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By Andrew Christopher, Co-ordinator Montréal UBF

THE FELLOWSHIP OF BELIEVERS

Acts 2:46 “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,”

• 2015 Annual Review

1. God`s work in Us.  I praise and thank God for being with our Montreal UBF ministry and co-workers in 2015. I stand amazed at what God has helped us to accomplish this year despite growing challenges within ourselves and the massive challenge of reaching the highly secularized young people of Montreal. During 2015 we studied Matthew`s gospel and met King Jesus over and over again. In our secular society Jesus is not King. He is ignored with apathy and indifference but through the words of Matthew`s gospel we indeed experienced that Jesus is King with his own kingdom and constitution. For a while he made himself lowly but he will come back. So we also are learning patience and humbleness. We make ourselves servants to one day reign with Jesus as kings. I thank God using the Eldership team of s. John Giesbrecht, m. Stephen Kwon, s. Ernest Chan, s. David Jumeau, s. Philip Wong and myself as weekly messengers. We are growing together through serving the Bible study preparation in the ministry. We also met late at night to go through 4 sessions of Biblical Eldership learning. This strengthened us as we realized that elders should be very responsible people and good teachers. We knew better where to put our efforts to serve God’s people. We also went through 2 sessions of teaching to have personal vision as messengers of God`s word.  Our women leaders m. Melissa, m. Faith, s. Vani, m. Elena, s. Sylvia,  m. Monique, and s. Connie shared Bible study and testimony writing together faithfully and made such a wonderful environment for our young people through their love, prayers and enjoyable Sunday and fellowship meals. They are truly beautiful women of faith a strong part of our core leadership. Each of our leaders are going through  life changes and find they are sinners but I am really thankful for their prayer for each other, some counselling and the presence of Jesus to make us better. 

   God has been growing our young families as well. b.Nicolas and s. Veronique were faithful to SWS and Bible studies as they had promised at the beginning of the year and God granted them a beautiful baby girl, Myriam on Christmas day! B. Alexei and s. Rita`s family went through a lot in building up their family this year. Even with 4 kids, illnesses, and setbacks God helped s. Rita complete her undergraduate degree in translation and b. Alexei is nearly finished his construction school. I believe God will keep using their family preciously for campus ministry and for spreading the gospel. 

Among our young leaders. This year s. Lesedi Masisi completed his Ph.D in Engineering and returned to Witz UBF ministry in South Africa. We thank God for using him to spread the gospel at Concordia and teaching the Bible to several of his fellow engineering students. S. Marcel Rodney faithfully served b. Jose and several other students at the McGill GBS now called “Foundations Bible Study”. God chose him as a messenger for the Canadian Summer Bible conference.  God is using him to co-ordinate our Tyrannus Bible academies and as a very faithful, Jesus-centered, Bible-centered leader in our ministry. Thank God for growing Luke Hong jr as a leader this year. He continues to make himself available to all our young people 24/7and God uses him greatly in the HBF ministry. God helped him to graduate from McGill University in physiotherapy only to find a difficult job market under government austerity. Instead of despairing he found strength in his faith and found new ways of serving God`s work. For example he supported the McGill club start-up by connecting McGill students to the street mission work at the “Mission de Grand Berger”.  We pray for victory in his job situation and his application to medical school. We thank God for m. Pierre Jung`s servantship for Montreal. Through him we were able challenge a club start up at Dawson College where he is studying nursing and he studies Romans with my son Joshua there at Dawson. I thank God for m. Pierre`s patient and loving shepherding of b. Carl from McGill and some other students. 

2. Bible Studies and Conferences. On April 3-5 we went on a conference retreat. We were worn out from living a rejected life in a secular society with little outward fruits.  The key verse of the conference Matthew 28:9 “Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.” At the conference m. Stephen, s. Marcel, m. Pierre and m. David Na gave excellent messages to help us see that our real problem is unbelief because we do not see Jesus as he really is. With God`s forgiveness and new life we made positive plans for witnessing and summer ministry. During the summer we studied the book of Judges. We learned that though the odds are against us, God can use a left handed person, a woman, a youngie, to do great things when we smash our idols and get strength and help from the Spirit of God.  

