their expertise to have conversations with new Canadians. That was really what it was all about. And then what happens is people find out, oh, this is really, really fun. And so.
Rob Chartrand (15:49.013)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (15:53.973)
Hahaha.
Rick (15:54.734)
When people come and they're interested in volunteering, we say something like, why don't you just come and observe a class? And maybe they're observing a conversation class and we're gonna do a basketball camp. We're gonna start that soon. It's like, just show up. And then what we find is most people after about one class to think, okay, this is not rocket science. I can lead a small group. I can play a part in this. And then we just help people take those next steps.
Rob Chartrand (16:21.781)
Hmm. So does the church must have a gymnasium then?
Rick (16:26.358)
Yes, they built that. I can't remember the exact year, but a few years after we started this ministry, the church was able to build a nice gym. But I mean, you don't have to have a gym to do this, right? We've done street hockey in our church parking lot. We've got a basketball hoop in the church parking lot. like, yeah, like it really is just dependent upon one's creativity. We had some
Rob Chartrand (16:35.649)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (16:47.883)
Yeah, indoor outdoor hoops. Yeah.
Rick (16:54.734)
Some of our volunteers love cross-country skiing. So they say, hey, we're going cross-country skiing on Saturday. Anybody want to join us? We did, did snowshoeing. It's like, it doesn't matter what you do. You're just trying to figure out a way to have conversations. And okay, I have to, I have to throw this in. like when we started, I was just so short-sighted about what this would look like. Like,
Rob Chartrand (17:09.409)
Okay.
Rick (17:21.71)
I just assumed there would be all these Euro Canadians who would be the volunteers leading this thing. And then very quickly we have new Canadians themselves who say, I can help. And now the majority of our volunteers are new Canadians. They came as immigrants. They understand completely what it's like to be an immigrant. They're empathetic. They understand the challenges and they just help the ministry in phenomenal ways.
Rob Chartrand (17:30.709)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (17:48.865)
Okay, we started talking about the model and I want to come back to that in a moment. But just really quickly talk to us of how did this morph into love new Canadians? Why? Why? What was that Genesis?
Rick (17:53.454)
Hmm.
Rick (17:58.83)
Okay. Okay. So let me give you the model and then I'll get back to Love New Canadians. Is that okay? Because that, so what we figured out is we do a number of things with little or no spiritual content. We're serving the neighbourhood. We're focusing on friendship. That's the primary goal. It's all about belonging, people becoming part of the group. You used a great word when you were talking that other day. What was the word you used? Belong.
Rob Chartrand (18:04.415)
Okay, let's do that. Yeah, that's fine.
Rob Chartrand (18:22.891)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (18:27.537)
of yes yeah yeah yeah belonging before believing or our belonging before becoming yeah
Rick (18:28.342)
Leave. Center.
Rick (18:34.348)
Yeah, yeah. I love the way you were talking about that. then so we're we don't want to like trick anybody, right? There's no like bait and switch. What we want is people to to come with their they come to class and they get what they're expecting. They come for a, you know, a conversation class, some called Conversation Cafe, some kind of conversation circle, whatever. That's where you get.
Rob Chartrand (18:50.677)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (19:02.166)
I say little or no spiritual content. It's mostly no spiritual content. But like if we're, you know, if we're eating, we'll pray. You know, if you're doing a conversation class and you have like Easter or Christmas, pretty hard not to talk about Jesus, right? But what we're trying to do is make it really easy for anyone from any background to come. But of course we love Jesus and we want people to know the joy and freedom that we experience in our relationship with Christ. And so for us, we think of stage three as
Rob Chartrand (19:08.213)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (19:13.609)
Right, yeah.
Rick (19:31.736)
what Christians might call evangelism and discipleship. It's like what churches do. It's what churches are good at. So for us, it's ESL Bible studies, it's Alpha worship services, it's small groups. It's for us, it's for people who are close to faith. They're checking out very carefully what it means to follow Jesus. Maybe they're new believers. So for us, that's stage three. Stage one, little or no spiritual content. Stage three, what churches are good at. It's like it's for people seeking.
Rob Chartrand (19:37.078)
Yep.
Rob Chartrand (19:52.833)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (19:59.253)
Yeah, okay.
Rick (20:01.582)
Seeking Christ and then in the mystery and wisdom of God we ended up starting for us what we call stage two It's a bridges class. So we call bridges because it bridges stage one and stage three So for us what we tried to make is the most gentle introduction to the gospel that we could possibly create So it's not even an evangelistic class. It's a pre evangelistic class where our goal is for a new Canadian friends to be exposed
Rob Chartrand (20:21.537)
Hmm.
