Chris McGregor (00:01.044)
Sounds good.
Rob Chartrand (00:03.529)
And we have somebody in our media department do the editing afterwards anyway, so hit post All right. Here we go Hey, we're so excited to have here on Church in the North podcast Chris McGregor He is the lead pastor of City Church in Montreal Montreal, Quebec Chris welcome to Church in the North
Chris McGregor (00:08.706)
next.
Chris McGregor (00:23.23)
Hey, thank you. It's an honor to be here. It was fun just to go back to the archives and you know, you and I have a little bit of a history, but I also know a couple of the other guests. So it's always fun to reconnect with Canadians, Canadian ministry leaders.
Rob Chartrand (00:35.109)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And our history is really a common ties with C2C network, which is a church planning network. So we do have a lot of common friends and a long common culture through that.
Chris McGregor (00:48.318)
Yeah, absolutely. It was a great, yeah, just a real formative time for me. I think we were just getting started in 2013 when that started. So met a lot of people and once a year we got to gather in some of the cool places of Canada. So yeah, really fond memories.
Rob Chartrand (01:01.689)
Yes. Yeah, they did have some really great gatherings back in the day. So let's talk about your church. Let's talk about City Church. Tell us where is it located? Kind of where do you meet those sorts of things? And maybe what's it look like on any given Sunday?
Chris McGregor (01:06.531)
Indeed.
Chris McGregor (01:18.122)
Yeah, so we planted City Church in 2013 and it meets, I would call it midtown of Montreal, so it's about a kilometer from the downtown core, so it is part of the city. So just as a quick reference, Montreal in the metropolitan population is 4 million people, so it's a very dense city, it's an island city. So we meet in what's called Côte d'Aneige NDG, which is...
of the 19 boroughs of Montreal, it's the largest, and it's also the most diverse of all the boroughs of Montreal. So we've been meeting there since the very beginning, and actually we've only had one Sunday meeting space, which has been a high school. It's a private high school with Catholic roots. And so probably like a lot of Canadians as a church planner, you have a very limited option in terms of meeting spaces. It happens to be against the law in Montreal to rent a public school.
For us, being in the neighborhood that we are, we don't have any movie theaters in our neighborhood. There's not really community center spaces that are big enough. And then again, taking away the public school option, you're pretty limited. So we were so grateful, total answer to prayer that we found this place and we've been able to stay there for going on 10 and a half years now.
Rob Chartrand (02:32.753)
Wow, yeah, I mean, as a former church planter, finding space to meet is huge. I mean, it's one of your biggest challenges, so you guys got a great space there.
Chris McGregor (02:40.606)
It is. I remember being so stressed about that because it's all the criteria that we looked at. And, you know, for a long time, we had no idea where in the city to start with. So, you know, there's a lot of anxiety back in those days. It was an exciting time, but definitely there's a lot of boxes and sort of hoops that you had to jump through to even get to the first Sunday. So, yeah, just the grace of God for sure.
Rob Chartrand (03:03.089)
So I'm going to ask you some real detailed questions as a former church planter. Do you store your equipment on site or you drive a truck in every week?
Chris McGregor (03:11.302)
Man, you'll be jealous. Yeah, we have some storage on site. We were able to negotiate that. I got some favor early on. And so the nice thing is, there's a theater in the school. And so all the chairs are there, the projectors, the sound is there. So we used to like I've got pictures of my wife and I, in the first year, like carrying a bass drum like over our heads, because it was, you know, a couple of feet of snow in December.
Rob Chartrand (03:15.344)
Oh, man.
Rob Chartrand (03:23.259)
Oh, yeah.
Chris McGregor (03:36.458)
So going through the parking lot that wasn't plowed with all that equipment and over time, within the first two years I would say, they gave us a small locker and then we've been able to get a little bit more and more space. So yeah, that's eliminated a lot of challenges for sure.
Rob Chartrand (03:51.857)
Wow, yeah, you know, when our rental space, probably for seven years, we had to have this huge trailer that we brought in. And then finally, in like the last year and a half, they were like, okay, you're good renters. We're gonna give you a space where you can store it. And then finally, that was a huge game changer. I mean, we still had to set up, but I mean, at least we didn't have to back in the truck. The truck was always the big deal, a big 18 foot trailer and all of that. Just so, yeah, so much work.
Chris McGregor (04:16.806)
Yeah. And I think, you know, being where we are, we didn't know where we could store it, right? Because if you're in the suburbs a little bit, you can find something a little bit easier. But for us, like we don't have huge parking lots or things that we could really lease. So it would have been super complicated to try to find somebody that A, had a license, a lot of people are commuting, right on subways and buses. And then, yeah, the finest spot to
How is a huge trailer would have been a challenge so grateful that we didn't have that obstacle
Rob Chartrand (04:49.241)
Yeah, so you're right in Metro Montreal, right? And so it is very much a commuting culture that people who come and participate in your church.
Chris McGregor (04:51.294)
Yeah, right.
Chris McGregor (04:56.958)
It is. It is. If anyone's ever been to Manhattan, it's similar. They're both island cities. So there are only two places in North America where you can't turn right on a red light is Montreal and Manhattan. So it's similar. It's not obviously as dense as Manhattan, but it's close. A lot of multi-unit buildings. So it's uncommon to have a single family home. Most people live in a duplex or a triplex or quadplex.
I would say more people than not are on the bus or the metro we call it, which is a subway. So yeah, a lot of people, especially young adults, will just have the public transportation thing and then as you get families and whatnot, you start moving outside the city and commuting in. But yeah, that's the advantage. It's a really one of the best things about living in Montreal is our metro system. It's incredible. So they built that for Expo 67 and then kind of beefed it up for the Montreal Olympics in 76.
Probably one of the jewels of our city.
Rob Chartrand (05:54.765)
Yeah. Well, let's back up the bus a little bit and let's, uh, I want to get to how you ended up planting this church, but let's talk about how you, since God's called the ministry back, back in the early days, uh, give us a quick synopsis of how you ended up in ministry.
Chris McGregor (06:08.322)
You're making me sound old, Rob. I don't know if I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Hopefully there's a bit of wisdom with the, with the old years on the mileage. Um, so I was, I had a business degree. I was in finance and, um, actually went to school at an American university on a track scholarship. And so I was planning to move back to Canada, go into investment banking. That's my uncle's an investment banker. My dad is a, an accountant. So kind of finance kind of ran through the blood.
Rob Chartrand (06:12.159)
You're in good company, my friend. Good company.
Chris McGregor (06:36.65)
Really enjoyed it and I did that for, I guess, three and a half years outside of university in Ottawa and I was very dissatisfied. It was really surprising because I really enjoyed business school. I did well. Uh, you know, that was kind of my plan for, I guess, four years since high school, I'd been planning for that moment. And for whatever reason, I looking back in the rear view, obviously in God's sovereignty, I know now, but at the time it was very perplexing, like why I was so dissatisfied.
