A Conversation with Canadian Pastors

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snider, and we have a special episode. We are actually in Nova Scotia, Canada, so far eastern side toward the

Maritimes. And with me today are two men who are pastors in the region,

Dave Storey and Hugh Morrison. And our church has been connected with both of these men and their ministry in different ways.

Dave, how many years ago did we get in contact with each other? Probably about nine years ago.

Yeah, and then Hugh, I met you probably about seven years ago then, maybe at Dave's.

Yeah, I met you at Dave's. When we were doing that men's study. Yeah. And we're here at a cabin.

It's a really nice, quiet place for a theological retreat or kind of an intensive.

For three days, we're looking at the theme of union with Christ and how Paul teaches that theme, and then how does he apply it in his own pastoring, as we see that in the epistles.

So we've asked these two gentlemen if they would give us a little time, and they've been gracious to give us some of their free time, which we don't have much of.

And just going to shoot a couple of basic questions. And so one question that we'll ask, and we'll start with Hugh, because Dave jumps in there more like me, and Hugh's a little quieter.

So we're going to make Hugh go first, so that he can't get left out. So Hugh, if someone came to you and said, you know,

I'm a part of a new church plant, and you've been a pastor for some time, and you've been involved with other church plants.

You know, if they were to say to you, what are some of the more important things that a young church needs to be aware of, or things that we need to make, you know, to give priority to?

What is essential in a church? How would you advise them? Well, I guess

I'd say the first thing is have a prayer meeting. And I find a lot of churches, and not just a token prayer meeting, but the felt need of calling upon God, and especially in our society today, that we need the

Lord, and we need to call upon Him. And we need to be serious about prayer, and make it a priority.

In our church at home, we have a Wednesday night prayer meeting. And we don't allow a lot of, you know, requests, because requests can take up the whole time.

So we have five, ten minutes, and we spend a full hour in prayer. And then even in our

Sunday morning service, and our Sunday evening service, we take time for prayer as a congregation.

And because we need the Lord. So that is, that'd be one aspect I'd say. And it's probably a more difficult thing to maintain and keep central.

But I believe it's essential. So that'd definitely be one. Yeah. So Dave, if a young person came and asked you the same question, you know, what would be some of the things that you feel like these are essential in a church?

Yeah, I would definitely agree with what Hugh just said. But I'd also add to that too, and I know Hugh would agree anyhow. Number one is knowing who

God is. And also a real clear understanding on what the gospel is, and man's need.

And I think when we see who God is, and the ruined state of man, the need for Christ is a lot greater.

And so what we would do is I would actually write down lists, and I would start going visiting houses. And I'd write down a list of a bunch of names, and I'd start praying for those names on a daily basis.

And sometimes morning, noon, and night praying for them. Then I'll go back and do repeat visits over and over. And so just repeat evangelism, just keep going back over and over.

And literally, as I read, I think by Spurgeon quite a few years ago, like literally wearying them with your coming. And going back with the gospel, and then go back home and pray for them and do it.

And eventually God's, you know, we do our responsibility, and then God's going to save His people. Another thing that I think is important is strong preaching.

I find a lot of people today, there's a lot of teaching, but very little preaching of the Word of God, exhorting people in the

Word. And so that teaching is, you know, more,

I guess it's less, you know, kind of pointing the finger and say you and where things need to change.

It's more information, and you go away with thoughts, but not necessarily do you feel exhorted or convicted.

And I just think, I think we need both. I think every church needs preaching and teaching. And the other one thing

I'd say. So, Dave, now your church, like you, has been involved with a number of church plants.

And I know that, you know, you have kind of a system that you work with, with training up young men in the church.

But then also, as you plan to work, you keep in contact with them.

Yes. Which I think is the unusual part. You know, there are a lot of churches that are raising up young men within them.

And as Hugh mentioned when we were just talking about it previous to this, some young men that he's working with.

And as they, you know, as they progress and we see there's a giftedness there, there's an earnestness, a life that matches what the

Bible says, an ability to explain what the Bible teaches.

And so you see all those things that are encouraging, and they feel called to preach. And so that's not unusual.

But I think one thing that's unusual is how you have kept touch with men that you guys send out.

So kind of give us a general kind of explanation of that. Well, I would strive for that.

And like I can just use Corey Betts, for example, in our Frederickson Church. And, you know, he came into it with us.

And so I said to Corey, why don't you consider taking this plant? Lisa and I, my wife and I, I had driven over and I started this group that some of these people in the past I had led to the

Lord. And so into it a bit, I said, Corey, why don't you pray, consider about you being the pastor of this new church plant.

And so he did that. And so eventually, like it'd be Corey doing one and I do one, and then it'd be

Corey doing two and then me doing one and then Corey doing three. And then, you know, if there was a need for help or anything like that, you know,

I would step in and try to help where I could. Or it's just say, if I was you, I would prayerfully consider this.