We were also so thankful to participate in the 2015 Canadian Summer Bible Conference, “Faith that Pleases God.” Canadian ministry is like dry bones. Many people, including myself, have been saying, “Raising disciples among Canadian students is impossible” or at least “really, really slow”.  But God greatly worked through young leaders and the testimonies. God used s. Marcel, s. Philip and myself as messengers and our coworkers served the conference in different ways. Through m. Henry’s prayers we had more faith to challenge the invitation ministry through united prayer meetings. 

  Over the year, the non-response of students to Bible study invitation was daunting and discouraging many times but we gained strength as we met together two by two or in fellowship with others like the early believers. I really thank God and we thank God together for those who maintained ongoing Bible studies with students or met new Bible students. s. Connie (Maria, Mryvline), m. Faith (Denise, Miao),m. Stephen (Leo, Evening College)  s. John (Eduardo, Legrand ) m. Pierre (Carl, Lily and Joshua) m. Danielle (Ajay, Camille), m. Melissa (Veronique, Elizabeth), s. Vani (Sarah), s. David (Matthew), m. Monique (Gessica, Barbara), m. Grace (Martine, Nairobi) and m. Luke (Daniel).  

We were also encouraged by m. Joseph and Helen Kim’s family. They arrived from in Montreal on June 27th and have been co-working and by faith adapting to the land with their children Esther and Joseph jr. Because they had experience in France UBF they began co-working with s. Philip’s family to evangelize the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM) campus with other shepherds and Bible teachers. God granted s.Phil one new student named Sadias by their invitation mininstry.  

We also thank God for the McGill start up club initiative. In cooperation with SeoKwon Korean Presbyterian Church and especially student leaders Ruth and Sarah we were able to establish a “Foundations” GBS on Monday evenings and an “Evening College” Bible school on Tuesday evenings. We did table fishing, coworkers gave up vacation and lunch breaks time to invite students. Although our club membership was not approved we were inspired to keep up the work at McGill and pray with a sense of faith and risk for Jesus. I thank God for my faithful co-worker m. Melissa. Together we served Nicolas and Veronique with SWS and Psalms Bible study. She also studied with Elizabeth and God helped me to have Bible sharing with Mohammed and a new student Adam. I was really encouraged and by what God did through our fellowship of believers in 2015 by working together. 

3.  HBF Young People & CBF Ministry.  We have a large growing young people`s ministry. It`s wonderful to hear how they contribute to the ministry by using their talents to serve the Sunday, Easter and Christmas services with music and the worship band. They are forming good friendships in God, in general, and many of them share their faith and invite their friends to the SWS and other events. They are served much by Luke jr, s. John, m.Faith, s. David, m. Luke & Grace Hong who prepared Genesis Bible studies, special presentations and generally give them a lot of love, understanding, patience and godly advice in their life and relationships. 

During spring break the girls took a trip to Chicago where there were served and studied about forgiveness by Grace Ahn. They all attended the Canadian HBF Summer Camp called, “Where Your Treasure Is” on August 21-23 at Bishop’s University. After Christmas they had great fellowship when they did a Christian Road Trip to Toronto and were served abundantly by Ryerson and Humber ministries. 

We also thank God for using s. Philip, s. Connie and many of the parents to serve the CBF ministry.  Nathan, Danielle, and Joseph jr.  graduated and several new children are coming. They also studied the book of Judges and had an idol smashing ceremony. They had a Summer Camp at Mt. Tremblant with the awesome theme, “The Promises of God”. s. Philip started a CBF section on our Montreal UBF website. God abundantly blesses their work with many children bringing others to the Easter and Christmas service again this year. 