And so I did what a lot of people did. I just moved from one company to the next thinking, oh, it's the culture, right? It's the company's fault or it's the job's fault. So I switched a couple of different jobs, a couple of different companies. And no matter what it was, I felt this growing dissatisfaction. And during that same season of life, I was running pretty competitively. I was on the Canadian team at that time. And so I was kind of preparing for the 2000 Olympics, training for that while trying to figure out my career.
And that all came crashing to a head. So I didn't qualify for the Olympics. I was kind of like the last person not selected for the steeplechase at that year. And so that was the end of like a 16 year dream where from the age of eight, when two Canadians won world records at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, I'd been training pretty competitively from swimming, switched over to running. And that sort of...
That was like a huge focus of mine for so long. And so at the end of the trials, I just remember just taking my shoes off, kind of going to myself, kind of gathering my thoughts. And it was a very overwhelming feeling. And it wasn't like I was shocked in the moment necessarily because it happened to be a windy day and everything was riding on that last race. So I had to get a really fast time, the fastest I'd ever run in a windy day. And so the chances of it happening weren't great, but as a person of faith, you always think, well, God can do whatever he wants.
But just kind of collecting myself, it was, I just started to feel the gravity of the moment that my career hadn't taken off. And now this huge dream, which was a really big part of my life had, ended at the time, I didn't make any rash decisions in that day or that week, but for an amateur athlete to wait four more years for another Olympics when you're already.
Chris McGregor (08:57.614)
24 years old, that's a lot of years you're giving away, right? And as a runner, it's not like you're in the NBA or NHL, you're not getting millions of dollars. Like I was actually going into debt at the time. So anyways, to make a super easy question very long, God used all those things, the convergence of the job dissatisfaction, the missing out on the Olympics. And if I go back, I guess two years before that, I was at a missions conference at my home church in Ottawa.
Rob Chartrand (09:00.893)
Yeah, totally.
Chris McGregor (09:27.422)
Shout out to Brad Moffat who was on the podcast a couple of times ago. And we grew up in the same church and you know, probably like a lot of believers, if you've been in a church that has a missions conference every year, you kind of get numb to the call because the last day of the conference, it's always like praying for those and calling for those that are going to be pastors or missionaries. And I was so open to that as a child. I was open to that as a high school student. But you know, after so many years, I just figured that wasn't what God had for me.
Rob Chartrand (09:30.406)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (09:55.442)
And so I was very surprised where I really felt the spirit really asking me to go forward, not to anything specific, but more just to the idea of surrender. You know, God, you know, kind of was like, Chris, would you be willing to at least lay down your plans and let me take the, take the reins? And, and I guess if I think back to that, you know, the idea of finance and making money and, and going into that industry was, was some sort of an idol on my life. And I had this vision for my life, this side of control.
And what God was breaking down during that conference and in that moment was just trusting him. And over time that became a calling into pastoral ministry. And so back two years now after the trials, there was a vacancy in our home church. Our youth pastor had left. The senior pastor just called me in and just said, Hey, would you be willing to do this for a year as an interim youth director with the gravitas of that title, right? An interim.
youth director, not a pastor, but an interim youth director. So I took on the role of the, leading the junior high and high school at my church in Ottawa, the Metropolitan Bible Church. It was an amazing experience. And at the end of that, the board was really encouraging me to help me go to seminary, like, think about next steps. And so I ended up at Dallas Seminary in the States.
Rob Chartrand (11:14.929)
Wow. So, you know, when you were the youth director, had you had any theological education up to that point?
Chris McGregor (11:21.402)
I went to a Christian university in the States. And so I had a little bit, I didn't major in Bible or theology, but part of the core classes, as opposed to taking psychology and all the core classes that everybody takes in university, we had some intro to New Testament, intro to the Old Testament, spiritual life, intro to theology. So I had a background, and I think just so grateful for our church growing up, just because it was an expositional church, it was a missions church.
Rob Chartrand (11:23.834)
Okay.
Chris McGregor (11:51.19)
being mentored in that environment already set me up for success. But I'm the kind of person that I feel a lot more confident if I'm reading, and I'm studying, and I just knew that one day if God was calling me to be a lead pastor that it would be obviously very wise to get some theological education. And I know there's different opinions about seminary and master's degrees and whatnot, but for me and my personality, I think it was very important, and especially as
Our culture is getting more and more complex. I feel like I use it every day. So I'm so grateful for those men having the wisdom to push me to get my masters and go down to the States and then come back.
Rob Chartrand (12:29.805)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how did you end up from youth ministry into the church plant?
Chris McGregor (12:35.982)
So I left Ottawa, went down to Dallas. I actually met my wife the first day of orientation. She's a girl from West Texas. And we got married about a year and a few months later. So that was really quick. It was the last thing I thought would happen was to meet my wife at seminary. And so we got involved in a really large church. Everything in Texas is bigger, it's true. And so my wife was one of the worship leaders. And then I started as an intern in the kids.
department and over the course of 10 years, I did everything from campus pastoring to spiritual development to high school. You know, so a lot of different facets of it. And it was in the second half of that time, so around year five or six, living in Dallas in this mega church in this city where arguably the most church city in North America, God started giving me this, I would describe it as a jealousy for Canada. And so.
I remember in my high school in Ottawa, there was, I knew five people out of a thousand that were going to a church regularly. And so our high school group, we had 50 or 60 kids in our youth group, which was really big in our city. But I felt alone a lot of times, I feel like during that time of life. And I was in Dallas where people were studying French Chan books and doing Bible studies and Starbucks. And it seemed like...
every corner there was a mega church, there was a TV station, there was a seminary, a Bible college, there was a huge influence for Christ, like to the point where our church actually had a sports ministry. You know, so it's just crazy that the complete paradigm shift that being in an environment like that did for me, going from a, you know, a traditional Canadian paradigm where there's maybe three to five staff members, a lead pastor, a music pastor, a discipleship pastor, a youth pastor, and maybe something else, to down there where there's 200 staff members,
you know, a sports ministry. So it was wild. And so that, you know, I think that jealousy factor of just like, man, this is so great to have so much access to this. I just wish that somehow I could be a part of that. And during that time, I remember reading one of Paul's pithy verses where he says, I don't wanna be the kind of man that builds on another man's foundation. So that kind of stuck in my head. And, you know, reading the last, you know, the book of Jonah in particular, the last verse, verse 11 of chapter four,
Chris McGregor (14:58.07)
where God says, shouldn't I have great concern or great compassion for the great city of Nineveh in which there's 120,000 that don't know their left from their right. And so, you know, during that era, as Tim Keller's writings were getting more and more prevalent and I was having these feelings of jealousy and praying into that, God started to just nudge me to, first of all, kind of back to my first calling was being surrendered again to having an open hand. Like we were...
doing really well. My wife and I had really good jobs. We were very secure. We had our dream house. We had just given birth to our second son. And so we were sort of in that environment as a growing family. And, but it was the excitement of starting something new is the excitement and the vision of coming back to Canada to plant a brand new church, to try to take what we had learned and what we had seen. And in some ways to try to contextualize that in the Canadian city.