Rick (20:31.214)
to the gospels and learn English at the same time. So we call it friendly people from around the world studying English language, Canadian culture, and the life of Jesus. So every week we'll do something on culture. Let's see, we just did something on Father's Day earlier. You might do something on St. Patrick's Day, how to drive in Canada. We're gonna ask a police officer to come and tell us some good things that we can learn from.
you know, those who know the rules about driving in Canada. What do do if you have an accident? anything. First day in school, you go into the doctor, whatever. So that's part of our Bridges class. So we spend 10 or 15 minutes on that. What we wanted is something that people might be talking about at their school or work. Like, if there's an election, for sure we'll explain the federal election or the provincial election, whatever is.
Rob Chartrand (21:25.888)
Hmm.
Rick (21:28.32)
a topic in today's society. And then we read a gospel text. And we have people from very diverse backgrounds reading the text. And what happens is, then we read a summary. And then it's a little simpler English. Then we break into small groups. And so we have groups of usually one table leader with three or four or five English language learners. And we start with a vocab.
vocabulary lesson, focusing on the words in the gospel text that we just read. It looks and feels like an ESL class because it is. usually 10 to 15 words just help people develop in their vocabulary. I teach one of these every week. And so we usually spend maybe 20 minutes on the vocab. And then in the same small groups, we'll do discussion questions. And the discussion questions like
Rob Chartrand (21:58.635)
Hmm.
Rick (22:24.406)
A normal Bible study, the goal is to understand the Bible, which is a great goal. But here we use the life and teaching of Jesus to understand our new Canadian friends. So we'll use the gospel text as a jumping off point to talk about their their birth country, their immigrant experience, their families, their their employment, you know, their vacation times, their dreams. And as we get to know each other, even failures. Right. So
Rob Chartrand (22:34.113)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (22:52.907)
Hmm.
Rick (22:54.574)
Like, so for example, in Luke 1, Zachariah, the angel appears, tells him he's going have a baby, right? His wife's going have a baby. And so he's startled. So we ask a question like, Zachariah was startled when he saw the angel appear. Being startled is like being scared and surprised. When have you been surprised? When have you been scared? So we're asking people to tell us about their experience. But meanwhile, we keep, we keep
Rob Chartrand (23:22.101)
Hmm.
Rick (23:24.554)
reinforcing the gospel text or Zachariah and Elizabeth were both old when the angel appeared to them in your opinion what's a good age to have children people have opinions about that one usually they say well about the same what the time I did when I had my kids right or question like the angel Gabriel had good news for Zachariah what good news did you get this past week what good news would you like to hear next week question like that is like that'll tell you a lot about how people are thinking right what looking forward to so
Rob Chartrand (23:38.88)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rick (23:53.742)
A lot of our new Canadian friends is like, I need to get my PR or, you know, I want to, I want, I want to get a job or I need to get a better job, whatever it is. Right. And then we try to have one gentle spiritually focused secret question each week. So when we did that lesson in Luke one, the question we use was, Elizabeth said, the Lord has done this for me. What is something that God has done for you? And we just see where that goes. Right. And many of our new Canadian friends, they'll have something to say about that.
Rob Chartrand (24:15.584)
Hmm.
Wow.
Rick (24:23.422)
I've been leading classes, you small groups where, you know, it's like there's just like crickets, like there's, see the tumbleweed blowing across the mesa, like no one says anything because they don't even think in these categories, right? But they're learning a little bit about Jesus life and teaching. They're making friends. They're learning English. They're laughing. They're very likely to come back next week. And then, and then what'll happen is they'll come back, you know, maybe three months in, six months in, they'll say something,
Rob Chartrand (24:37.195)
Yeah.
Rick (24:52.994)
you know, I'm not a Christian or I'm not a Christian yet, or if I was a Christian or they'll start talking about God or prayer or something like that. And we know God is speaking to every one of them. And we're just waiting to see what God has next for them. So that for us is state you and the examples I gave us from an intermediate lesson. We also have inner lessons where we do something a little different, but.
Rob Chartrand (25:08.767)
Wow. Wow. Yeah.
So I'm just reflecting on this and I think many churches are really good as you say at stage three and they would say like an alpha for example and that's the starting point and so we can just get people into our alpha, new Canadians or second, third generation Canadians and then that's the ministry. And then some churches are great at like the stage one and the stage three.
Rick (25:36.172)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (25:42.453)
But to get people from stage one to stage three is too big of a jump. Like to move from point one to point three.
Rick (25:49.74)
Yeah. And we love Alpha. Alpha is a key part of our ministry. But for us, Alpha is a stage three part of the pathway because
Rob Chartrand (25:52.223)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (25:56.671)
Well, yeah, and its assumption is the Bible is the word of God, right?
Rick (26:01.066)
Absolutely. we found, I've taught Alpha as one of the leaders for many years. And what happens is many of our new Canadian friends, the concepts that we're dealing with in Alpha are beyond them. often the language is a challenge, but not just the language, but the concepts. So we have many people who come two, three, in one case, four times. And I think they come because they want to learn English and they love the English conversation.