4. Tyrannus Bible Academies. I thank God for helping us to present the following Bible academies this year. Some were presented to attract new students and some were presented to help our Bible teachers to apply Biblical thinking and response to the problems of our times. The academes were as follows:

• January. Biblical Truth About Humanity: s. John & s. Marcel. 
• February. Disaster/Extinction Scenarios and the Faith of Future/Past:  s. Rita, s. Andrew
• April. Freedom: Marvel or Mirage?:  s. Marcel, s. Ernest & s. John. 
• May. Celebration of Discipline: m. Luke & s. David.
• August. The Future of College Ministry: s. Connie & s. Marcel.
• September. The Problem of Suffering: s. Marcel & s. John.
• October. Fleeting Pleasures and the Pleasures of God: m. Melissa. 

 The Tyrannus Committee members (s. John, s. Marcel, s. Andrew) began a course “Apologetics and Outreach” to improve as servants of the Tyrannus Academies. They made more connections with HBF ministry, the McGill Evening College and had presentations on McGill campus.  

5. Special Guests and co-working. 

We greatly thank Dr. Augustine and Teresa Sohn for their visit on June 2nd. It was very valuable and edifying for our member to be able to have a Q & A session with the president of our UBF Board of Directors. We shared supper, received some news and had that chance to talk, pray and have fellowship with him and s.Teresa.

One week before the 2015 Canadian SBC we hosted the United Worship team for their practices and a couple worship seminars were given. This allowed us to pray for the young people serving the conference with worship music and for Johnny Lee the leader of the worship team. After the summer conference m. Luke’s Hong’s family helped Miso Kim and b. Zheng from Edmonton to visit Montreal before they returned for their flight back home.

On November 21 & 22 we welcomed m. Mark Yang from HQ for Shepherd and Missionary education. We studied the book of Titus together from the point of a gospel-centered life and for a gospel-centered community. 

On November 24th Hannah Kwak from Toronto gave a mission report from her trip to Kyrgyzstan to our HBF youth group. She was accompanied by Mary Hwang from Illinois who presented a Thanksgiving Testimony as well. We really thank them for giving inspiration for short term missions and speaking life into our young people. 

On Sunday December 27 we held a special World Missions Day when m. Samuel H. & Anna Lee shared their testimony and mission report from their last 4 years as missionaries in Zimbabwe. This renewed our spirit to dream about world missions and be witnesses locally in Montreal.

II. Vision and Strategy

• Key Verse. 

While reading pastor Abraham`s message and praying for our co-workers God helped me to see that, even though we have sins, unbelief and weaknesses, we are the church of Jesus and loved by him very much. He is calling us to grow individually and as his church. I was inspired by the way the young Israelites lives were transformed into families of God, workers and worshipers who built up the work of God in Israel. God used them to make Jerusalem, the Holy City. Psalm 122:1 says, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” It is a joyful proclamation to live and work together in worship of God. It gives of a vision of working and worshipping together to build God`s house in Montreal. To bring both French and English speaking students to Jesus and make disciples. 

• Conference and Bible School Plans

• Montreal UBF Summer Bible Conference July 1-3, 2016 Bishop’s University.
• 5 Tyrannus Bible Academies in January, April, August, September & October. 
• HBF Camp 15-18 August, 2015 (tentative) 
• Send 1 or more representatives to June 5th World Mission Report.
• Easter Bible Conference March 25-27, 2016. 

• Ministry Strategy

• Growth of elder team as messengers of God’s Word and responsible stewards.
• United prayer every Friday for campus ministry.
• Growth of young leaders as Bible teachers, servants and conference leadership/stewardship.
• Build membership guidelines/church covenant. 
• Regular fishing on McGill, Concordia, UQAM and Dawson campuses. 
• Advance McGill Club status, rebuild Concordia GBS. 
• Prayer Topics
• To fix our eyes on Jesus and persevere in spreading the gospel.  
• To evangelize McGill, Concordia, UQAM and Dawson College.
• To become a fully bilingual ministry. 
• HBF student to grow in relation with God and each other. 
• To have more 1:1 than SWS attendants.