Rob Chartrand (15:49.849)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so how did you end up planting Citychurch then?
Chris McGregor (15:56.914)
Yeah, so Canada is a big country. So one of the first steps was getting the specificity of our calling. So we looked at, wanted to be a big city. So we looked at Vancouver and Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. We really played through those cities, pulled some demographics, trying to get an idea what life would be like there. And if we felt like we could fit there and if we could have an impact there.
Rob Chartrand (16:13.634)
Okay.
Chris McGregor (16:24.29)
And because we were leaving Texas where my wife's from and coming up here, we thought, you know, be wise for us to be somewhat close to my family in Ottawa. And so we eliminated the West coast and just focused on. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. And then over time it became down to Toronto, Montreal, and it made a lot more sense as a, as an English person to go to, you know, Toronto and obviously the biggest city of Canada and a lot of similarities with Dallas, but
Increasingly, God just made it really clear with a lot of fasting. It was a long time. I would say a couple of years of this really soul-searching fasting praying and over and over that time it was funny because we were at a leadership conference at that time that we hosted for like 3,000 pastors in Dallas and it was like the last worship song on the last night and we sang this song about the darkness and the light and as I sang those lyrics that I'd sung probably a couple of dozen times before
So I could see the skyline of Montreal. And so it was like a visceral calling. And it was so gracious of the Lord because that night, you know, obviously my wife and I were praying through this, but my mom and her mom, so my mother-in-law, were both at the conference. And so here we are at midnight now at the end, everything's finished, we're back home, got some Taco Bell on the way home, and we just kind of debriefed. And so, you know, both of our moms said, hey, did you hear anything? I know you guys have been really...
asking for direction and clarity. And so we both kind of in our own way, Yancey had a similar experience on that same night where we both said, yeah, we feel like God's calling us to Montreal. And so that was sort of the genesis of it back in 2011. We moved up there a few months later, joined up with C2C, which was sort of a, a cross Canadian interdenominational church planting movement. And then we just started getting worked on.
Rob Chartrand (18:08.487)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (18:16.854)
plans to plant. Their idea was to be embedded in another church, another church plant, preferably in the city. So we did that for a year, served in downtown Montreal on the campus of Concordia University. And then out of that, we started building up our launch team and launched in the summer of 2013. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (18:37.533)
Okay, okay. Wow, and those early days are always nail biting. Lots of prayer and lots of anxiety. Is it gonna grow? Is it gonna last?
Chris McGregor (18:47.166)
Yeah. Oh man, I, we should have like not started to begin with because we had a launch team and you know, they say you start with who you know, and then build it up from there. Hopefully you get to a dozen or a couple of dozen people. And we actually went backwards. So we had this Bible study going on. We had, we were in a Jewish neighborhood, so we had some Jewish people coming. And as the story was going through the story of God in the Old Testament, they were very much with us. And as soon as we got into the New Testament, I was like, ah, this isn't for me, you know, so we.
Rob Chartrand (19:13.853)
I hope not.
Chris McGregor (19:14.858)
We started losing people and this was now a couple of months before we were supposed to launch. So it was it was definitely scary and like maybe I'm not supposed to be called to do this if I'm actually going backwards in numbers not up.
Rob Chartrand (19:29.029)
Yeah, yeah. So tell us about your church ministry context. I mean, the people you're reaching, the place where you're at, and maybe how does your church reflect this context?
Chris McGregor (19:40.606)
Yeah, so I think one of the unique things about Montreal and Quebec in general is there's a sociological phenomenon called the Quiet Revolution. And so a very Catholic city, obviously, New France was a product of missionaries coming from France. And so all the cities in Quebec were planted along the St. Lawrence River by priests and nuns.
And so Montreal was the same way back in 1642, the first people came. And so for, you know, 300 years or so, there wasn't really any other Christian church there was to speak of, there wasn't really a lot of Protestant influence. Mostly, vast majority, like the whole community was built around the church. Like it was very much a parish model where the Catholic church was the centerpiece. That was the centerpiece of life and community, and then businesses and community would flow out of the church.
And so as Quebec and as Canada was growing around, you know, 50s, 1940s and 50s, Toronto was growing and English Canada was growing. And there was a sense that the Catholic church, who at that time, they had control over the school boards, they had control over the legal system, the hospitals, even it was told by other people that to get on the radio station, even back in those days, you had to go through the Cardinal or the Bishop in your city.
to get onto the radio. So there was incredible amount of control by the Catholic Church. And so there was a new political party that came to power right at 1960. And most of their campaign was built on the idea that we are gonna break away, we're gonna split from the Catholic Church having so much influence in society. And so from 1960 to the mid 70s, that's when the quiet revolution took place. And so it went from being 85% of people were in the church on a Sunday morning during those times.
Rob Chartrand (21:05.597)
Wow. Yeah.
Chris McGregor (21:32.858)
down to 35% within a decade and then dropped precipitously after that to the point now where they say there's about 1% Christian in our city today. So that's what's unique. I think you have this, I guess similar to New England where there's a strong Catholic church that's everything's built around and then the church loses influence and loses impact. For me, the thoughts that we have is
people don't really understand what grace is about. You know, they understand control, they understand authority, they understand that the priest is above everybody else. But the idea that a church is about a gracious relationship with Christ, that God's done the work, it's not about our works, it's not all the things that we do, like that message was lost in translation alongside of all the power and control. And part of the quiet revolution was that women were supposed to have a baby every year in childbearing years. And so,
you know, like Celine Dion's an example of that, where she's one of, you know, 15 or 16 siblings. And that was very common back in those days. And so the church was kind of seen as anti-progress, anti-technology, anti-women. And then as, you know, as the, um, enlightenment and that turned into post-modernity or post-modernism, a lot of the post-modern thinkers were French. And so it was, it was kind of an interesting time where that was coming to Vogue and there was this break.
Rob Chartrand (22:56.426)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (23:02.01)
from the political system and then all the stuff that goes with it. So you have the sexual revolution, you have the quiet revolution, and then you have post-modernity coming up. And so there's this huge schism between the society and the church. And so today there's like this incredible vacuum that still exists now 60 years later.
Rob Chartrand (23:19.801)
Yeah, I mean, and I mean, secularization is a reality that all of Canada has faced, but not like Quebec. Like it was like a harsh reaction, like just deconstruction with immediacy. And that led to like this rapid, rapid decline in church attendance because maybe church participation in that was heavily influenced by social pressure.