Rob Chartrand (26:13.451)
That's right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (26:17.856)
Yeah.
Rick (26:30.478)
Maybe there's some curiosity, but one of our friends, the fourth time she took Alpha, she decided to be a follower of Jesus. It's like it started to make sense to her. And then she was able to lead her daughter in the same path to become a follower Jesus as well. It's like, just, can't tell you what joy it gives me when these things happen.
Rob Chartrand (26:47.839)
Yeah. Well, and what I, what I like about the bridge, and which, which is, is uncommon, I would say is, if I was to put this in the framework of say, homiletics and we use the bridge in homiletics. And so we, we say we need to understand the text in its culture, in its context. And then we need to bridge it across 2000 years to a contemporary context and interpret it within that context and make it available. And, and we're really good at.
the first part of that, which is the hermeneutics and all of the understanding of the text and what it means in bridging it. But this approach here, what you're doing is you are starting with that context and just entering into that context, immersively and understanding. And then instead of directly hitting them with the text, you're hitting them sideways. instead of being directly confronted with the text, they're
they're immersed in the narrative themselves because all the questions are about them. right. But they're automatically caught up in the narrative because it's, it's relatable. And then the, just by virtue of doing that, the, the, the truth of God is hitting them sideways rather than directly head on.
Rick (27:50.892)
Yes.
Rick (28:03.604)
And it's not like we came up with this idea. We saw others in the Philippines who were doing something similar in their work with one of the minority groups. And they just thought, if people can be reading scripture, good things will happen. No matter what else is going on, if they're reading scripture, because it's so powerful. The life of Jesus is so powerful. Jesus is so winsome. When you get to know Jesus, who doesn't want to be a follower of Jesus, right?
Rob Chartrand (28:08.801)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (28:27.329)
Yeah. So talk to us about the stage three. mean, how many people end up being part of stage three and what sort of fruit are you've been seeing over the long period you've been doing this?
Rick (28:39.534)
So what we found is it took us a while to figure this what we call our strategy or intercultural ministry pathway out. But once it's all operational, we found that for every 10 who come to stage one, about four were coming to stage two and about half of those are two will move on to stage three. So we're seeing like 10, four, two.
Rob Chartrand (29:03.211)
Hmm.
Rick (29:08.0)
Right after COVID, we did all our classes online during COVID. And then when we started again in person, it was probably more like 10, three, one and a half. And right now for us, it's probably more like 10, four, three. We've had phenomenal interest in Bible study like we've never had before. And so thanks be to God, right? And we some good teachers and we do all that in small groups as well. It's basically
Rob Chartrand (29:25.024)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (29:29.857)
Yeah, yeah
Rick (29:38.176)
Ask a question, read a text and ask some questions and see where that goes.
Rob Chartrand (29:41.089)
Well, there have been different ebbs and flows of different people groups coming to Canada. Have you found that there are some people groups that are maybe more responsive to the work you're doing?
Rick (29:54.904)
So with Love New Canadians, we've worked with churches all across Canada, working with various kinds of people groups. And in our experience, what we're doing works really well with people who are atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims. And in our experience, we've really struggled. haven't had a lot of people come from backgrounds, say, like Hindus or Sikhs. I've thought a lot about that.
Rob Chartrand (30:03.083)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (30:12.822)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (30:22.015)
Right, yeah.
Rick (30:24.416)
And I think it's because of our real big focus on English language learning, we attract people who come and they know they're weak in English and they want to learn English. Most of the people who come to Canada, the majority don't even qualify for like a federal or provincial government ESL classes, right? And it's only becoming more of a challenge more recently. So if they can find a place where they can have a conversation, help improve their conversation skills, they'll look for that.
Rob Chartrand (30:46.891)
Hmm.
Rick (30:54.83)
If people come and they're already are pretty comfortable in English, they're probably not going to end up at our English language classes. They might come to our and they do, they come to like our, we do a public speaking class or like toast masters for people learning English and they'll come to our class. The employment class, we call it job talk where we learn how to write a Canadian resume and Canadian networking and.
Rob Chartrand (31:01.728)
Right.
Rick (31:23.47)
Canadian, I'm missing one, sorry. Resume, interview skills, and networking, right? All that, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (31:31.839)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So from an Indian and Punjab background, I mean, I have friends who work cross culturally in in Edmonton and Toronto, they found they found that be true as well. But it's so is the challenge that worldview challenge or is a challenge? Just the reality is that the the necessity of what you're offering isn't as important to them.
Rick (32:02.392)
So I'm assuming it's because what we're offering doesn't meet their needs, right? Because we focus on felt needs and whatever we've been doing and we've tried to be as creative as we can, we're not able to meet the felt need of everyone.
Rob Chartrand (32:06.453)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (32:15.905)
Yeah.
