Rob Chartrand (00:00.246)
Well, hey, I am so excited to have on the podcast with me today, John Stairs. He's the lead pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Cambridge, Ontario. John, welcome to the podcast.
Jonathan Stairs (00:10.875)
Great to be with you, Rob.
Rob Chartrand (00:13.354)
Hey, we want to start right off by hearing about your ministry journey. You have not always been the lead pastor of Temple Baptist Church. So give us, you know, give us a quick backstory of how you got into ministry and how you ended up at your previous church.
Jonathan Stairs (00:32.211)
That's great. Yeah, I was born in the Maritimes in Mountain New Brunswick and I was the son of a pastor. In fact, I'm a third generation pastor. I wanna honor that spiritual heritage, still upholding, you know, priesthood of the believer and everybody has a, you know, a role to play in the church, but I'm thankful for the spiritual heritage I had. And so, grew up in a pastor's home.
Rob Chartrand (00:43.031)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (00:59.995)
My dad was a pastor of Hillside Baptist Church there in Mountain. And as it came together with the three churches, a hundred years old, and it was just an amazing experience for him. And gave my life to Christ at age five, was baptized at age eight. And I always wanted to be like my father, wondered if God wanted me to be a pastor, even from my earliest days. But then I fell in love with baseball and pursued other things and...
saw some of the shadow side of church and wondered, do I really wanna go and be a pastor and still love Jesus? And when I was age 17, I felt the call of God in my heart and just loved to serve in any capacity I could in the church, VBS, ushering, even helped a little bit in the nursery, whatever I could do just to serve. And so at age 17, I actually...
had some affirmation from my local church that I should pursue being a pastor. And I applied to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and didn't apply anywhere else and was very blessed to be able to get into that school and be around some amazing leaders in the church and people who had really served Christ globally and felt God's call in their life. And that's where I met my wife, Lori, who's also a pastor's daughter.
Rob Chartrand (02:06.126)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (02:23.374)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (02:25.755)
and ended up graduating there from Moody and getting married two weeks later and candidated on the way home from the honeymoon, if you can imagine. So we, my wife and I have been in marriage and also ministry together for 27 years and served about six years in an evangelical free church in Illinois after graduating from Moody.
Rob Chartrand (02:54.112)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (02:54.899)
able to also have a be a part of amazing program at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was an in ministry M.D.V. program, Master Divinity program. And we're, you know, most of this, most of the students there were like 20 years older than me. And I just learned from them. And it was a great experience. Graduated from there and got a call from actually my dad's former associate who was leaving the home church that we were.
and Chad and we had since moved from the Maritimes and gone to a church in Tadam, Ontario and He at my sister's wedding said hey I've got the call of God to go to a church in Oshawa Calvary Baptist in Oshawa and would you come back from the States and And serve alongside so I had the privilege of being in a second chair role at Calvary Oshawa and served there for ten years and Was I would call?
for 16 years, an unintentional assistant pastor. I think that's actually Martin Hawkins term. He's a former associate pastor with Tony Evans at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship there in Texas. And got the call here to be the lead pastor. And I can share more of that if you'd like, but that's the...
Rob Chartrand (04:01.535)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (04:16.851)
shrunk version of my call to.
Rob Chartrand (04:18.878)
Yeah, yeah, a lot going on there too. I mean, you've got family as well.
Jonathan Stairs (04:22.979)
Yes, I do. I have four children and yeah, and I have a grandchild.
Rob Chartrand (04:28.191)
Wow. Okay. Full quiver.
Rob Chartrand (04:32.934)
Oh man, okay. You look way too young to have grandkids.
Jonathan Stairs (04:34.127)
Yeah, which are amazing.
Jonathan Stairs (04:40.256)
They're super fun. You they're amazing. So you know how you're tired after church on Sunday, Rob? They come over for our Sunday dinner still. And and I just hold her and I get all these endorphins and it's just amazing. So. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (04:45.941)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (04:53.494)
Nice, nice. You can crash later. Well, we're, I mean, I have two daughters, no grandkids yet, but there's no pressure from me. We'll let them make that decision when it's time. Okay, so yeah, you're associate roles, second chair roles, working in the church. And then Temple Baptist Church, where you are now, wasn't really on your radar. So how did you end up?
up there at Temple and maybe tell us a little bit about how long ago that was, etc.
Jonathan Stairs (05:27.763)
Yeah, that's good. That's a great question. Going back to this to be like an unintentional associate, I think one of the things I learned was just as, I would just try to learn as much as I could from my lead pastor. And growing up in a senior pastor's home, I had a little bit of a head start. And one of the things I just watched, I was like, okay, yeah, man, I love what he did here. Or there's some things maybe I would change with this. And I started to kind of create in fashion.
some ideas in my own heart, what some of my values were. And often a church, a church, if they're kind of making a transition for pastoring, they will pick somebody internally if they don't wanna change much, but they will pick somebody who's different, who's from an external standpoint. So they'll pick some from outside the church. So...
My wife and I had been serving at this really great church in Oshawa for 10 years. We had a lot of different responsibilities. One of the things we had was young adults ministry. And I was on sabbatical. And Rob, you probably remember these days where you're working on your doctorate and you're exhausted. And I just needed a little rest mentally. So I just said, all I'm going to do is read my Bible. I'm just going to read the Gospels.
Rob Chartrand (06:50.474)
Mm.
Jonathan Stairs (06:50.883)
And I was just blown away with Jesus, how amazing he was, just trying to read it at face value and came back and started teaching about Christ and the young adults group grew. And out of that, Lord, I wondered if maybe God was calling us to plant a church. So we kind of created our DNA core values for what that might look like. And this was part of the long term vision of that church anyways, to potentially have multiple congregations or plant a church.
Rob Chartrand (06:56.738)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (07:04.31)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (07:21.263)
My wife had been working with some of the street youth, the youth that had been on the street in Oshawa. So we wanted to maybe kind of reaching some of the marginalized in our city. And so I was like, Lord, do you want us to continue just to serve where we're at? We're seeing fruit, it's been amazing. Great team to work with. Do you want us to go plant in church? What do you want? And I remember asking the Lord, what do you want done? And as I was walking to church one morning.
So I get to the church and here's this email from Temple Baptist Church in Cambridge. And they said, hey, we're looking for a senior pastor and your name is the one that we're hoping to pursue first. And they knew of me because my dad had been the interim pastor there for about eight months in 2011. This was now 2012. And I said, well, I can't take that prayer back.
Rob Chartrand (08:10.135)
Right.