But he's done a great job, too. So but I just like I enjoy being involved in it. And I want to see them have success for the

Lord and for his namesake. So but you've continued to meet with Corey, especially in the early years.

Oh, yes, we continue meeting and prayed together and shared, you know, even problems that would be going on in our churches and prayed about those and how would we handle that.

And so we just continued to do that. And we still continue to talk about those things.

And yeah, and so that's been encouraging. And he's as I said, he's been a great brother to work with.

Yeah, I remember the first time that I visited Canada and stayed with you that you told me that your normal week, of course, when

I was there, your schedule was different, but you would normally spend a little time each week would be dedicated to visiting the men that planted the churches.

So weekly time with them. Yeah. And then there's pastoring and then there's sermon preparation.

But then there's evangelism door to door in a community where many people don't go to church, unlike where we live.

And I mean, Dave, you know, the mercy missions of the church, you know, in the sense of like, you know, long cold winters, you guys cut a lot of wood for widows.

Yeah. And it's not just the widows in the church. No, just to whoever needs a hand. And it's just an open door to share the gospel.

You do a lot of work to provide that for people in the community they can't provide for themselves.

And then, yeah, and then you use it for the gospel. So both of your churches are involved in Christian school.

Yeah, Christian school. I think, too, being personal with people, not just coming in like a Jehovah's Witness, you know, but just engaging the person and introduce yourself and just kind of being friendly with them and then just slowly start injecting the gospel in, you know, talking about did they have any spiritual background, you know, and going from there to what do they think about God, you know, and the

Bible, and then once they say what they say, then I can come back in and say, well, this is what the Bible says about who

God is. And right there, we're right into who God is and who they are. And, you know, like I'll actually just read right through Romans 3, 10 to 17 or Jeremiah 17, 9, and just say this is what the

Bible says about us all, you know. And so we need a redeemer, as the last lesson said.

Now, how big is Doak Town? It's really not, it should just have been, it should have been named

Doak. It's just Miramichi. There's no town. Yeah, Miramichi Valley Church, you know, so that's what it is.

In the area. Well, I think there was like 900 and some people, but now they've, the town's expanded out, so I think,

I can't say for sure, but I think they're calling it like 1 ,200 people now or something like that. But there's kind of like the main road and then houses are just built off the road.

Yeah, it is. So it's the Miramichi River Valley, so like Route 8 it's called. And there's other little routes off of it too, like little side roads.

And we have people from all those, a lot of those roads who attend our church. And so, yeah, we just go out to all those roads and we just, like I said, we make friendly with the people.

You know, if someone's got firewood they need to get done. You know, it's something I grew up doing logging with my dad, so it comes pretty easy to us.

And we have, you know, industrial wood splitters. We can do all that work for them.

We could do for them in three hours, but it would probably take them a long time to do. And then we talk to them about the

Lord and what Christ has done for us. Yeah, I mean, in Dovetown everybody knows you.

Pretty well, yeah. Yeah. They're probably one way or the other.

One way or the other, yeah. So Hugh, on the island there in Cape Breton, you know, when you're in a community that is not particularly keen on, you know, being talked to about Christ and everyone wouldn't say, hey,

I'm already Christian. I'm already there with you. I completely agree. How have you found, you know, what have you found helpful for reaching out, for evangelism, for, you know, for finding a way to get into the people's lives with the gospel?

Yeah. Yeah, nobody would say they believe what we believe. Yeah. There'd be nobody.

One of the things I have for a 10 -year period, I wrote in the local paper. We have a paper that has over 4 ,000 people home readership.

And a lot of people actually who leave Cape Breton get that paper and subscribe to it. So for 10 years,

I wrote an article in that paper. And it actually, the first article

I wrote, a lady in Pleasant Bay was born again. And, yeah, she started to go to Pierce Bible study and church.

But door -to -door is probably the main way. We have gospel meetings with Dave and with others, usually a couple of times a year.

We have a series of gospel meetings and invite people. But things in the year, like we have an evening service. And for periods of time, we have like once a month, we'd take our evening service.

And like at Christmas, everybody, people would bring stuff to make like a gift basket.

And then on that Sunday evening, we'd just go out and distribute, like however many we put together.

Valentine's, we put together like, you know, a basket for families of chocolate or whatever.

And we'd always like put the tract and something about the message. March break, we'd do like a movie package night, popcorn and pop for families.

And these are all people outside of our church. And then we'd put like, you know, one of the movies,

Courageous, or the, you know, Kendrick Brother movies in it. And so, or, you know, in strawberry season, pick strawberries and then just go and distribute baskets of strawberries to homes.

Things like that. But, you know, probably door -to -door is one of the main ways we do that.

And we just have an invitation to our church. And we're kind of doing it a bit more systematically right now with some of the interns and teaching them about door -to -door.

But just in a kind of, it's a little more non -threatening than going up, just inviting someone to church.