Rick (32:17.486)
And we love working with felt needs, right? Because every new Canadian, just like me, we do things to serve ourselves, like to help ourselves, right? To make our lives better. And so we love to use that as a way to make friends. And that's what we do. We make friends.
Rob Chartrand (32:27.798)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (32:33.439)
Hmm. So how did this then evolve into Love New Canadians? mean, this is you talked a lot about your work here, but I mean, how did that come about?
Rick (32:38.893)
Okay.
So what happened was, so if the ministry at our church started in 2006, around 2010 churches were looking for help and we're doing a little bit, but we knew that we had to get more serious about this. And so one day we just said, September 1, 2014, we're starting Love New Canadians. And so we just picked the start date and just started to reach out and connect with churches.
Rob Chartrand (33:05.099)
Hmm.
Rick (33:11.406)
and find ways of letting people know about what we're doing and then just keep having conversations. We just talked to a lot of people all across Canada and learned from a lot of people and then just kept moving forward in that way. And that's been an adventure. I think what was an adventure for me is this was completely out of my comfort zone. Starting something like this, I was pretty comfortable spending a little bit time in my office and standing in front of a group of students, but...
reaching out all the time, connecting with new people and finding ways to help churches move forward in their connection with new Canadians. That's been a great adventure.
Rob Chartrand (33:52.095)
Hmm. Yeah. So what you know, if a church was to get involved with New Canadian say they their their hearts are postured this way, they might have seen some seeds of work that have already begun to form. How will you help them? What sort of services or opportunity do you give them?
Rick (34:00.568)
Yeah.
Rick (34:11.15)
So typically what we do is we start with a conversation and if we can we do it in person but most of the time it's online. And we just start asking, okay, who are the new Canadians who are in your church already? Where are they from? And do know why they ended up at your church? Who are the new Canadians in your neighbourhood? Who are the people that, you what kind of restaurants are around you?
Rob Chartrand (34:19.457)
Hmm.
Rick (34:40.204)
What kind of people do you run into? And are you able to do any demographic research? Right. And then we start thinking, what kind of resources do you have? What kind of church buildings do you have? What kind of volunteers do you have? What size of your church is there? Is there be a possibility to start like a ESL conversation circle? So we'll ask a bunch of questions and then we'll talk about our ministry philosophy and then we'll say, OK,
Rob Chartrand (34:45.718)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (35:10.274)
What would be a good next step for you? And typically we'll encourage a church to start with an ESL conversation cafe because it's really simple to do. To get volunteers, you just need volunteers who smile, are friendly and know how to listen. If they don't know how to listen, they can do something else in the church. We need...
Rob Chartrand (35:28.993)
Hmm.
So that's like a conversational English. They don't have to teach it in the grammar. They just have conversations. Yeah.
Rick (35:34.818)
That's right, grammar is all written. All they have to do is show up and say, Juan, can you read question one? And then we talk about question one and then Susie, can you read question two? We just talked about it see where it goes, right? And if people are starting like from zero, we'll usually say, okay, think about what class you might start with, say the conversation circle. And then do you have any volunteers who ready to do this already?
Rob Chartrand (35:46.805)
Hmm, wow.
Rick (36:04.512)
and maybe they know one or two, maybe they don't. And then you say, let's plan for an information meeting, know, maybe Sunday after a worship service or something, let people know. And you'll be surprised. You might find out, there's some guy who sits at the back of the church. He taught English and career for three years or whatever, right? You just, you never know who might be in your congregation or what background they have. And then you might find, there's three or four, maybe there's two.
It's kind of hard to start with less. You really need two to get started. Okay. So you have a group of two or more, and then you pick a night. it doesn't have to be a night. People across Canada are teaching English classes in churches. Anytime from 9am to 10pm, seven days a week, somebody is teaching a class somewhere. Okay. So, so you figure out what works for you. And then the key is you got to start advertising. It's great if you already know, you know, we know.
one or two people, they want to be part of it. Okay, now we got a class of two. Then we figure out, okay, how can we do word of mouth? Maybe we do a three by five card. You free ESL class, Tuesday at 7 p.m. with a website or a phone number, maybe a QR code, whatever. And then you just have people in your church take those and say, hey, can you spread these around? You don't say, hey, you need English. No, you say, hey, do you know anyone who might be interested in ESL conversation circle, right? And then.
You start distributing these. Maybe you get a Boulevard sign. You do some meetup or you do your church website, you know, there's not a lot of your New Canadian neighbors are probably reading that, you. Yeah, so you just figure out ways to advertise, right? And then and then you got the night and you got your curriculum and you've printed. Maybe you make tea, coffee and a cookie and you wait and see what happens, right? And then.
Rob Chartrand (37:39.105)
Half your congregation is not looking at your website.