Jonathan Stairs (08:20.135)
but I can at least, you know, I'll pursue this Lord, but I'll tell them all my values. They won't want me, you know, Temple Baptist Church was, I think in all fairness, they would say, you know, maybe of the fundamentalist, fighting fundamentalist type of stream at that time. Maybe a lot of the fight had been taken out of them and they had started on this pathway, I think, to a greater understanding of grace, which we all are. We're all.
Rob Chartrand (08:40.717)
Okay, yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (08:49.991)
all recovering legalists in a sense, as someone said. But I thought, you know, though I might be conservative in theology, I'm not in methodology, like whatever we have to do to make disciples of all nations. And so I kept telling them, I said, well, here's my values. Don't move forward unless you're interested in these values. I learned that from Steve Jones, our
Rob Chartrand (08:52.31)
Yeah, totally.
Jonathan Stairs (09:17.127)
president of our fellowship of evangelical Baptist, he went to Temple of Sarmian and actually learned to take the values and front load those. So the people are knowing what expectations you have, right? So I thought, I'm gonna do that. And they kept telling me, it's like, we know we need to change or we're gonna die. And I said, well, I humbly disagree because you actually need to die and then you'll change and then resurrection happens for both of us.
Rob Chartrand (09:45.43)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (09:45.979)
And that was more prophetic than I understood at the time. I think most prophets don't fully understand, but considering myself a prophet, I'm just saying most prophetic utterances or whatever you wanna call those, those are usually not, we don't fully understand what we're saying when we're saying them. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (10:01.854)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, preaching is prophetic in its sense. So I mean, I think it'd be interesting for listeners to hear like, when you say they were fighting fundamentalists, I mean, give us a bit of a picture of that. I mean, what were some of the things maybe prior to your time, but I mean, in its history? What were some of the some of the marks of that fundamentalism for that community?
Jonathan Stairs (10:26.471)
Yeah, I want to, it's hard, it's a good question, I want to honor those that have come before me and that's important. And, you know, in the life of the church and every most churches, there's the DNA of evangelism and they had that. They had used a lot of kind of American strategies such as, you know, busing ministry. And for a time that was used of God and lots of kids came to Sunday school. It was a King James only church.
Rob Chartrand (10:31.746)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (10:38.366)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (10:46.796)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (10:56.64)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (10:56.643)
up into 2010 when they voted to use other translations. Maybe just too much focus on some of the externals, which again, I've struggled with in the past too. So those are some of the things. And I think at times more of an independence rather than an interdependence with other churches. And again, by God's grace, they were willing to.
Rob Chartrand (11:19.671)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (11:26.311)
you know, chase down, chase down God's grace in a new way. And it's a, hopefully that kind of answers your question.
Rob Chartrand (11:31.818)
Yeah. I mean, high autonomy, strongly independent Baptist Church that's focusing on some of those significant fundamentals, which in their time, I mean, made sense as you know, they're responding and reacting to culture and what's happening in their day, but still holding on to them in our day. Yeah. And as you say, we're all recovering legalists at heart.
Someday, the next generation will try and unpacked and unwind all the things that we've put together for our day, as well. Yeah. Okay, so how did they respond? I mean, you gave them your kind of list. This is who I am. This is what I would want. And thinking maybe that they would say, well, that's not really a fit for us. But how did they respond to that?
Jonathan Stairs (12:06.542)
Exactly.
Jonathan Stairs (12:27.751)
they kept wanting to move forward. They actually gave me like a, I don't know, I was like, it was 99% vote, 99.6 or something. It was very high vote. But here's the thing that was helpful, I wanna say too Rob.
Rob Chartrand (12:29.696)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (12:36.758)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (12:45.059)
I think it also helped that my father was the interim pastor for those eight months because they also knew that I did not or that I did have feet of clay that I had lots of you know, failures and things that you know, my dad would use me as illustrations in his family. So they kind of knew of me if that makes sense. It was and so that was really helpful. They did a really deep dive on me as well.
Rob Chartrand (13:03.73)
Okay. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (13:14.939)
They listened to a lot of sermons and they, you know, I think this is probably in the new space we're in. They did the whole like criminal background check, the financial check, the social media check, you know, just doing all the private investigation of those things. And so along with kind of an alignment theologically and what I was talking about with values and some of them, maybe I just, a couple of them, I just, I'll just run by just so you can hear
Rob Chartrand (13:26.071)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (13:45.035)
talking about with values. Like I just was trying to call us to some things that were not visionary, but again, values. Like for example, you know, our first step is to fall on our knees in prayer and rely on God. Like we want to be a house of prayer. We take God's word seriously. We were more about application than just filling our heart and minds with knowledge. It's got to be applied knowledge. You know, we fight God's word.
Rob Chartrand (13:59.588)
Mm. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (14:14.403)
not over God's word, but with God's word, driven by the gospel. We wanna think, live, and act as missionaries to our community and world. We want to sing one another songs to God. We want to be intentionally multi-generational, multicultural. We also talked about the fact that follow the whispers of God.
And the big thing too is also like our measuring stick, and this is from exponential, is God's stories change lives. It's not just, it's not just, you know, the normal things of attendance and budget. And that's helpful when you're, when God calls you to serve in a church that's been in a decline, you gotta, it can be discouraging, you gotta refocus them on what is most important, what's the God's story that he's doing in people's lives.
Rob Chartrand (14:49.823)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (15:12.147)
Did I answer your question?
Rob Chartrand (15:12.17)
Yeah. No, that's great. And, and I mean, I think Temple had been in a, in a state of decline for a while and was just trying to refining its purpose and its vision. Is that an accurate picture?
Jonathan Stairs (15:24.699)
That would be an accurate picture. And those who remained were faithful. They were prayerful. And I think the word of them. And it's been neat to be on a journey of we all changing through this whole process and Christ changing us through the Holy Spirit.
Rob Chartrand (15:43.358)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So hey, were you like when you sent that to them? Were you actually seriously maybe considering it at the time? Or you were just like, I just let me just make this really clear so I can get on with my life and ministry at the church I'm serving at or
Jonathan Stairs (15:59.119)
Yeah, that's great. I think I was trying to be sincere and earnest and actually giving them the values. Like this is what this church I think personally needs. I just didn't think they'd want me, you know? And so, and I like, I just was okay because I was actually really content in my role where I was at. I just wanted to make sure I was making the greatest contribution I could for the Lord, so.