Chris McGregor (23:43.766)
It was, the guy actually that I worked with at the school I mentioned earlier that we rented from, he said that back in the day, you would just meet up on the porch of the church. Like that's where you would meet people. And some people wouldn't go into mass, but that's what you would do is kind of like you would check up on everyone and you would, it'd be like the local bar is today or the coffee shop. That's where people saw each other. You know, and so you take that away and then there's this vacuum of what's left. Like what's gonna tie us together anymore? And so, you know,
Rob Chartrand (24:02.446)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (24:12.534)
couple of years ago, there was an interesting phenomenon. We had this strike that happened with the students protesting tuition hikes. And so it went on for like, I think two months where people were banging pots and pans through the streets and the students were protesting this marginal increase in tuition. And the article in the Montreal Gazette, which is the largest English newspaper in our city, wrote that since the erosion of the church, we've been looking for ways to bring us together. And so even as a...
kind of an anecdote, there's a university called, university course called the Montreal Canadians as a religion. And so there's almost like these false ways or these imperfect ways that people are trying to get a cohesiveness to bring people together. And since the church has been so dramatically sort of expunged from culture, it's sort of like we're kind of grasping at ways to do that. And it's really tough. Even like I said 60 years later, they're still trying to find ways to
find common ground and find some sort of unity.
Rob Chartrand (25:12.409)
Yeah, yeah. So I have to imagine it's created a vacuum for the transcendent. And people are trying to find it. It's what, you know, Charles, our Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor would call the haunting of secularism. And so you have to fill it with something. And it's, it could be a political association, some sort of a, something else, I suppose. You know, people have said, while church planting in Quebec is just so hard, it's like scorched earth for the church.
Chris McGregor (25:27.981)
Right.
Rob Chartrand (25:42.225)
Do you think that's true anymore?
Chris McGregor (25:45.482)
You know, one thing that I found myself saying a lot through the pandemic is that the church shines the brightest in the darkest times. And I think that's true in a pandemic, but I think it's so true in any city in Canada these days. I do think there's so much hope because secularism is a failed experiment, especially in Quebec, where we've had 60 years. It's not like in Ottawa or other places where it's been 20 years or 25 years, but it's been, you know,
even if people wouldn't admit it, I think they're looking for something what's next because it just hasn't worked. And you can see that from the mental health statistics, you can, there's a lot of ways to quantify it. But of course people wouldn't necessarily talk about it in those ways on a popular level, but I do think there's a tremendous opportunity right now just to seize that moment and to be very thoughtful and prayerful, but also to be very bold that the gospel is good news. And that's something that I think when you're living in a,
as a minority in Canada, I think we have to remember that, that the Evangeligon is, it means good news. And so we are good news people, we have good news, even when it's perceived as bad news, that we have to remember that we're coming from that standpoint, that we are the salt and light of our city and pastors and leaders are the salt and lights of their communities. And so, like I said, we have to be thoughtful to listen and have feedback and how we construct things and how we build things up in a wise manner. But
Yeah, I've always looked at it more on the positive side that in Dallas, for example, I got really tired of the consumer culture just because there's such a huge quantity of churches and quality of churches like to be recognized in Dallas, you have to be like over the top. And so people that I was discipling, young families that I was dedicating their children or helping them get married and counseling.
there was a lot of times there would be an 18 month run and then they would leave because the other church, less than 400 meters down the road had a better kids ministry or they had a better worship ministry or because it was closer. And it was just, when you have options like that, it just sort of takes away from the family dynamic, the body of Christ. And so that's what I find refreshing about Montreal is that the people that are here.
Rob Chartrand (27:48.549)
Right.
Chris McGregor (28:05.95)
although we feel like minorities, like there's a real tangible desire to be together. And when you see someone come to Christ, it really is a miracle and it's a beautiful thing to celebrate. And so, you know, year by year, you just, you try to be faithful and fruitful. You try to trust that God's going to help you be fruitful for the faithfulness of your ministry.
Rob Chartrand (28:26.705)
Well, I mean, another phenomenon that's happening in Canadian culture since the 60s has been several runs of new Canadians coming in from different parts of the world. So Montreal has become very much a much more ethnically diverse context, right? And, and, and has that influenced your church and your church's makeup?
Chris McGregor (28:47.602)
Yeah, it really has. You know, the number one destination in Canada is Toronto and the second is Montreal for immigrants coming to Canada, which makes sense, the two biggest cities. And so, you know, starting in the 50s or so, you had this wave of Italians and then you had a wave of Haitians and then you had a wave of Greeks. And so just one ethnicity after another. But as I mentioned from the very beginning, we live in the largest and the most diverse borough of our city. And so,
the street that our church meets on, if you go down the street, which is a pretty significant commercial district, every other restaurant is an ethnic restaurant. And so like you have a Russian and a Polish, and then you have Middle Eastern, then you have Italian, and then you have a burger place. And then so it's unbelievably diverse in the neighborhood around us. And it's been awesome because we're actually reaching our neighbors
Rob Chartrand (29:40.283)
Love it.
Chris McGregor (29:46.75)
because we're a commuter city, 80% of our church comes within a couple of kilometers of our meeting location. So that's been really, really amazing and also complicated, but beautiful. I love Sunday mornings because it's a real reflection of heaven that it's, you have different skin colors, different stories, different ethnic backgrounds, people leading worship, people on the stage, people at the front doors, and then people in the congregation. So...
We've had this huge wave of Africans and Brazilians coming since COVID opened up again. Before that, we started with a lot of Filipinos and we had a lot of South Asians and increasingly we're getting some Latin Americans. And so it's incredibly diverse from really most of the continents of the world. And so what we have in common is Jesus and an English church.
Rob Chartrand (30:18.781)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (30:38.461)
Yeah, that's awesome. So talk to us about something I noticed on your website, and we've chatted a little bit about it. But you have two ministries you would call Share Life and Shine Light. And I guess they're more like postures that you have towards the community. Talk to us about those.
Chris McGregor (30:59.658)
Yeah, so I think your second statement, I think would be the way that we position it. It's sort of a tagline, if you will, and it's a way that we put underneath our logo just to kind of tell a little bit of our story. And so sharing life for us is answering the problem that's been created since the quiet revolution, and that's loneliness and isolation. And so sharing life for us is the New Testament commodity of fellowship, right? And it's the idea that we come together
tops as well as valleys and that we do life together not just on an hour on Sunday mornings but in groups and we show up on July 1st which is Montreal Moving Day. We show up for each other when we're a baby, we show up at funerals, we show up when there's a job to be celebrated. So sharing life is this idea that we've really worked and embedded within our culture to be a church that's very highly relational. And so it's less come and listen to the priest and come and get content and it's more about let's be together.
Let's serve each other. Let's be the answer that Jesus created for the loneliness factor in our city. And then the second part is just, again, answering the crowd revolution a different way. I think the perception is that churches, generally speaking, are takers. They don't pay taxes. They are anti this group or anti that group. And instead of it, I see Jesus as being good news.