Rob Chartrand (37:47.755)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (37:55.425)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rick (37:58.45)
You meet and then after the first meeting, we talk again and say, okay, what worked? What didn't work? What could we tweak? And most people are pretty excited because that would actually work. It's a lot of fun to do this. Right. And then we just figured, okay. And so as soon as we start that ESL conversation circle, we're thinking, okay, when can we have a party? Maybe it's a potluck. Maybe it's going to be Christmas soon. Let's do a Christmas party or whatever. Make it simple. Make it fairly inexpensive.
you're gonna meet families, right? And that's just a really powerful thing. then what you're doing is you do that six months, 12 months, you do that as well as you can, then you're thinking about starting that stage two class.
Rob Chartrand (38:37.803)
Mm-hmm.
So Facebook groups is another great way, because a lot of new Canadians before they even come are on Facebook groups with their people groups, their ethnic groups, and they're learning about what it means to be in Canada even before they come. And if you can get access to some of those particular Facebook groups, it's a great way to promote. Yeah.
Rick (38:44.854)
Yeah.
Rick (39:00.782)
Absolutely. and like we were working with one church in Hamilton and they did their first class and they had two students, which actually is not an uncommon number for a first class. They were discouraged because they put a lot of work into it. One senior saint in their church, he started making up little brochures and he just went to every place close to their church building, say, hey, would you, can I put this up here? And then no time, they started to go to 10 to 15, up to 20 were coming each week. And they found this was,
Rob Chartrand (39:10.411)
Yeah, yeah.
Rick (39:30.958)
This was fun, not just for the volunteers, but it invigorated the church. We've been working with another church, church, I don't know, about 70, 80, and they found that so many of the English language learners have connected with their church. They show up at the worship service. They're just interested and curious in what's going on. Now that doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's so encouraging, right, to see people express interest in knowing more about the church and what the church does.
Rob Chartrand (39:34.24)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (39:53.312)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (39:58.337)
So when you're connecting with churches, are you doing on-site visits? Are you doing Zoom conversations, emails? How do you interact with churches who say, want to get connected with Love New Canadians?
Rick (40:10.84)
So we do some traveling. try to get to Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, and do some in-person, but we also connect a lot online, right? So it just depends on our schedule and the schedule of people we're connecting with. Can I tell you about one advertising thing? Eventually, it's word of mouth, right? Word of mouth is gonna be the most powerful way, but it takes, I would say, two to three years before that happens, or maybe you connect with a networker.
Rob Chartrand (40:17.345)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (40:26.101)
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Rick (40:40.014)
who just makes it work for you. So somewhere, maybe about two years ago, one of our students didn't tell us, they took our brochure, they took photos of our church, they took everything that we do, like on our website, and they started putting it on Chinese social media. So we're on WeChat and we're on something called Little Red Book, and things started, like almost immediately our attendance went up about 25 to 30%, right?
Rob Chartrand (40:40.097)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (41:09.451)
Wow.
Rick (41:10.286)
So we, you might not have someone who can do that for you, but it's like, people come from other countries and they'd already been reading about us. Like you were talking about before they got here, we had one guy, his third day in Canada, he attended his sixth ESL class at our church. Yeah. So others will do the advertising once you get going. and because we never do the bait and switch, because we're very respectful, we treat all of our students like adult learners. What happens is,
Rob Chartrand (41:26.175)
Wow, amazing, yeah.
Rick (41:38.934)
Immigrant-serving agencies learn to trust us. you have to earn that reputation. have to earn that confidence, right?
Rob Chartrand (41:44.563)
Right, right. Well, that was a question I was gonna ask. know, some skeptical listeners might be listening and saying, well, isn't what you're doing just kind of a marketing ploy to get people to the altar of Christ? you know, so is all that preliminary work just kind of...
know, fluff or disingenuous and all that matter, you know, and so they might be a little skeptical of your approach. How would you respond to that?
Rick (42:21.368)
So, and I'm sure there's people who that's how they think of this. And that's actually what their ministry is doing, right? We've connected with churches and whatever they're doing, they're trying to get Jesus in there because they're like, well, what if they, you know, they hit by a bus on their way home, like, you know, and they don't hear the gospel. We keep thinking we just have to trust the spirit of God. And we try to treat people like we would want to be treated if we were in their culture, learning their language, right? So.
Rob Chartrand (42:27.521)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (42:48.458)
I think of it as we have two tasks, two missions, like two primary goals. So our one goal is to serve our neighbourhood, to help our new Canadian friends settle well into Canada. And that is mission. That is serving humanity. It's serving the neighbourhood. It's loving our neighbour. That's one of our tasks. Our other task is we want to build a church. So in doing stage one,
Rob Chartrand (42:52.15)
Hmm.