Rob Chartrand (16:05.814)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (16:13.407)
Right, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (16:26.471)
So tell us the story then. How did you end up making that decision and how did the call come together?
Jonathan Stairs (16:32.083)
Yeah, so I actually preach those values to the whole church. I didn't just share them. I preached them. And I said, I said to them, like, if we're getting married here, and if you want to call it that, don't marry me. Don't vote for me unless you vote for these values. It's not just John stares. It's these values of we we're going to think and act like missionaries. We're going to have a lot more of a different perspective.
Rob Chartrand (16:37.011)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (16:55.091)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (17:00.632)
in this world, I'm trying to think about making disciples, that kind of thing.
Rob Chartrand (17:06.646)
Yeah, yeah. And he got a 99% vote. So that's pretty incredible. So you see this alignment of God's heart in everybody there. And so you moved to temple, you landed, well moved to Cambridge and landed at temple and then 13 days after arriving, a bomb dropped.
That was kind of unexpected. Tell us about that. What happened?
Jonathan Stairs (17:39.919)
Yeah, so let me give you a little background. I knew going into the situation that one of the things that had hurt the church was that they had in a previous abuse situation from a former deacon and teacher in their Christian academy. There was an academy that was attached to the school to the church at the time. And this person now had been in jail.
And so, yeah, 13 days after arriving, we were served with a lawsuit from some of the victims from the previous leader. And, you know, Rob, they don't teach you about lawsuits in seminary. I know you're a great seminary teacher, but you probably don't have Lawsuits 101. I don't at Heritage College in seminary either. We haven't taught that.
Rob Chartrand (18:17.602)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (18:35.827)
No, they do not. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (18:39.907)
So I didn't have, I try to really surround myself with people who are way smarter than I, that I can really ask a lot of good questions. And there was just nobody at first glance. Like there was just nobody who had gone. My dad hadn't gone through a lawsuit. Grandfather hadn't, didn't know of my mentors. But God always has people, right? And so I started, we started praying.
Rob Chartrand (19:01.452)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (19:08.871)
And those crises are actually opportunities to see God work. And I would just encourage our listeners that if they're in a crisis right now, it is a great opportunity to see God do an amazing work. I wanted to be a part of a church where it would be a story of God and what He's done and He gets all the credit and that's what's happened at Temple. And it caused us to fast track
are my relationship with our leadership team. We would spend, man, night after night just in meetings trying to pray and read the scriptures about what to do about lawsuits and handle this situation. And it really forged in us a real unity of the spirit and probably fast-tracked my ability to lead at the church.
You know, sometimes it takes quite a while to be a pastor and leader. You can even get a strong vote, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have a mandate, right? So.
Rob Chartrand (20:14.107)
Yeah, gaining the confidence and the trust of those you lead takes time. But a crisis and watching you lead through crises and trust God through crises is definitely going to accelerate the trust you have with your people.
Jonathan Stairs (20:27.367)
So what we did is we came back with two main goals out of that lawsuit. The first was we would chase down the truth and wherever it led, we would own it. So if we were liable, if we were culpable in any way, then we would own that. The second goal was that we would pursue reconciliation, not just legal resolution, but that we would...
Rob Chartrand (20:39.842)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (20:47.863)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (20:56.711)
pursue biblical, spiritual reconciliation with everyone we could, that God would allow that to happen. So those are our two goals.
Rob Chartrand (21:02.658)
Hmm. Wow. Okay. Now, now this wasn't the only leadership crisis you were facing. So I mean, talk about being tested in the fire. I mean, in the middle of all of this, there was also something else going on. Tell us about that.
Jonathan Stairs (21:19.547)
Yeah. And by the way, I'm still trying to like grow my, my preaching muscles at the same time. Like as an associate, as an associate, you're doing like, I was very gracious to get like 25% of the time I get to preach, but man, doing this every week, it's relentless. So I've still tried to learn how to preach and lead at all these things at another level. And the second crisis that came up was, um, we, as I said, we had an Academy.
Rob Chartrand (21:25.666)
Exactly.
Rob Chartrand (21:39.957)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (21:47.891)
It was a Christian school. It was a part of the ministry of the church. It was the dominant ministry of our church. And I'd been around for 35 years and had seen students up to, you know, population of about 200 students at one time. And it had declined a lot down to about 60 when I arrived. And soon found out as I was looking at the financials of the church.
that we were hemorrhaging about $80,000.
Jonathan Stairs (22:20.268)
a year on the Academy.
Rob Chartrand (22:22.818)
to keep it, to float it, to keep it going. Your church was, yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (22:25.859)
And now that threatened the viability of the church.
Rob Chartrand (22:29.762)
Hmm. Yeah. So what, what were you? You know, what did what did you do? What was your plan?
Jonathan Stairs (22:38.831)
Well, again, this was a crisis I had not led a Christian school before. And, you know, you're learning all of these things. And we had a part-time principal at times. So that meant that I had a second hat as being principal in some of those, those efforts and, and she was a galley woman. She actually was having, she actually had cancer during that whole episode too. So it meant more. I remember one, one week working about 80 hours.
Rob Chartrand (22:52.844)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (23:01.976)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (23:07.36)
just on the school and I'm like I can't even go visit some people in the church that I need to. So we
Rob Chartrand (23:15.818)
Yeah, was this was some of this? No, this was all pre COVID wasn't it? Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (23:19.503)
Yeah, this was back, uh, 2000. I probably, I arrived in September of 2012 and probably by year, like month three or four. Um, you know, I probably learned, okay, no, this is actually when you get the end of year, year in financials, like, Whoa, this is, this threatens the viability of the church. So, um, I'm the kind that if I can't understand, like,
Rob Chartrand (23:32.748)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (23:47.367)
financial side of things that I think we pastors need to make sure we pay attention to these things. I'm like, if I can't understand it and be able to explain it to others, then I got to chase down that and find some people who can help me explain all this. And so I learned all the challenges of what tuition was costing and there's a certain level of cost. And I learned about this well at Depper Education about the fact of what's the real
Rob Chartrand (23:58.378)
Yeah, good plan.
Jonathan Stairs (24:15.975)
What are full-time student equivalents, right? Those types of things. And so...
Jonathan Stairs (24:23.979)
We let, we had to lead through this decision. It was a hard decision with our elders. And this is probably the part that was in, in part, fulfilling this aspect that we know that we're going to need to die. Um, and then we'll change and then resurrection will happen. So we came to the conclusion that this was just not sustainable. And I think it's Carrie Newhoff that talks about the fact that, uh, sometimes you have to kill what's killing you.