And the church has always been good news. They are the first ones to run to the cities when everybody left the city during pandemics. They were the ones that served when people left young girls exposed in the first century. It was the Christians that brought those young girls into their home and nursed them up and helped them to thrive. They were in the very best way progressive. So Shining Light is about mission and it's about how we can be good news. And so we try to...
as a church partner with organizations that do better job than we could ever do, addressing homelessness and domestic abuse. We work with refugees and immigrants. And so a huge part of our missions budget stays in our city. And then we also do things within our country to plant churches and then we do things internationally. But we've really focused from the very beginning of being very locally based in our mission, you know, literally choosing an elementary school within walking distance of our Sunday meeting space. And...
Chris McGregor (33:21.578)
saying, hey, how can we serve? And so we were given an invitation to come in. And so we did huge backpack drives and lunch boxes. And some kids that were coming that were brand new to Canada didn't have winter jackets and winter boots. And so we did a clothing drive throughout the winter. And so we started very, very local and very small. And over time, we've been able to do more and more addressing the things that God's graced us with. And so that's been...
human trafficking on an international level and domestic abuse on a local level, as well as homelessness and immigrants and refugees.
Rob Chartrand (33:53.317)
And I think I saw on your website, you've raised something like in the last decade, over $300,000. Is that right? Or maybe I got the number 500,000. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Huge.
Chris McGregor (33:58.894)
It's actually over 500 now. Yeah, yeah. So we do something a little bit unique. Every December, we do something called the Light Project. And so every dollar that comes in from December 1 to 31 goes to our missions. And so as most churches, that's our largest offerings of the year. And so that's been a matter of faith for us as a church to be able to meet our budget. But coming from the legacy of the church in Ottawa, the Metropolitan Bible Church that was a really strong missions church.
We wanted to have that same DNA where we won't just talk about it and put it on our website or put it on a sheet, but we actually live it with our budget. And so, um, I think God's been, you know, has honored that and has given us not only more opportunities to serve and to help to over time, over 10 years of consistency, giving back to our city. We've started changing the conversation, but more than that, we're just, we're, we're living, I think the way that the way of Jesus, like we're embodying the very
values of Jesus to be generous and to be good news people in our city.
Rob Chartrand (35:01.881)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, for some mega churches, 500,000 might not seem a huge number, but for a church of your size, that's a disproportionately large chunk of your budget that goes toward mission. It goes outside of your church to help and to shine light.
Chris McGregor (35:13.847)
It is.
Chris McGregor (35:18.882)
Yeah, it takes a lot of faith every year because you're gathering it, you're talking about it. You're like, wow, can we really do this? And you put a lot of energy into that. And so, just like my own personal story about calling into ministry, every year it's that check in my spirit. Like, are we gonna be this kind of church? Are we gonna just play it safe? And so I think what it does though, for the people that are giving to our church, we're asking them to be generous. I think we're modeling what it looks like to have faith and to be a church that gets way above the tithe in our own missions, right? So I think that helps.
Rob Chartrand (35:48.153)
Yeah, yeah. You and I had chatted about some of your discoveries about building resilient disciples. I wanna spend some time talking about that. I think COVID taught you a lot about this. So what has COVID taught you about building resilient disciples?
Chris McGregor (36:09.358)
Yeah, I would say I'm still unpacking what I'm learning and I think moving towards application, but what I think was really disappointing and made me a little bit of disillusionment was some of the people that I would have considered leaders before the pandemic started, people that were there every Sunday and leading a ministry, not people that just showed up once a month or twice a month, but were there almost every Sunday serving.
and we're actually leading other people. Of all the people that didn't come back after the pandemic, it was a proportion of those people. And so it was really discouraging. And like I said, disillusioning to think, well, these are people that we've spent the most time with and people that I would have said, that we have a high, in our church, we have a high value of serving. We just feel like that's pushing against consumerism because we're actually involved. We're serving like Jesus served.
So that was always been an emphasis as a church planner to have people engaged in the church and in a really practical way. And so to have some of our leaders disengage and not come back was, it really, you know, it really forced some change in a healthy way, I think. It just, it helped me to see and our leaders to see, wow, this, we've got to make some tweaks in how we're talking about things, perhaps how we're discipling people.
I think when you ask the question about resilient disciples, the first thing that near the end of the pandemic, I found myself saying this a lot on camera to a cell phone back in those times, but you look so deeply into the gospels and then you look into the book of Acts in particular during those times, because you're just trying to find something to anchor yourself into. We're all...
going through this for the first time. We're trying to look for some practical ways to talk about things as well as how to think about things. And our government couldn't help us with that and really other pastors couldn't help with it because we were all in the same boat. But there's a scripture that really, I really feel like the Holy Spirit gave me to talk to our church and to help me even frame this conversation was John 16, 33, where Jesus was talking to his disciples not long before the crucifixion. And he's talking about
Chris McGregor (38:28.65)
You know, I'm going to give you peace, but he said, he also said the caveat in this world, you will face trouble, but take heart because I've overcome the world. And so I started quoting that almost every Sunday because I think in the North American context and in Canada in particular, we haven't had a war in our countries since the 1800s. Right. If my history is correct.
we've had it pretty easy compared to a lot of places in the world. We've had a time of prosperity. We've been building our country, we've been building our cities, we've been building our incomes and building bigger homes. And we've had that largely outside of any global catastrophes that have really affected our country aside from economic ones. And so I think there's been this embedded expectation over time and I grew up in this generation where everything's gonna get better and bigger, right? And it's as a Christian,
Rob Chartrand (39:19.409)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (39:22.23)
Because you start living the story of your culture, I started to think, well, things are solid and things are in place and things are just gonna get better and up into the right. But then you read the New Testament again through those eyes again, and you remember that the expectation that things are always gonna be easy is not the New Testament, it's not the expectation of Jesus. In fact, Jesus actually causes disruption on purpose. Like he sent out the disciples two by two.
before they were probably trained and ready. Like he had them exposed to the demonic, he had them exposed to opposition. And I think sometimes we just, I think we've grown up with sort of a bubble in Canada and in the church certainly. And so I think we just weren't, we were very ill prepared. Whereas other places that have experienced war or other places that have experienced famine, it probably affected them in a much different way because they'd been...
trains in some way to handle some of the adversity that was coming down the pike.
Rob Chartrand (40:20.921)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So resiliency isn't just a Christian problem, it's a cultural problem that has manifested itself as well within the Christian community. Is it fair to say that?