Rick (43:15.904)
Out of that, we find people with spiritual curiosity who want to move on to stage two. We find the people with genuine spiritual interest and questions who want to move on to stage three. And so I think we have two goals. One goal is to love our neighbor. And the second goal is to build the church of Jesus Christ.
Rob Chartrand (43:33.215)
Yeah. And those are not, those are converging goals because the most loving thing you can do for another person is to share the love of God with them and the fact that God loves them and wants to enter into relationship with them. So that's, that's not a, know, and so what you're doing is you're bringing together the great commandment and the great commission together and doing both. yeah, jump in.
Rick (43:37.742)
Absolutely.
Rick (43:54.566)
And can I jump in on this? So I said, typically for us, it's for every 10 at stage one, it's 10, four, two, 10 at stage one, four at stage two, two at stage three. That means more than half of the people we connect with aren't going to move forward in our experience. And the way we see that is it's not their time yet, right? The Spirit of God, they haven't heard the Spirit of God yet, right? We know the Spirit of God speaking and it's just not their time.
Rob Chartrand (44:01.547)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (44:20.331)
Yeah.
Rick (44:24.118)
And so we keep looking for the spiritually curious and help them, the ones who want to move along a path of faith. And for others, we're just happy serving them.
Rob Chartrand (44:31.647)
Yeah. So here's the litmus test of true authentic love when you're doing evangelism. If those 10 never accept Christ, will you continue to love them? Yeah, right? Yeah.
Rick (44:44.078)
Of course, of course. Yes. And what's so interesting is, okay, when you first start out, it can be a little discouraging because even if it's an interesting class and everything's working out, if someone gets a job, they're gonna stop coming, right? Or if their kid needs to get to some tutoring session, they're gonna stop coming, right? But we keep serving and as we build up those who are involved, it's a little less.
It feels a little less personal when people stop coming. But we've seen so many people, they come for a year two and then they're gone. They get a job. But what's amazing is maybe they lose their job or something happens in their life. And a year later or two years later, they come back. We had one guy, they were coming, things were going in really good direction. And, you know, they just kind of drifted away. Then he was in a car accident. And that just really shook up their whole family. And they started coming back every week.
Rob Chartrand (45:14.911)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (45:25.045)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (45:42.475)
and came to faith in Christ and were baptized. And we're just so thankful to God for that.
Rob Chartrand (45:45.729)
Hmm.
So how do you help churches with the bridge part, stage two, and integrating that into their own context?
Rick (45:53.345)
Yeah. So we encourage them to figure out, get something at stage one happening and pick one thing. And then what will often happen is it'll start to grow. It'll start to build. And I'll start talking to them. OK, I think now is the time to explore stage two. You need at least two more volunteers. Right. And people say, oh, stage one is going so well. We don't want to mess with this. We're getting so many people. Just try it. Just try it. And then eventually they'll try it.
Rob Chartrand (46:13.583)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (46:22.122)
And for many that we connect with, including our church, our biggest class is our Stage 2 class. So we have a lot of other classes going on Stage 1, but Stage 2, there's something about it. We've done our best to try and explain what it is, but we encourage churches to observe. You know, observe our class. You could observe our class online anytime, or you could, our Stage 2 class online, or find another church that's trying to do this.
and just see what it's like because it's not quite like anything that we'd seen before, which is why we ended up writing the curriculum because we couldn't find curriculum that did what we wanted to do.
Rob Chartrand (47:00.095)
Hmm. Hmm. And that so that's you make that accessible to everybody and they can format it according to their context and
Rick (47:05.066)
Yes. Yeah. So we charge money for coaching, curriculum and seminars. And if churches can't afford it, it's all free. hopefully some of the churches can afford it.
Rob Chartrand (47:15.306)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (47:18.753)
So you're not making millions of dollars off of this work then? Nope, treasures in heaven, Treasures in heaven. Listeners might be listening to this and think, yeah, this is stirring my heart. Let's get this going. Can they expect immediate results if they get started today?
Rick (47:21.198)
Not yet, not yet. Has anyone ever written a Bible study and made money on that?
Rick (47:42.136)
Well, if they contact me, rick at love new canadians.ca, I'll get back to them within, if not today, tomorrow, and we'll start the conversation. then, like, this is a good time to be thinking about it. I don't know when your podcast goes live, but like September's a great time to start. September would be a great time. You start, maybe you do a four week trial run or six week trial run. It's hard to get volunteers, you know,
Rob Chartrand (48:03.04)
Hmm.
Rick (48:11.31)
here, you're signing in blood for the rest of your life. No, it's like we're looking for volunteers who will sign up for a few weeks. And then, you know, maybe you're doing a six week trial run and around week four, you think, hey, this is working. Let's extend it. We'll do eight weeks. And then maybe start something again in January or something. But maybe you end up doing eight weeks in the fall and you end up with a party. They okay. And then what's happening is you're getting better at it, right? It's like you're getting better at connecting with you. You're getting better at listening to accents, right? That takes a little while.