Rob Chartrand (24:40.151)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (24:45.866)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (24:52.987)
You let things that are, you know, dying a slow natural death, just let them die. But in this case, this was, this was going to cause in addition to the lawsuit, which we were already in debt before I arrived as a church, everything was kind of coming together and I thought, okay, maybe I'm going to plant and plant a church. We're going to have to sell this whole property and start over.
Rob Chartrand (25:16.414)
Right. Start over.
Jonathan Stairs (25:19.191)
And so we worked with the teachers, we worked with the parents. A lot of the parents were outside of the church. Of the 60 students, there was only 12 that were attending our church. And four of them were my children. So it didn't have a lot of it had a deficit financially, but it had somewhat of a discipleship deficit, too. And I.
Rob Chartrand (25:30.99)
Hmm. Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (25:46.831)
You know, as leaders, they talk about this all the time. You just have to define reality. And I had to define reality, explain what was going on. We ended up closing the school. We had the really difficult decision to do that. Totally. It was like, if I came in September, we closed it there, May, June, that year. Yep. But then what happened was.
Rob Chartrand (26:01.322)
How long into it were you when you made it? Yeah.
Okay, yeah, after the year of classes, yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (26:14.163)
the parents outside of the school, they, and the church, by the way, decided, this was a church vote. And I think they voted 77% or something like that to close the school, which was pretty strong despite the fact that they love this school, right? Like I just understand that. And so we decided to close the school, went through all the, you know,
all the contracts with the teachers who were severely underpaid and all these types of things. And I got through that. The next morning I arrive at the church and there's all this news trucks in a parking lot. And the parents had notified the community. And I understand why they would do that. They wanted to save the school. And I think it was a low news cycle. And so.
Rob Chartrand (26:54.262)
Oh man.
Rob Chartrand (27:01.506)
Sure.
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (27:07.535)
We were front page news for 10 days and God doesn't waste anything. I had learned to do some press releases in my previous roles. And, and so I just tried to manage the message and we tried to manage the message and try to be really caring and be out in the front. And it actually was amazing because.
Rob Chartrand (27:10.739)
Oh my.
Jonathan Stairs (27:36.079)
Instead of it being bad press, it was actually good press. Some people started coming to church and some got saved. We gave the opportunity to the parents to raise that extra $80,000. We knew that was not the long-term educational business side of things, but let's try it one more year. And if they could raise it in 10 days, if they could raise $80,000 so that we could renew the contracts for one more year, we would do that.
Rob Chartrand (27:55.118)
Sure.
Jonathan Stairs (28:05.475)
So they didn't just raise 80,000, they raised $110,000. And so that meant staying open for one more year. We tried to figure out a different business type of plan for getting more students and ended up at the end of that year. I think, you know, you didn't wanna surprise people. I think some people were at times surprised with the fact that we had to close the school as much as we tried to communicate that.
Rob Chartrand (28:11.463)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (28:35.003)
But that extra year just gave us more time to get used to the idea that if we cannot make that change, then we'll have to close the school. And we ended up closing it. And again, more media coverage. And it was it was positive in a lot of ways. And we ended up having what I would call nowadays, they call it a celebration of life rather than a funeral.
Rob Chartrand (29:01.439)
Right.
Jonathan Stairs (29:02.059)
We celebrated all the good things that had happened over 35 years. We called all alumni back and then we said, here's a new vision. We still care about kids. We still care about evangelism. And we're going to ask the Lord to give us a new vision.
Rob Chartrand (29:04.63)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (29:16.074)
Oh, that's great. You know, so you've been in it for a year. You've got this lawsuit. You've got the school challenge. You've got the huge learning curve in your job, but also learning curve in this educational institution and having to figure all that out, figuring out budgeting on so many different levels. And then finally you're like, oh, okay, we've reached a decision. We're closing the school.
And then in the fall, you have to do an about face. I mean, like, that's tough, because I know once you made that decision, you feel relieved, the sense of, okay, we can move on, we're going to move on. And then all of a sudden, I have to pivot again, and pivot back to something you thought was done. I mean, what was going on in your heart at that time?
Jonathan Stairs (30:04.711)
hard because it was a long time ago, but one of my favorite verses is 2 Peter 1-3, that God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. So I just knew that sometimes you have to, you just have to persevere and kind of keep going and asking the Lord, I just need grace and your energy for making through these decisions and you know, not running ahead, but just staying with your leaders. And I think
Sometimes we all just have to get used to an idea, right, of change. And I knew that this was...
Rob Chartrand (30:36.504)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (30:42.867)
I believe that I shouldn't say I knew that's arrogant. I believe that this was going to be best for the church in the long run. And I knew it wasn't sustainable where I was because like, I couldn't, it was weird. I, I was doing all this stuff for the academy, dealing with all the media and all the parents, but two things. One, I hardly had much time with my own children. And two, um, I also, uh, re looked at my hours and I was like,
Rob Chartrand (31:04.013)
Right.
Jonathan Stairs (31:12.575)
I am not spending any time with outsiders. I'm not spending any time discipling anybody. And I knew that God had called me to disciple people and live as missionaries to our community. So I knew that God would help us sometime to bring some closure.
Rob Chartrand (31:31.55)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and inevitably he did use it to bring people to himself and in a roundabout way that you weren't maybe expecting. So, so meanwhile, the lawsuit was continuing. But something pretty amazing happened. How did God show up in that?
Jonathan Stairs (31:50.587)
Yeah, thanks Rob. Yeah, and for your listeners, and hopefully they never have to go through a lawsuit, lawsuits have a lot of activity, and then they don't. And one of the things that maybe is helpful for us as pastors is we are all about words, right? We parse words all the time. So in some ways,
You know, talks about the scribes in the New Testament. Sometimes we act as scribes and we act as, we have a little bit of a legal mind because we really parse out words and what they mean, how they're heard. So that was helpful. But yeah, two years went by with, you know, flurries of activity and no activity, flurries of activity and no activity. And I recall one day we received word from the victims that they...
Rob Chartrand (32:25.463)
Mm-mm.
Jonathan Stairs (32:45.787)
they were willing to come back to us with a lot lower settlement cost. And we had gone through the whole process, as I said, to chase down the truth and see if we owned anything. And we realized that there's always things you can do better, but at that time, this is really important. You can't just judge based on today's standards. You have to base your decisions on what was the decision at that time as best that they...