Chris McGregor (40:35.114)
I would say so, you know, even as a hockey coach, I see that with the generation of kids and, you know, we're all trying to do our best as parents, but you know, the term helicopter parents or bubble kids, I do think that's steeped in. And so I think we've, out of good intentions, we've tried to protect our kids, but I think the net effect of that is that our kids can't negotiate situations. They don't know how to handle adversity. They don't know how to...
handle laundry or cleaning. They don't know basic things. And I think by trying to protect them by in so many different ways, not allowing them to play at the park without us right beside them, or not allowing them to go on their bikes, or, you know, different decisions that we make because of what's in the news, perhaps, I think we've unintentionally really set them up for failure. And so I don't think that's, I don't think it's more of a Christian problem as it is a cultural
This summer I read a book called The Comfort Crisis and I just picked up another book called Anti-Fragile. And so there's a lot of people thinking about this now is how unintentionally we've brought these on ourselves by Netflix and smartphones and things on demand, drive-throughs and microwaves. We have this very comfortable world, which is great, but we don't know, we don't have to face adversity because of that. And so I think as church leaders, we've got to really...
Rob Chartrand (41:37.48)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (41:59.286)
think about in this cultural moment, how do you build a disciple in that cultural context? Like how do you build a high school kid that is raised by parents like that and in churches like that even? How do you disciple a young adult who's in their early 20s in university? Maybe they've moved to Montreal from Winnipeg or maybe they've moved from Toronto. And how do you, for the first time, they've not lived under their parents' roof, how do you disciple them so that...
they can handle secularism, so they can handle the challenges of university, but also even practically, like they can, they're resilient enough to get their driver's license or get their health card switched over or some of those practical things that we don't think about. So I think for me, I've been working on what are the gaps? So like what's the gap between a disciple of Jesus, if you go to the New Testament, it's pretty clear what a disciple is and what a disciple does. It's not just
someone that knows what Jesus knows, but it's someone who can do what Jesus did, right? That's a true definition of a disciple. So knowing that that's the target, and you have to start with where we are. So I think I've been thinking through both in person as well as digitally, what content, what experiences, what environments can we create that will help people grow in their resiliency so that they shouldn't expect an easy life or a comfortable life, but indeed,
that they can even in trials and even when times are very crushing that they have a faith that's not only resilient, but as this book describes, antifragile, which is even better, you actually grow through adversity. So those are some of the things I'm thinking through right now.
Rob Chartrand (43:35.545)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, yeah, I'm actually teaching a workshop this weekend at YouthQuake. We're having the YouthQuake conference here. So we have like 1800 people showing up here on campus for a senior high youth retreat all weekend. And so anyway, I'm teaching a workshop on resilient leadership for youth pastors, youth leaders on Saturday morning. Sid Kupp and I are doing it together. And
Chris McGregor (44:02.411)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (44:07.201)
But that is a challenge even for young pastors. I mean, the average clergy in the first five years, 50% of them are gonna be gone within the first five years. So how do we help our leaders become more resilient as disciples? And I think the core of it is our ability to build capacity in all aspects of our lives. So relational capacity, intellectual capacity.
physical capacity, spiritual capacity. And what I mean by that is, is you have to be able to grow these parts of you, it's like a muscle that you have within you, and it has to be holistic. So and a muscle in a body doesn't grow by sitting, it atrophies by sitting, right. And so it's, it's resistance, recovery, resistance, recovery, these things in tandem all the time.
Chris McGregor (44:50.09)
No. Yes.
Rob Chartrand (44:57.637)
that grows resiliency, right? And I think that's true for your spiritual life. I think that's true for your physical life. So we have to be taking care of our physical bodies as pastors, a relational life. You've been peopled out. I know I've been peopled out. I come home on any given Sunday and like, I just need to do nothing. Get me away from, I love people, but I need a break. Ha ha ha.
Chris McGregor (45:13.738)
Oh yeah. People, I know, yeah. They got an old song. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Yeah, and I think Rob, as a pastor, and you're in the same role, or you've been in this role, the biggest problem when you're counseling couples is expectations, right? So that's when you're trying to counsel and prepare somebody for marriage, one of the first things that you do is you try to unearth expectations.
Rob Chartrand (45:23.358)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (45:43.022)
and maybe lies or just false expectations. And a lot of times what a wife and a husband are bringing into a marriage is what they saw played out in their home, whether it's healthy or unhealthy, right? And so I think the first thing that we have to do to prepare young leaders is to set healthy expectations. Like you're not gonna be Steven Furtick the first day and maybe you should never be Steven Furtick. That's like another conversation. Yeah, but you shouldn't,
Rob Chartrand (45:59.783)
right?
Rob Chartrand (46:05.871)
Yeah, may that never be true for anybody. Yeah. Save us from platforms.
Chris McGregor (46:13.13)
You shouldn't have this expectation even as a Christian. And I think this is one of the most disappointing things is that somebody who's sacrificed to be in ministry, and it's a sacrifice to be in ministry, let's be truthful. But just because of that, you don't earn the love of God anymore, and you don't earn an easy life because of that. And in fact, sometimes the opposite. You might be the tip of the spear where the spiritual warfare is gonna be, you're gonna be facing that. And so I think expectations around
what it looks like to be in ministry, why it is that maybe God doesn't answer your prayers or why it is when God maybe withdraws from his presence from you from a season of time, it's not because he doesn't love you, but he's trying to, he's building resilience by you not being on the roller coaster of emotions. And the other part that's been very helpful for me is the expectations about fruitfulness. And so, I think in our, in Canada, in the West in particular, we think everything's again up and to the right and it's quick.
microwave, it's uber eats, it's on demand. And the metaphor from Jesus in the New Testament is a seed. And a seed is buried in the ground, and then a seed dies, and then after a certain amount of time, then a little stem comes up out of the earth, and then it gives birth to, you know, and then it grows, and then it multiplies, and eventually years later then there's birds that are perching in the tree. So I think just having an expectation about the timeline that God doesn't work
in a microwave, God works within the cycle of the seed. I think to me, those are two of the biggest things that I would say to a young leader. And you and I have both worked with young leaders and I've seen it so many times that there's a disillusionment that happens, not in the first six months, but always for me, it's in the six months to one year period. And you have to let them go through that. You have to sort of.
Rob Chartrand (48:05.605)
Yeah.
Chris McGregor (48:07.574)
You have to let them like experience that. I think you can prepare them by saying, don't, it's not weird that you're going to experience this, but you can't like hover over them and like try to make everything better, you've got to let them feel the weight of that. And I think that to me, I've seen that over and over again, if they can get past those that first year, uh, you know, maybe it'll come in your year and a half, but it's very early on where your, your expectations are smashed, where you have to really.
Trust this calling and trust that Jesus is gonna bring fruitfulness out of this moment for you to stay with it, I think.
Rob Chartrand (48:39.845)
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, but so much of our preparation for young leaders, you know, they just need to get onto YouTube or go to a conference. And we put before them these unicorns who are these overnight success stories. And their assumption is, oh, if I do that, I mean, you and I probably both experienced that with our church plan. It's like, oh man, I'm gonna do this thing. It's gonna be blowing up. It's gonna be bumping. It's gonna be amazing. And then God gives us this really slow growth. And sometimes we're going backwards and not forwards, right? And...
