Halifax and Valley Waters

In August 2023, in the company of a sister in Halifax named Natalie, the church in Halifax was planted, and it gathered for the first time in a hotel meeting room in Dartmouth with six who pledged themselves to go on together. The church has continued since then, meeting on the Lord's day.

We left on the night of Thursday 7 May, Ekaba from Calgary and Chidera from Winnipeg, and arrived in Halifax on the Friday morning. As on every one of our missions, the journey was paid for out of our own wages. Ekaba's wife was then expecting their third child, who was born in June.

We went straight from the airport to the mission field: first to Dalhousie University, where we have gone out to the students before, and then to the Public Gardens on Spring Garden Road. We spent the day on the streets, speaking to people about Christ and inviting them to the open meeting the next day. We carried printed invitations, with a picture of light falling through a dark forest. The theme was “A Fresh Sight of Christ”.

It was not easy work. “If we went and said to people, can I give you a hug, we would have had a lot of hugs from strangers. But if we said, can we speak to you about Jesus Christ, it wasn't funny. We bore His reproach on the streets.” Ekaba told the brethren honestly of the thoughts that came to him on the pavement: “Who sent me? I could have been with my wife and children. Why am I even doing this?” And then the answer: “The bride must speak. The bride cannot be silent.”

The church in Halifax held its open meeting in a hall at the North Woodside Community Centre, on Pleasant Street in Dartmouth. The brethren set out chairs before a screen and a lectern, and the meeting was carried on Zoom for those who could not be in the room. It ran for more than two hours, until we had to give up the room.

One of the sisters of the church opened the meeting with Psalm 24: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates.” There is a protocol for coming into the presence of God, she said: “There is a password, and the password is thank you.” We sang, and the room took up again and again, “Yeshua, when we call You, You will answer.”

Ekaba spoke of the contest of worldviews: every worldview is competing to be the frame through which we understand our meaning, and in the end there are two, the vision of man and the vision of God, to be one with Jesus Christ. He did not lecture. He taught by asking questions and letting the brethren answer. Why did Jesus die? What did He preach? Is the kingdom here, or is it to come? Is the church an organisation or an organism? The brethren did not agree, and searched it out. “An organisation within the organism is submission. Outside of it, it's control.”

The brethren read the Scriptures in turn on the church as the bride of Christ, and then on the two calls of this hour: “Come up here” (Revelation 4:1) and “Come out of her, My people” (Revelation 18:4). Come out of sin, of the old man, of dead tradition and of the church business system; come up to Christ as head and treasure, in holiness, in worship that is not performative, in body life with every member functioning, and in expectancy of the Bridegroom.

Chidera then asked what Babylon is: a system that is no longer about Jesus Christ but about man, from Nimrod's tower to Nebuchadnezzar's image to the Babylon of the Revelation. “A true preacher, preaching Christ, preaches himself out of the pulpit.” He gave four charges for building together: stay together; centre life on the gathered church; commit to the body; and keep the living word always present.

One who came for the first time said: “This is actually what I needed. That is why I registered. It's very encouraging.” Brian said, “It's inspiring for me to understand that we've joined the labourers.” Before we closed, the brethren arranged the next day's gathering, with a brother of the church to bring the word.

On the Lord's day the church in Halifax gathered again, as had been arranged at the close of Saturday's meeting, with a brother of the church bringing the word.

We gave time that day to Natalie. She has been at the heart of the church in Halifax from its beginning in 2023. We met with her to encourage her and strengthen her in the work, and to pray with her.

Then we set out for New Brunswick, some four hundred kilometres and about five hours by road, up through Truro and across the Chignecto isthmus, past Moncton, and on into the valley country towards Hampton.

On Monday morning we had breakfast with Brother Don Carpenter, a minister of the gospel who had visited both of us in our own cities. He spoke to us as a father, plainly and without flattery: “I have no vested interest. I don't pay your bills. I don't have your vision.” A work must be given a fair time, he said, but if it is not producing, a servant of God should not be afraid to establish it afresh. He counselled us on the churches in Calgary and Winnipeg: that a church may meet in a home without shame, eat together, and steward its money for the day the Lord adds to it. “It doesn't mean you're a failure. I'm talking about you being a good steward.”

That afternoon he told us his story. He built the house at Valley Waters as a Bible school in the early and middle 1990s, with carpenters to oversee the structure and many others who gave their labour, men building and women cooking. One year two or three hundred bed sheets were donated by a Montreal hospital and hung between the rooms for walls. “We never made any money in Bible school. We just fed them and taught them and sent them home.”

“God always uses you wherever your revelation is,” he said. “Preach what you do know. You will pay a price every time you move ahead in obeying God. The worst thing to do is to stop.” He lives with severe heart disease and has no thought of retiring. “If I had a Bible school, I would bring you in for a week or two weeks to teach. There's nothing on earth I love more than teaching the Bible.”

That day we also met with the brethren at Valley Waters. They received us very well, and it was a blessed meeting and a lovely time of fellowship in the Lord. We spent the night at the church.

Early on Tuesday morning, under a low grey sky, we walked round the house at Valley Waters before we left: the long white building, the pond below it, the sanctuary with its rows of maroon chairs, the library where the students once sat, the dining room and the kitchen. Brother Don had said that a house like this, where people may come and live and be immersed in the word, cannot be matched by anything online. It stands ready.

Then we took the road back across New Brunswick and down through Nova Scotia to Halifax Stanfield International Airport, some four and three-quarter hours, and flew home: Ekaba to Calgary, and Chidera to Winnipeg, each to his family.