Rob Chartrand (32:51.063)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (33:14.683)
And they actually went above and beyond what were the standards of the time. They should be applauded for that. So we didn't believe we had any vicarious liability. Our lawyer didn't believe that, you know, we didn't have any money. So we actually, there was an offer back to us. So we said, OK, let's bring this before the Lord. Let's call the church today. Another day of prayer and fasting. And we are our elders and deacons met.
Rob Chartrand (33:16.01)
Right.
Rob Chartrand (33:39.179)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (33:42.867)
And we went through the scriptures again, you know, about lawsuits and forgiveness and reconciliation. And it just happened that day. I had received a letter that was addressed to the treasure and, um, I gave it to the treasure and I went on to explain what the offer was after doing this Bible study, essentially on lawsuits and, uh, the treasure opened it up and he said, what was the amount that you just shared? And I.
told him the amount and he's like, this is a big quest for the exact same amount of money. Does this offer? And we don't even know this person.
Rob Chartrand (34:23.126)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (34:25.239)
It was one of those like Holy Spirit spine tingling moments where you're like, Whoa, like, you know, the cabode, the weight of glory just fell on us. We felt like, okay, we just got quiet real quick. And we're, we said, okay, let's take, let's just take a day and we don't want it to overreact. But I think that God's calling us. This is manna from heaven. I think we are supposed to, you know, go to these people who've been hurt so deeply and
Rob Chartrand (34:37.633)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (34:55.291)
try to represent to them, be honest with them, saying God loves them, like he has not forgot about them, he cares about them, because you can't talk to them. There's a layer of lawyers, right? And we went back to our lawyer and he was, that was, you know, our lawyer, I had developed a good relationship with and I'm trying to witness to him when I told him the story and he's like, well, you don't need to give that money. And I'm like, I know, but I think we do. I think we need to, because that's what the Lord gave us.
Rob Chartrand (35:05.294)
Sure.
Rob Chartrand (35:21.495)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (35:24.891)
because we're in debt still. The church had been in debt its whole existence. They borrowed to start the church. And so we gave them that money. And it just got rid of the layer of lawyers. And then it opened up a door where we could actually try to reach out to them, explain what happened, and want to hear their story. And
Rob Chartrand (35:32.814)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (35:38.616)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (35:53.095)
And it not just did that, it started to open up all sorts of other conversations, just trying to pursue reconciliation with a whole bunch of people. So a few months later, we had a forgiveness Sunday where we just said, you know, let's individually, corporately, is there anybody that we need to get right with anybody that needs to get right with us and let's be open with that through that whole perspec process. I needed help.
Rob Chartrand (36:00.951)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (36:16.854)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (36:23.507)
And there's a good book by Jeremy Bergen. It's called Ecclesial Repentance. And the church confronts their sinful past. And I needed like some 50,000 foot views of view and questions to know like, what do you do? What are we supposed to own and what are we not supposed to own? And I think all churches wrestle through this.
Rob Chartrand (36:32.962)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (36:49.831)
But Jeremy, this book really helped me to get kind of a big 50,000 foot view, theological understanding of that.
Rob Chartrand (36:52.034)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (36:56.906)
Yeah, well, we'll pop that up in the show notes for our listeners. That's a good resource.
Jonathan Stairs (37:03.088)
Okay, yeah. So anyways, that just opened up the floodgates for more reconciliation. And yeah, so I think maybe hopefully that answers your question.
Rob Chartrand (37:10.359)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (37:15.338)
Yeah, wow. Now you actually you went and you met with the perpetrator as well, didn't you? Tell us a little bit of that. I mean, why Why did you choose to do that? What were you hoping for?
Jonathan Stairs (37:27.352)
Um.
Jonathan Stairs (37:30.647)
I was just hoping to bring about reconciliation to every party that I could be involved with. And I just said, and you have to be really careful because it wouldn't have been helpful for this person who had now since got out of jail to probably come back to the church. I think that there's a lot of obstacles for that. But I asked him, is there anything that you want to seek forgiveness from the church?
Rob Chartrand (37:50.466)
Right. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (37:59.951)
And he wrote a letter corporately to us, you know, repenting of his deception, of his abuse, of those. And we read that corporately and corporately forgave those. You know, and...
Rob Chartrand (38:12.087)
Bye.
Jonathan Stairs (38:19.911)
Those are hard days. But I think the parable of the unmerciful servant just rings deeply in my heart, that I've been forgiven billions of dollars, billions of debt, I could put it that way, right? And I just need to grant forgiveness to others. That doesn't mean that person is now a trusted individual. I wanna make that clear, right?
Rob Chartrand (38:21.495)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (38:37.001)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (38:41.61)
Yeah, we're
Rob Chartrand (38:47.146)
Yes. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (38:49.531)
Like not at all, but we're only talking about forgiveness, forgiveness and reconciliation, trust, restoration. Those are different levels of, right?
Rob Chartrand (38:57.782)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and we're called to reconcile, but that doesn't necessitate the restoration of that relationship to its former state because trust has been broken and violated and you know, you love the victims as well. Were any of the victims in the crowd when that letter was read?
Jonathan Stairs (39:16.727)
no, they weren't. Well, not the direct victims, but in a sense, the whole church had been victims, right? They all knew this person.
Rob Chartrand (39:23.63)
sure. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (39:28.111)
No, they were not. So, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (39:30.122)
Yeah. Well, God ultimately used all of this to build his church. So tell us about that. I mean, tell us about the rest of the story, planting, building. I mean, there's so many incredible things that were the outworking of this very difficult season that you guys went through.
Jonathan Stairs (39:53.143)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great. So we went through this whole process. I guess if I could kind of overlay it. When I was asked to teach at Heritage College in Seminary and just on renewal of churches, and if I could overlay it, Daniel Henderson, he's a great proponent of prayer. And he talks about the steps of renewal.
And he talks about personal renewal. It has to start with us first as a leader. And then it filters down to the leadership team, leadership renewal. And then there's the corporate renewal. So one of the things we started with the leadership renewal is we started to try to dream again as a leadership team. We'd have dream days. We'd walk around our property and say, I know it doesn't feel like it. We're drowning now, but what would...
