Just a short time ago, we were celebrating a huge milestone, working for the International Mission Board (IMB), for most of the past 20 years. We had been living in Moscow, Russia, only minutes away from Red Square, had learned to speak Russian, and were anticipating many more years of fruitful ministry across Russia, when we were asked to pray about something critical. The IMB asked everyone over 50 (I had just turned 50) to pray about taking an early retirement. At first, both Jeanne and I were a bit annoyed to be honest. Why pray about this? We love Russian culture and people and were very content in our life and ministry there, even though learning Russian was going to be a lifelong battle! And we are missionaries for life—through and through. But in the end, we earnestly asked God if it was time to return home.
Early one Sunday morning, I was bolted out of bed with a word buzzing through my mind—jubilee. Immediately I went to the Bible and began to read from Leviticus 25, which is all about the Year of Jubilee. God called His people once every 50 years to return to their homeland, to live in freedom and obedience, to treat others right, to live without debts, and to celebrate the goodness of God in their lives. For the next three hours, I was glued to the Bible, reading every reference I could find dealing with the idea of jubilee.
The Lord also led me that morning to Ezekiel 37 about the valley of dry bones. "Therefore prophesy (proclaim) and say to them: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel (home). Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open up your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD" (Ezekiel 37:12-14, NIV).
So with complete conviction, Jeanne and I both understood that the Lord was calling us home to Canada, and that we were called to continue our missionary journey in Canada and proclaim the good news that Jesus still saves. He takes spiritually dead people, and breathes new life into them! Further, we became convinced that the Lord was calling us home to the Fraser Valley to start a new church, Movement Church. We were once again called to move, though this time, we knew it would be to finally land and plant deep roots.
The approach we have taken in planting Movement Church is to once again aim at a university community, namely the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV). We live a couple of blocks away from UFV in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Further, we have landed on a multiplying house church approach. Why? Property and rent is outragous in our area. And in multiplying house churches, the clear focus is evangelism and training those we lead to Jesus to do the same—focus on evangelism and start more house churches.