Rob Chartrand (48:16.757)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (48:34.87)
Yeah.
Rick (48:40.91)
Some people don't even want to volunteer because they're embarrassed because they don't get an accent. like, I can't tell you how many times I've said, I'm sorry, can you say that again? And then by the time it's three times, like, I'm embarrassed, they're embarrassed, everybody's embarrassed. That's okay. It's just part of this kind of ministry, right? And then the more you do it, the better you get at catching an accent. So, okay, the question was, what do we do?
Rob Chartrand (48:56.224)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (49:03.903)
Yeah, well, so we'll put your information on the in the the show notes. I guess what I'm getting at more is the long game that this kind of ministry requires the long obedience.
Rick (49:10.69)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think it requires so long to be used. So like a few years in, we're wondering, is the church going to pull the plug? Because we haven't seen a lot of spiritual fruit yet. Right. And it's like the spiritual fruit is someone saying, I'm not a Christian yet. Right. Or when they use that word God in a sentence, that's the and what happens is when volunteers see that they'll latch onto that.
Rob Chartrand (49:23.265)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:34.409)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (49:39.406)
because Christian volunteers, looking for affirmation, right? That this is going in a good direction spiritually. And honestly, it wasn't until about year six that we started to see regular spiritual fruit, like people coming to faith and baptisms. And it's like only through the grace of God. We've had 27 people this year.
Rob Chartrand (49:46.229)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (49:54.411)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's a long, long obedience. Yeah.
Rick (50:08.201)
express interest in learning about baptism. Seven are getting baptized in a couple weeks and there's another six that are that are interested in getting baptized soon. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (50:10.091)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (50:13.601)
Amen.
Rob Chartrand (50:17.951)
Yeah. Well, I want to, I want to take the camera and pan it out a little bit from Calgary and to think about the world or even in Canada. And I want to talk about what God's up to in the world today. Cause I think it's relevant to what you're doing in your work is there's one Pew report article I recently read just August last year that says that 3.6 % of the world's population are international immigrants.
Like that's 300 and some million people. In other words, they live in have lived for more than one year in a country other than their their birth country. That's a lot of people on the move, a diaspora movement of people groups around the world. Why should this matter to churches in Canada?
Rick (51:05.922)
Yeah, so I would say it matters because Jesus has called us to love our neighbour and to build the Church. And this movement, this diaspora, has created phenomenal opportunities for us. Just being honest, I think it's every Church's responsibility to do this, right? If we're ignoring our neighbours, who are we? Right? Can I say that out loud? It's like...
Rob Chartrand (51:24.993)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (51:31.783)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you can, yeah.
Rick (51:35.274)
It's like, and then I keep thinking to the neighbors we're not connecting with, right? So we keep thinking, what can we do so we can have that conversation with those we're not meeting yet? And then we've to try something. And then I really sometimes I think that's what faith is, is just trying the next thing, right? And it's like, it's the boldness to put ourselves at risk and do that next step. And what's the worst that can happen?
We've done so many things where we try it and it doesn't work. And we think, okay, maybe we need to advertise differently or maybe we need to do it at a different time. And somebody's like, oh, that one didn't work. So we've grabbed that and we go to the next thing. That's okay. That's totally okay. Right? least we're trying.
Rob Chartrand (52:15.019)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the world is right next door. The world is just across the street. And God has given us an opportunity to participate in his great commission just by walking across the street rather than sending people across the globe, which is important too.
Rick (52:35.575)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rick (52:39.646)
And yeah, and it's great when we can connect with our neighbors, person on, you know, to the north, the South of me, the neighbors across the street. But what we found is some people in our churches are quite good at that. Many not so good. But all of our parishioners are able to do a ministry like this in a church because you're working as a team. So you use your skills, whatever your skills are to
Rob Chartrand (52:57.173)
Mm-hmm.
Rick (53:08.192)
to connect with New Canadians. So some people will come, they'll leave the table. Others, they're leading the class. Some of them just doing the organization. Someone else is doing the tea and coffee. It's like everyone can have a role in making this move forward. I was just talking to a woman yesterday and she said at their church, someone was afraid to try this and say, come and just do the coffee. So they're doing the coffee and they're doing the coffee week after week and saying, why don't you just sit and observe? Sit in one of the classes, sit in the table and just don't say anything. And they did that.
Like three weeks later, they were leading the table because they've had, we can do this.
Rob Chartrand (53:40.447)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They have their own stages. Stage one is coffee. Stage two is observation. Stage three is conversation.
Rick (53:45.399)
Yes.
Rick (53:49.038)
Absolutely. And I tell this to all of our potential volunteers. Just come and observe. Observe as long as you want. And then when you're ready, let's make this move forward.