Rob Chartrand (40:25.463)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (40:49.543)
What would it look like if God took over and did something here? And just give them hope again. I took them to our whole leadership team, our staff, to exponential conferences, because I wanted to expose them to different ways of discipleship and thinking about acting like missionaries. And so we went through a real leadership renewal. And then we finally went to the corporate renewal, which would be the whole church. And
Rob Chartrand (40:50.582)
Right? Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (41:12.363)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (41:16.911)
ultimately mission renewal and refocus and structural renewal. And what happened for us was, I think I mentioned already about the forgiveness Sunday. And I told you about the fact that our church had been in debt for its whole existence for 55, well, at that time it would have been almost 60 years. And so one of the things that we knew that we needed to do was,
Rob Chartrand (41:16.994)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (41:27.863)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Chartrand (41:38.999)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (41:46.215)
to get out of debt. So we had a bank loan and then we had some other debts that we had. And we thought, well, what Lord, now that we've taken care of this relational debt, let's see if Lord you would help us with the financial debt. I think relational is always first. And so we had another Sunday where we tried to raise the 80,000 to get rid of our bank loan. And instead of just raising 80,000, God gave us.
Rob Chartrand (42:00.162)
Hmm. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (42:16.007)
$280,000 and that got rid of all of our debt. So that freed us up financially. And we just continue to see, just try to do the things that Jesus calls us to do, to pray, to teach God's word, to make disciples and God bless the church and you know.
Rob Chartrand (42:18.906)
Wow.
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (42:42.663)
I've seen people get baptized, I've seen new families start coming. We added a second service, added some staff, but we have been going to exponentials. So we also had in our heart, like what if, what if God allowed us to plant a church? We've never done this in our 60 years. And I would joke about the fact that like, we'll be like Sarah, we would, what if we could plant a church in our post-menopausal years? And you know, like,
Rob Chartrand (43:03.211)
Right. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (43:11.771)
Like what could happen as a church? And I really wanna be a multiplying church. And so in 2018, God called us to surrender and tie the about 10% of our church. And this was a wanted pregnancy, not an unwanted pregnancy. We gave up some of our choice servants, surrendered them. Really.
Rob Chartrand (43:33.911)
Right.
Jonathan Stairs (43:37.803)
Most of our worship team, most of our youth leaders went and planted what's called Restoration Church. The associate pastor at the time was a person I'd known since he was in utero. He was my youth group leaders growing up. That was their son. I had high trust with this man. His name's
Rob Chartrand (43:43.203)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (43:58.082)
Wow.
Jonathan Stairs (44:08.023)
people to plant restoration church. And that was one of the most glorious days of my ministry. And the next Sunday it was one of the most discouraging when all those people are gone, right? It's hard Rob to be, yeah, I learned through that. I'm like, I would love to have actually a network of what I, you know, mops in the States, mothers of preschoolers. I think there should be a network where mothers of planted churches, you know, like the-
Rob Chartrand (44:18.23)
Yeah. And then you got to start again. Yeah. That's
Jonathan Stairs (44:35.335)
How do you, we need support too. And we go through postpartum depression and those types of things as we plant the church. So yeah.
Rob Chartrand (44:41.61)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, good for you guys to do it and that and restoration's doing well today, it's thriving.
Jonathan Stairs (44:48.495)
Yeah, they've really grown. They've now become self-sustaining, self-governing. They grew significantly. I think they're about 120, 150 on a Sunday. Went through all the changes through COVID and just, it's been an awesome, awesome story. So we're cheerleading them on. Thank you, Lord.
Rob Chartrand (45:00.431)
That's great.
Rob Chartrand (45:05.078)
Yeah. You know, and a lot of leaders in your situation are afraid to plan for that reason, because I mean, you really are sending off maybe some of your talent and your mature disciples and your passionate younger generation to start something new and your fear, well, what's gonna happen to the church at home? What, you know, are we gonna go into decline or are we gonna be plateaued and for a long time, you know, what are the struggles you're gonna face? But that's not your story.
Tell us about what happened on the home front.
Jonathan Stairs (45:38.575)
Yeah, I think at the same time we were planning to multiply, we were also called to add. And so this is crazy. I don't recommend this. It has to be something the Lord is leading you as a church to do. But at the same time as we were planting, we decided to, we knew we needed to add staff because we need some replacement, right, from the church plant.
Rob Chartrand (46:01.079)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (46:05.431)
We needed to restructure some of our documents so that we can maneuver better with a church plant and give them more empowerment. And then we also decided to build because we knew looking at our building, it was not functional. It was needing some repair, about like a million dollars just to repair roof and parking lot. And that's just not really exciting to raise funds for.
Rob Chartrand (46:30.125)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (46:33.784)
No, lipstick on a pig is what we like to say.
Jonathan Stairs (46:36.191)
That's right. That's good, Rob. And so we thought, okay, Lord, we've been dreaming about this. We had those dream days. What would be the, like, we called it the master's plan, meaning, you know, Jesus' plan. What would the master plan for the church be so we don't just chase good money after bad? Like, let's not just do this piecemeal. What does he really calling us to do? And so we endeavored to essentially recreate our property here. And...
Rob Chartrand (46:48.823)
Yep.
Rob Chartrand (47:03.764)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (47:06.949)
We started on a $12.2 million project, and we're committed to doing that debt-free.
Rob Chartrand (47:12.811)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (47:18.222)
Come on debt free.
Jonathan Stairs (47:19.975)
debt-free. We had enough time as being in debt. So again, another God's story. We were able to raise support, first of all, for our church plants, about $350,000. We're trying to figure these things out, but you're like, how can we make sure that they're on really solid ground, take care of Restoration Church first, and then on top of that, then...
Rob Chartrand (47:26.391)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (47:36.407)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (47:49.991)
you know, what has got calling us on this physical property to do and, and we were able to raise all that money.
Rob Chartrand (47:56.546)
Wow. So you, you had a few acres that were undeveloped, obviously you didn't transplant to a new location. You were able to reconfigure the kind of the landscape of your property.
Jonathan Stairs (48:08.215)
Right. There's like 10 acres that we have 10 acres, which I don't know if this is true out in Saskatchewan, but in Ontario, there's a new law that you can churches can only have up to five acres base because they want to continue to have a tax revenue. Whereas properties are, you know, church properties aren't taxed here in Ontario. So, so we had 10 acres. So we knew this is prime location. And we, we decided to
Rob Chartrand (48:24.535)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (48:29.582)
Okay.
Jonathan Stairs (48:37.435)
recreate the building and we still have some vision to actually recreate all of the property as well. And we identified some of our strengths, also some of our weaknesses in the building, in our ministries that we needed to invest in. So those two areas were, the church had been built, there'd been numerous building projects. Originally was the school.