And then, you know, we're here inviting somebody. So people don't mind that. And then, well, we're also talking with people about the

Lord. And then we see where it goes from there. Usually we leave a track. We've given probably a dozen

Bibles or 10 Bibles away in the last month and a half and hitting different sections around us.

So if a young man came to you, this will be my final question for you both. If a young man came to you and said he felt called to preach and, you know, so he was going to be, maybe he was going to go to school and, you know, he wondered, is there anything you would say to him to advise him in those early days?

Well, what I would do is more than even say is I would allow him to come along with us and not be an elder, but kind of like see what it would be like to be one and even in our meetings and things like that and take him out evangelizing.

Like, for example, Tim, you know, people like that who's with us now, so we go out, evangelize, and give them responsibilities.

And when they get in hard situations, you know, it really gives them, it gives you an opportunity to see how they're going to respond in a hard situation.

And I think also too is teaching them, you know, that we need to pray, that we have compassion on the people we're talking to and to show the love of Christ to them and to, you know, that it needs to be, everything that we're doing needs to be gospel -centered.

And so that's kind of what I do. And I guess Tim's been working with us now and he's an incredible young man too.

He's got great gifts there. So I guess just taking them and working with them and mentoring them, and I think it's the best way.

I think evangelism sometimes is better caught than it is taught. Yeah, yeah.

That's probably true of most of the aspects of the Christian life. Yeah, I would say, yeah, the same thing.

I mean, even like preaching, teaching somebody to preach, like some of the guys, meeting with them and going through that and then giving them opportunities to preach and then having that critiqued even by some of the other young guys and then meeting with them afterward about it, visiting with them and praying with them because I find,

I don't know, a lot of, even biographies, recently I'm giving biographies.

Yeah, I noticed some of your guys were reading them. It was like they had no idea about these lives.

I mean, even for myself, I'm reading Hudson Taylor again for the first time, the double volume, and it's like food for my soul.

Yeah. And I find too, like even there you talk about these young guys, people wanting to go with him on mission, and they laid it out what it was because they didn't want people beginning and then one, causing trouble on the field or then just leaving.

And I think today, I mean, I heard a statistic once that in North America, it was like 60 % of those who are going to the pastor or church planting after two to three years are no longer there.

I mean, we just experienced that in Mary Gray, the prosperity gospel guy coming. He lasted a year.

And I think, yeah, we're in a very secular society and it's not going to be welcome, come on in.

I've reached in people. I mean, people get to know you and you're doing things, but it definitely takes, like Jesus said, others have done the hard work and you're going to reap.

It's hard work to reach into a community that doesn't want the gospel.

Yeah. Hugh, in light of what you just said about the difficulties of ministering, really ministering, how would you encourage churches to pray for their pastor?

Well, one of the things I'd say and said it to people, like I had definite people

I knew who were prayerful, specifically praying.

Those are the people I would go to with things and I'd send out, let's say, an email or whatever if we were having gospel meetings or if we were going through a difficult time and I would have a group of people who

I knew and took prayer seriously and I'd rather five of them than kind of just generally throwing out prayer requests.

But for marriage and that, because that is one area where Satan is attacking.

I mean, just what came out in the convention down south and hundreds of pastors' names. So, obviously, that's under attack and we're in a loose moral society.

And so I would say for your personal life with the internet and pornography, accountability, and then your marriage.

I mean, if you're intact and your marriage is intact. And I think too with your children, to be constantly training your children, instructing them in the way they should go.

And that's our first ministry right there, our family. And then everything else flows out of that. I find too a lot of like, even when we're talking about young guys or whatever, there's a lot of passivity and there's a lot of undisciplined today.

And those are two areas where there needs to be instruction and leading them in.

And we're doing that, even just to get up at a certain time to be in the word and prayer.

And then, oh, you have to go to bed at a certain time. We're in a very undisciplined age.

Yeah, it's different than the one we grew up in. Like everybody was up working in the woods early. And like I said, guys are staying up late, playing video games and watching

TV, so they're sleeping in. Yeah, so their whole discipline, they need to, like 1 Timothy 4, 7, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

Yeah. Yeah, I think a disciplined and godly life just all the way around. Yeah. When I say with Dave, I make sure

I'm up early. I got to be up before Dave. So when he comes downstairs,

I'm like, Dave, I've been praying three or four hours, Dave. Where have you been? 4 .30.

Dabbing your chin -ups. Yeah, I did my chin -ups, but not enough. I say, maybe get your sweatpants on.

No, that's right. I don't wear my sweatpants. Well, guys, so good to see you.

And to be with you in the churches up here, always, I find it particularly encouraging in a very convicting way, but helpful, and always good to be able to be of any service to the churches here.

Yeah, you're a great encouragement to me, personally, and to Hugh, I know, and also to Waldburg Churches, and the people definitely love you and look forward to you coming.

Yeah, they're kind to me. So thanks for being willing to be in front of the camera. I know that's not your favorite thing.