Rob Chartrand (54:01.651)
Well, we all know that immigration has been a pretty hot political topic these past 18 months in Canada. mean, there was a number of months ago, 1.2 million, they tracked a million immigrants, new Canadians came in and that was more than we could handle. And, you know, it's led to a bit of a population trap. So, I mean, there's a political reality around immigration. But let me ask you, should this change our posture towards new Canadians who are here?
Rick (54:31.63)
Well, of course I'm going to say no. Like what's going to happen is the federal government was planning to bring in 500,000 new permanent residents each year and about three million temporary Canadians through could be students, could be temporary foreign workers, et cetera. And they dropped those numbers and there's still around 350,000 permanent new Canadians. And they've dropped the number from three down to two million is their goal. Two million temporary.
residents and like it still leaves phenomenal opportunities, right? It creates all sorts of challenges for our governments, right? They're trying to figure out health care. They're trying to figure out housing. But in the meanwhile, we can meet someone. Maybe they're a refugee from a war-torn country, could be people from Ukraine, but also they're people from India and China, right? That we can have a conversation with and just become their friends.
Rob Chartrand (55:29.569)
Well, and I think, you know, as the alien outsider, some of them might be hearing all of this from Canadian news and might be thinking and feeling, I'm not wanted here. And we have a tremendous opportunity to say, you are wanted here. You can be part of our family. You can connect with us and grow with us. And what it's a, it's a tremendous opportunity to express God's love in a very tangible way.
Rick (55:56.632)
Yeah, something like 60 % of Canadians think that there was too many new people coming and the federal government has listened to that. But it's not like Canadians are saying, because if you get to know Canadian demographics, Canadians rely upon immigration because the government only rarely has started to talk about it and say, we need immigration so people can come and pay taxes, right? We want new Canadians to come, get jobs, earn money, get their kids go to school.
Rob Chartrand (56:21.397)
Yeah, yeah.
Rick (56:25.486)
they make money and pay taxes. And it's like, it's a way of taking, of helping with the demographic shift as we have more and more senior Canadians who require more money from the government. So that's speaking really crassly, but it creates an opportunity for us to see, as you know, many new Canadians are already believers, right? And what we found is when we're a church that welcomes new Canadians, it makes it easier for
Rob Chartrand (56:48.545)
That's right.
Rick (56:54.198)
New Canadians who come, they're already believers to come to our church with, this church loves New Canadians. This church loves diversity. This church loves having people pray or read scripture or sing songs with different language or different backgrounds. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (57:11.647)
Well, I mean, you're right. That Pew report even says that over 50 % of the diaspora peoples in the world are Christians. So over 50%, if applied to Canada, are believers in Christ. And I've said this on the podcast before, but they are far more prayerful, far more evangelistic and planting more churches than Canadians are. So what a gift. What a gift to have the global community, global
Rick (57:35.693)
Yes.
Rob Chartrand (57:39.211)
brothers and sisters join our local church families. Tremendous gift. So what's the first step? If a listener's listening today and they're asking, hey, where do I start? What would you say?
Rick (57:43.402)
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.
Rick (57:53.902)
So I would encourage your listeners to contact me, Rick at love new Canadians dot CA. And let's just have a conversation. And the thing is, even if I can't help you, because we've worked with, well, something like 740 churches and ministries, I can find someone who can help you. I know and I can help you. OK, in your situation. Oh, why don't you talk to this guy? Because they had the same situation. I can help you figure out what you might do to move forward.
Rob Chartrand (58:23.115)
Hmm, okay, well let's get them started there. What if you're not with a church and you're just an average Joe Christian listening in, but they think, I'd really love to know how I can love new Canadians.
Rick (58:26.326)
Absolutely.
Rick (58:37.998)
So if in that situation, I would recommend that you, if you're part of a church, talk to someone at church and see if you can find some other person who you can work with. Because if you have two people, you can make this go forward. And if you're not part of a church, I encourage you to explore that. Find a church in your neighborhood where people love Jesus and love their neighbors, and then figure out how you can be part of that.
Rob Chartrand (58:50.422)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (58:56.009)
you
Yeah. Yeah, amazing. Well, I wondered if we could conclude today with you giving a word of encouragement to our listeners,
Rick (59:10.968)
Wow.
encouragement. Well, God has done such amazing things for us and he wants to use us, whatever our background is, whatever experience, in ways that connect with those who don't know, don't yet know Jesus. And he wants to see us experience the joy of being part of that ministry that draws people to Christ.
Rob Chartrand (59:41.365)
He'll even teleport you like he did Philip to connect with somebody from a different part of the world to hear the gospel. Hey Rick, this has been a delight. Thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for sharing with us on Church in the North.
Rick (59:48.556)
I love that. Yes.
Rick (59:58.924)
Hey, so glad that I could be here. Thanks for the invitation, Rob. Take care.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:02.059)
God bless.