They built the school first and then they had added like a auditorium and it was one big long caterpillar, if that makes sense of a building. And you know, for new families coming in and your kids are way off in the fire under the church and there's no lobby, there's no central gathering. Churches back in the day, they built just an auditorium with no
Rob Chartrand (49:16.201)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:26.271)
Right. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (49:35.175)
community space to actually fellowship. You just kind of come out of the auditorium and go right out into the parking lot. That needed to be fixed. There was no real vibrant kids ministry space. And so we focused, let's focus on the next generation. Let's focus on community. I had been in Africa and Togo, West Africa and saw how the most basic essential there was clean water and trying to get out of poverty. And as we thought about
you know, and we surveyed our community actually, not just ourselves, but we can, we talked to leaders in the community, like what's, what's our greatest need here in Cambridge? What do they need? And we realized that people suffer from relational poverty here in Canada a lot. And how can we create, for lack of a better term, I know I'm born from others, but like a third space for people to actually, so we recreated our building to become a community center for Christ, the through COVID.
Rob Chartrand (50:18.91)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (50:26.199)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (50:34.327)
Um, we realized that the church again, it was just reinforced. The church is the people, not the, not the place. And, uh, so coming out of COVID we, we had, it took us two and a half years to build. We had a year's delay because of being considered non-essential construction. And that actually helped us to, uh, do some changes maybe that we maybe wouldn't have otherwise. And
Rob Chartrand (50:41.247)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (51:00.915)
The other thing is it also, we wanted to build a building that would be very transparent. So there's glass everywhere. And that came out of kind of a redemptive aspect of that, that abuse situation. We realized, you know, we've maybe hid things too much in the past. Let's communicate, you know, transparency. Let's communicate that God is light. Let's use the building to share the gospel. So we have our gospel pathway we've built into the building.
Rob Chartrand (51:09.41)
Right. Wow.
Rob Chartrand (51:23.31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (51:31.327)
Just things like that and be more transparent and enable us to have speakers come in on really challenging topics like church abuse. Mary DeMuth was one of the speakers and things like this just to help us to try to be more transparent.
Rob Chartrand (51:46.368)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (51:50.038)
Wow, wow. You know, one of the, and you know this, I mean, one of the dangers of building a new building is the building becomes the mission and you replace that. And it so becomes a, you know, you're raising money for the building. You're raising money to keep the building and maintain the building and sustain the building. Whereas, I mean, it's just a means to the mission. And it sounds like you guys have really thought through how can we use this.
building so that it doesn't become an idol or it doesn't become a monument, but it's actually just a tool that's going to support the mission and values that you have as a church community.
Jonathan Stairs (52:25.999)
You said it brilliantly, Rob. You got to think of it as a tool. It's just a tool. And it's dangerous because it's shiny, right? And people can be attracted to that, but are they really attracted to Christ? That's what's most important. So, you know, have we, at times, maybe it's that the tool becomes a temptation, probably at times, but we try to put it back in its proper place and not be, you know, we're the story of the...
Rob Chartrand (52:31.762)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (52:38.242)
Hmm. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (52:55.559)
the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites. They'd look up to it during the plague and then it became under Houston and then they started worshiping it. So we just gotta be really careful and make sure we're focused on worshiping Jesus and the right thing.
Rob Chartrand (53:04.567)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (53:09.298)
Yeah, yeah. And then I think that's a good indicator of decline too, when all of your energy and focus is on keeping a building and you've lost sight of the mission of God. I mean, that's you're on the other side of the growth curve for your for your church, if that's the reality. Is your worship auditorium then it's a multipurpose room? It's kind of like a black box. You can move the chairs and what not or?
Jonathan Stairs (53:30.699)
Uh, no, we, we didn't grow, like we added a few chairs. We took out the pews. Um, we decided not to try to be like a mega church, not that's not a criticism of any large mega churches. I've served in a large church, but, um, we decided because we wanted to plant again in the future that we would make it kind of a small hall up to 500 seats. And you know, maybe if God blesses, we would, you know,
Rob Chartrand (53:36.415)
Okay.
Rob Chartrand (53:49.346)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (53:59.519)
at a second service at most, but it's intentionally that way. The building actually, we weren't actually worshiped or the auditorium driven. That was the last part of it, actually. It was actually the community center part of it. It was the kids ministry that was driving the recreation of the property.
Rob Chartrand (54:10.592)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (54:15.222)
Hmm.
Hmm. Yeah. And I mean, and in the midst of all this, you were still baptizing people leading people to Christ? Is that correct?
Jonathan Stairs (54:26.919)
Yeah, the Lord was continuing to grow. There was some, maybe quieter seasons. The tank was dry for some days, but this year it's been like, God's just been blessing. We have all these new families, really de-churched, unchurched people have come. We haven't got a lot of people from other churches. That's not really, I don't get excited about that. I actually call the other.
Rob Chartrand (54:35.598)
Sure. Yeah.
You're right.
Rob Chartrand (54:47.997)
Mm.
Jonathan Stairs (54:56.743)
pastors to our Bible from Bible-leaving churches and say hey this person showed up are they a spiritual fugitive and I need to send them back to you, so I never I don't get real excited about from other churches like that's God bless them, you know, so Yeah
Rob Chartrand (55:09.206)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (55:13.612)
So your church, is it still recovering from legalism? Have you had to help with that recovery or are you guys in a good space now?
Jonathan Stairs (55:23.567)
We're always recovering, but we just got to keep sort of like alcoholic, right? But I think I think where there's been a shift, I knew that remember I talked about the King James version. We just did. I just didn't make a big issue of that. I preached to the New American Standard, which they wanted me to. And just, you know, I first. When I first came, I wore, you know, suit and all those things.
Rob Chartrand (55:29.589)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (55:36.15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (55:50.867)
because I saw myself as a missionary to the church as well as a missionary from the church, right? So, you know, I remember a few years in, I was preaching through Genesis and there was a long passage and I thought, I'm just gonna do something crazy here. Well, I remember I told you I do, I don't know, crazy things, but I thought, why don't we just have 10 people, why don't we, almost like a Sunday school, I wanna have 10 people volunteer to read these 10 verses or and then.
Rob Chartrand (55:54.367)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (56:19.371)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (56:21.372)
and then another group, another 10 verses. So it was like maybe five or six, wasn't 10 people, but each read 10 verses in this long chapter in Genesis. And they read it. And I noticed that they are all reading from different translations.
Rob Chartrand (56:36.176)
Oh.
Jonathan Stairs (56:37.691)
So I just couldn't help but like, I made a joke. I was like, it looks like we've gone past just our one translation viewpoint we had at one time. And they all laughed and then we never talked about it again. It's not been an issue since.