Chris McGregor (49:09.102)
Exactly.
Rob Chartrand (49:09.357)
And that, so you've got this cognitive dissonance about what you have been told it should be and yet the reality of what it is. And you'd have to wrestle with that and surrender that and realize maybe I shouldn't have been set up in that way in the first place. I should have gone to fewer conferences sometimes.
Chris McGregor (49:13.247)
Yes.
Chris McGregor (49:17.036)
Yeah.
You do.
Chris McGregor (49:25.81)
Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, even the disciples had very different lies post resurrection. So I think, you know, the story of the talents, one is one's a one talent, two talent, five talent person. I think that's part of the that's part of the grid, I would say, is like, just because somebody has a big church or is in an urban context, it doesn't mean you will. And the kingdom of God needs every expression. Right. And so I think, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (49:51.985)
That's right.
Chris McGregor (49:54.23)
There's, what I'll say about the blowing up idea or it overnight success idea is there's no such thing. I think that's a misnomer because there's always a reason for why things blow up. And I think there's a, you know, you go to almost any mega church, they started with 1500 or 2000 people and maybe they came from the largest church in their city and it grew from there. That's, I mean, that's a unique leadership pathway out of its own, but.
to go from nothing to 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 or 5,000, there's no such thing as an overnight success in music or in the church world anyways. So I think we should get rid of that whole idea anyways.
Rob Chartrand (50:36.377)
Yeah, no, I agree with you. And so much of that as well is context. Like it's beyond the control of the leader. Like I know some incredible, amazing leaders who because of where they planted and the timing of what are planted and all of that, they don't have the thousand, 2000 person growing movement or whatnot, but anyway, it's not even about that. You and I both know that. It's not about, it's about being faithful and serving Jesus where you are and what he's called you to do. That's, that's.
That's the heart of it. It's not the, I mean, fruitfulness is important, but faithfulness is more important at the end of the day.
Chris McGregor (51:12.586)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think so. I think it's both. And I think we measure fruitfulness in a Western eye. I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind in John 15. But I do think when we're faithful with what God's calling us to do, we will be fruitful in the economy of God, right? So that might be the death in the soil that we can't see. And maybe someone picks up what we planted, and then years later, there's this huge success. Like, I'm...
Rob Chartrand (51:25.402)
Right. Yeah.
Chris McGregor (51:41.066)
I'm very cognizant, Rob, that right now in 2024, I'm standing on the shoulders of people who gave their lives to plant the gospel in Quebec, right? And so there's these early people that came from Ontario and Western Canada that planted Protestant churches in the 70s, and some of them were thrown in prison because they were distributing Bibles. Like it was that crazy. And so I'm always cognizant to think, you know, we have a pretty neat story and-
By no means are we a massive church in Canada, but we've had some success, and obviously all the glory goes to God, and there are societal factors that we are, there are people that were one to Christ, that were discipled, and they may be grandkids of those people that are now in our church, or at least share the gospel with people who are in our church. And so, I think again, we just gotta redefine what success looks like, and helping people to understand that if I'm faithful to what God's calling me to do,
that he's gonna take care of the results and I need to be okay with the pace of that and what that even looks like.
Rob Chartrand (52:43.705)
Yeah, yeah, and I guess those who did that were resilient disciples in a very difficult time.
Chris McGregor (52:49.802)
Absolutely, yeah. And so their church may not be around anymore, but again, the fruitfulness of a disciple and that we understand that the Holy Spirit has taken charge of that person's life. And so regardless of if there's a church or not, there's another church that they could go to, and then the Lord will take care of that person until they can be embedded in a new community. And so it's never wasted, as we know, to share the gospel. It's never wasted to disciple someone.
God thinks generationally, we think in the moment, like we think in this next second, or this next app, or this click on the phone, but God's a God of the generations, and so He's writing the story. So if we are faithful in this conversation and with my neighbor across the street, God's going to take care of the growth of the Kingdom of God, which is His prerogative.
Rob Chartrand (53:36.269)
Yeah. You know, I often wonder about resilient disciples with the emerging generation, if the senior pastor actually has more of a role in it than say the next generation pastors, so the youth pastors and the children's pastors, because the raising of a next generation of resilient disciples isn't, isn't like, I think it's our, our role is to talk to parents and not just to the kids. You know, if we talk about Deuteronomy 6 and the Shema,
Chris McGregor (54:02.83)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (54:05.489)
And the primacy should be with the family in discipling children. Because the church, I mean, we only get them, like if you're a youth pastor, you might see a young person for maybe one, two hours a week. Whereas the family sees them for 30, 40 hours a week of waking time, right? So, I mean, and it's parents who are really creating the environment for resiliency for children. So in your imagination, is there anything we can do as pastors with...
parents and families in terms of developing resilient disciples or next gen.
Chris McGregor (54:40.742)
Oh, 100%. I think that's so well said, Rob. It's funny that you said that because we have a baby dedication coming up this Sunday. And so we created a whole class for preschool babies and preschool children that basically does the very thing that you described. So it's walking them through some practical things about parenting, but it also like helps them know how to pass on their faith to their child and how to...
how to make sure that it's not a kid-centered home, but it's a God-centered home. And so, we have a two-week class that's actually a prerequisite to get dedicated. Back in the day, this is the first year we've done this. So for 10 years, we've been doing it. Yeah, you wanna get dedicated. And then we, over the years, we've strengthened the language of it, turned it into more of a covenant where the parents making a covenant, we as a church are making a covenant together to raise your son or daughter to know and to love Jesus.
Rob Chartrand (55:20.622)
Okay.
Chris McGregor (55:37.858)
But now we're anchoring it in the idea that you have to be, you have to go through this two week class in order for you to be dedicated. So that's just another way I feel like we can equip parents, because I totally agree with what you're saying. Like as a parent, I've got a 17 year old and a 14 year old and I always feel like I'm failing. So the last thing I wanna do is bash or make parents feel any more pressure than they already feel. But I do think to your point, like there's some really important things that we can do to equip our parents.
One of my commitments is I'm leading the young adults group right now. So that's my effort to build resilient disciples as I'm listening to them every Wednesday night for two hours and trying to teach them at the same time. And so it's helping me to, to understand how they think and, and the ways that they're being shaped and then hopefully I can help with my perspective. So, you know, there's a lot of ways that I'm trying to address that. And that's, those are the front of mind things I would say.
In addition to the Sunday messages, like looking out on the crowd, I'm thinking about high school kids, young adults, I'm thinking about parents, those are the people that are about to be married. And so you're trying to even shape their theology, right? Like conversations like this, like about resiliency and how I talk about comfort a lot on Sundays as part of the application. So how do we live the way of Jesus in a way where right now we're so comfortable?
Right? And in the pandemic, that was even more so. We were all in our pajamas and our sweatpants and never leaving the house. And so we had to like recover from the pandemic, I think, even more so than we were living right now.