Rob Chartrand (56:49.482)
Yeah, well, I mean, and if so many people have come to faith and there's newness in your community, so many people don't even remember those days, right? It's like a totally new transformed community, but some would, for sure.
Jonathan Stairs (56:58.789)
Right.
Jonathan Stairs (57:06.688)
Yeah, I think a lot of people would say, remember I talked about the renewal process? I think a lot of us would say.
Rob Chartrand (57:10.263)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (57:13.915)
We're new people. Like the Holy Spirit is, we don't wanna go back to those days. But we don't wanna go in the ditch either of just like anti-nominism. We don't wanna just like not believe that the scriptures also calls to obey the scriptures too. Like it's hard balance, right? You can go, we're all like, if we're all like, you know, I was talking to one leader. I thought it was brilliant what he said. He said, I confess that I'm an anti-pharisee Pharisee.
Rob Chartrand (57:18.102)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (57:27.038)
Sure, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (57:42.919)
you know, and...
Rob Chartrand (57:43.051)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and grace includes the gift of the Spirit, the cares, the grace of the Spirit, to transform lives into the image of Christ. I mean, so it's not just freedom from, it's freedom for, right, so we've been set free for so much more in our lives, and so, yeah, it's not just about avoiding legalism. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (57:58.882)
Amen.
Jonathan Stairs (58:08.371)
That's right. That's exactly right. So.
Rob Chartrand (58:11.818)
Well, John, I know there are ministry leaders out there who are facing difficult challenges and I pray that it won't be a lawsuit. I don't think I'll add lawsuits to the curriculum because my hope is to instead add things to the curriculum that will help us avoid lawsuits. But nothing is, I mean, nothing is a bulletproof, right? Because humans are humans and sin is still a power at work in this world. How we know that, but.
Jonathan Stairs (58:29.117)
Amen.
Rob Chartrand (58:39.63)
there are leaders out there who are facing difficult challenges. So I wondered if we could end with you just, just kind of giving a final word of encouragement to the leaders who are out there and who are listening today.
Jonathan Stairs (58:49.843)
Yeah. And I think you just said something really profound because, yeah, we wouldn't teach specific them how Navik gave it a lawsuit, but I know that you have a heart and I hope I have a heart too, to share that there's some competencies we're trying to build in the next generation of leaders. Like are they people of prayer? So they seek God, are the people that like research and study God's word and other things and
Rob Chartrand (59:06.614)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (59:11.116)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (59:11.519)
and humble enough to ask questions. Like if they have that skill set and transfer that over to other things, I think that can help in whatever God puts us in the situation. So, you know, a couple of things I would say. One, you know, maybe you're some listening today, you have a heart for church planting, but maybe you also have the gift of patience and God, you know, the Holy Spirit has really given you the fruit of that. And I know it's fruit, you know, it's the full.
Rob Chartrand (59:20.162)
That's right. Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (59:40.179)
full aspect of all the fruit. But I remember Bob Fleming saying, revitalizers are church planters with patience. He was one of our former regional directors out here for fellowship. And so, I think that's true. I would remind them of a verse that was really helpful through all those times and still is, is Exodus 14, which says, it says, the Lord will fight for you. You only need to be still.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:02.603)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:10.551)
Hmm.
Jonathan Stairs (01:00:11.151)
And there are days where you just need to, when it's in the midst of the big storm, Jesus often would draw away and get along with his father. And you have to do that to survive those crises. And I would just encourage you to be reminded, the listeners, that the battle belongs to the Lord. The Lord will fight for you. I also remember, remember during those crises, I wrote in my journal,
Rob Chartrand (01:00:34.7)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (01:00:41.047)
uh, courage stinks. Like after closing the academy, like everyone's like, oh, courage, you have courage. I'm like, no, this stinks. Like it's hard. And we, we love the brave heart speech, right? But we forget at the end of the movie, he got disemboweled. Right? And we forget that, you know, Jesus taught in a greater way, Jesus taught, um, and, and led with great courage when he was crucified.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:46.002)
Alright. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:56.41)
Exactly.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:09.002)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (01:01:09.683)
And the difference between him and William Wallace was he actually, he actually rose from the grave. And with our, with keeping our eyes on our savior, there can be resurrection. There can be hope and resurrection can happen no matter what situation you're in when you're overwhelmed. If you just continue to let, be reminded of that Exodus 14, and keep your eyes on Jesus that, you know, the Lord will fight for you. You only need to be still. He fought for us at the cross. He fought for that.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:15.576)
Yeah.
Jonathan Stairs (01:01:38.535)
He's gonna fight for his church, right? You know, you have to remember, you're not, as someone else has said, you're like, I'm not really the lead pastor at Temple. Jesus is. And I can go home and I can say, okay, I did my role today. You just take, you do the rest of it, Jesus, while I'm sleeping, so.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:40.718)
Sure.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:49.047)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:57.994)
Yeah, good, good. Amen, good word. And thank you for sharing your story. I'm just so inspired by your guys' dependence on Christ and your willingness to, in the midst of difficult times, to just press into him and to be still. So it's a fantastic story, and I thank you for sharing it with us. And all glory to God for.
Jonathan Stairs (01:02:23.731)
Thanks for watching.
Rob Chartrand (01:02:25.858)
for the work he's doing in your church and in you, my friend. So thanks for being with us.
Jonathan Stairs (01:02:30.229)
And may we keep our eyes on the Lord in the good times, too.
Rob Chartrand (01:02:34.75)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If people want to get in touch with you, where can they go? Go to your website.
Jonathan Stairs (01:02:43.259)
Yeah, templebaptistchurch.ca. They could send an email at info at templebaptistchurch.ca. I'm willing. People have been so gracious to me through the years. I'm willing to share any of my stuff. I'm not trying to profit off this. If I can be a resource to anybody in care, I have a real heart for pastors. Most of my family on both sides are.
pastors and I just love pastors and missionaries and trying to bless them. So anything I can do to be a help for the church, I'd love to.
Rob Chartrand (01:03:17.394)
That's great. Well, thanks for joining us on Church in the North. And we're going to reach out to you in the future and hear a little bit more of your story and what the Lord is up to at Temple.
Jonathan Stairs (01:03:27.463)
Thanks, Rob, and God bless you and Briar Crest. And thanks for what you're doing here to help lift up the church in the North in Canada here.
Rob Chartrand (01:03:35.338)
Yeah, thank you. All right, blessings, brother.
Jonathan Stairs (01:03:38.313)
Okay, thanks, bye.