Rob Chartrand (57:02.971)
Right.
Rob Chartrand (57:16.229)
Right, right, right. I did a thing just recently, because we're recognizing here at the college that we have a generation who are coming in and taking courses who are not resilient, like they're fragile. And they've grown up in a culture of over-parenting and safetyism and trigger warnings and anti-bullying campaigns. And everything that is kind of.
forced them into this way. And so the result is when they get to the fourth year and some of them are going into ministry, there's a hesitancy in some of our students because they're concerned about, well, that's gonna be hard and that's gonna be difficult and sometimes challenging. And so there's even a questioning of whether or not they should do this. So for those students in my Christian ministry program, I've opted to actually prepare a gift for them when they graduate. And I actually have one here on my...
on my desk, I'll pull it up for you here. But they get a black box and they open it up and inside is a pair of scissors. And the scissors says on it, it says, run with me. And then they open up the box, there's also a card that's in there. I don't have a card to show you, but it says right on the front of the card, run with scissors. And then I say to the students, your entire life you've been told to be careful to play it safe.
Chris McGregor (58:21.515)
Oh, I love that.
Chris McGregor (58:25.154)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (58:40.685)
You grew up in a culture of over-parenting, trigger warnings, and anti-bullying. It's almost natural, even noble, to avoid anything that might harm you. Parents bubble wrap their children before sending them out to play tag. And then I talk about the sociologist, Jonathan Haidt, and the coddling of the American mind, and he talks about safetyism, where our value system has made safety sacred in our culture. And the trade-off, though, is we've protected kids from every imaginable danger, while at the same time making them more fragile.
Chris McGregor (59:01.454)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (59:10.541)
and less resilient. And so I say to them, I want to call you to live dangerously. And what the world needs now are resilient disciples. And then I walk through about what that means, right? And how you grow resiliency. And then I say, at the end, I say, in the coming years, I hope you'll pick up these scissors and be reminded that it's okay to take risks. You can face floods and you can walk through fires because God is with you. Even Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame.
Chris McGregor (59:16.622)
Hmm.
Rob Chartrand (59:40.057)
So I hope that you, for the sake of the kingdom, and with the wind of the spirit blowing through your hair, will run with scissors. So that's what I hope is 10 years from now. Who throws away a good pair of scissors, you know?
Chris McGregor (59:47.794)
I love that. That's so good.
Chris McGregor (59:54.202)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I love that image. And I think too, as pastors and as leaders, as we're mentoring, have the ability to help shape the generation coming behind us is, what do you miss out on if you don't do that? Right? Because I think I grew up on the stories of the missionary biographies. And you think about all the things that were won to the kingdom because men and women sacrificed. And...
Rob Chartrand (01:00:11.095)
Oh, yeah.
Chris McGregor (01:00:22.014)
And maybe we talk too much about the heart. It's so hard and it's so hard. Yeah, but look how beautiful it is to give your life in service of Christ. And again, back to that generational idea, like William Carey didn't see a ton of fruit in his lifetime, but then there's this incredible fruitfulness that happened in the generation past. And the story of the Moravians, like my friend John Tyson talks about it in New York City all the time. He constantly is talking about.
missionaries and prayer and revival because I think one thing that our uh the generation behind us is doing so well is they are authentic and they are kids that love prayer and love simplicity and authenticity and they're leading the ways in repentance and leading the ways in seeking God so on the other hand like their position very well if they can just uh use that fervor of purity that fervor for
devotion to Christ and they can channel it in the way of adventure because I think if we can talk about it more as an adventure rather than as Duty I do think that's part of the part of the missing conversation is look what could take place If if yours if you were devoted to the Lord and if you took the kingdom of God the seeds of the kingdom like what could God do in a generation, you know and anyway
Rob Chartrand (01:01:20.987)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (01:01:40.133)
Yeah. Well, isn't John doing like this thing called primal path, like for men, fathers and sons? And isn't that part of it is like this development of resiliency for disciples?
Chris McGregor (01:01:53.246)
Yeah, and that's specifically aimed at men because, you know, there's another crisis of boys in our culture today, and that's a whole other conversation. But so he's addressing that, but like, they, I think they have like 40 hours a week of prayer rooms around the city of New York and Manhattan. So you think about secularism, you think about Manhattan, and like they're going all in on prayer, and most of that's led by, you know, millennials, right? And Gen Z. So anyway, I think there's,
Just like every generation, like I'm a Gen X, and so we had strengths and weaknesses and areas that we were more closely aligned with the gospel and other ways that we weren't. And so I think trying to find ways to honor them, but also ways to challenge them is important. So I love that image though of running with scissors and trying to find ways to kind of captivate their imagination for adventure. I think to me, that would be fun.
Rob Chartrand (01:02:47.545)
Yeah, well, we all know that Gen X is like the best generation. We, we smell like teen spirit. Like it's just, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, totally. Well, hey, I wonder if we could end with you just sharing with us a final word of encouragement as we think about ministry leaders who are listening in today.
Chris McGregor (01:02:51.351)
100%
Chris McGregor (01:02:56.068)
Latchkey kids. Oh yeah.
Chris McGregor (01:03:09.43)
I mean, I don't know you guys, but what I would just say is thank you. I think why God called me back to this country, I grew up in the capital city. And so I've got a great affection for our country, but a bigger affection for Christ. And so I just want to say thank you. What you do matters. And so whether you're leading a family or whether you're leading a youth group of five boys that don't seem to pay attention on a Sunday morning, whether you call yourself, called to something, you know, a little bit bigger or more prominent.
you matter. And I just want to encourage you to remember that Jesus has called all of us. And he says to go into all the world and to make disciples. But bookending that command, which we're so good at quoting, is he says, all authority on heaven and on earth, I've given to you. And then he says at the very end, he says, and I'm with you always to the very end of the age. And so I just want to encourage you to continue to make disciples in our great country.
The way to transform a community is to make disciples of Jesus. And remember that as you go, you go in the authority of Jesus, and you go in the presence of Jesus. That he is with you on a Saturday night when you can't figure out the message. You know, he's with you on a difficult board meeting. He's with you when you've got your resignation letter ready to send. That he is faithful, and it's his mission, it's his kingdom, and we get the privilege.
of being a small part of it. So again, just across our country right now, I just wanna say thank you for being a part of that and being a part of reaching Canada for Christ.
Rob Chartrand (01:04:47.473)
Good word, good word. Chris McGregor, thank you for joining us on Church in the North.
Chris McGregor (01:04:53.59)
Hey, thanks for having me, Rob. It's an honor. I had a great conversation. I learned a lot even today from you. So I'm looking forward to putting some of these things in practice now.
Rob Chartrand (01:05:00.493)
Yeah, well, we'll have to get you back on here again sometime soon. Bless you and your church. Yeah.
Chris McGregor (01:05:03.882)
Hey, you're welcome anytime.