What I Didn’t Know About the Church Down the Road
Story written by Jaden Neufeld.
Here is the story of two churches, three inspiring people - Max, Ali, Buena - and how they all intersect.
In the summer of 2019, I scanned the dining hall of a campground in White Rock, B.C. looking for a place to sit. I was there to speak for the first session of a youth camp for a church called Fleetwood International Church, a community that gathered about 20 minutes from where I was pastoring at the time. The room was loud and chaotic. Nothing out of the ordinary for a summer camp. I found a seat across from a teenage boy who was different from the majority of the students in the room. He was calm and serene as he picked away at the food on his plate. After asking him a few questions, I found out that his name was Max, and that he had recently moved to Canada. When I asked him what he liked most about living here, he thought for a moment and said, “It’s easier to sleep at night without all the noise.” Puzzled by a response that didn’t include talk of snowy hikes or polite people, I asked a few clarifying questions. I quickly found out that the noise that Max was referring to was missiles touching down in the surrounding city where he once called home. Max was a Syrian refugee who had recently come to Canada with the help of a church called Jesus Way Fellowship. And apparently, he wasn’t the only young refugee in the room.
Max
“We wanted to reach out to the people that belong to nowhere.”
Now how the stories of Jesus Way Fellowship and Fleetwood International Church intertwine, I’ll get to in a few moments. And trust me, it’s worth the wait. But for now, let me tell you about how Max ended up there.
Rewinding the story by a couple of decades, I want to introduce you to a true inspiration. His name is Ali. In the later winter and early spring of 1993, Ali was fasting. It was the month of Ramadan, a holy time of prayer for practicing Muslims, which Ali was at the time. He had fasted during the month of Ramadan his whole life, but this time would be different. This year, Ali encountered Jesus Christ in one of his dreams. The dream was vivid and compelling, so compelling that Ali and his family surrendered their lives to Christ and began following Him. 12 years after that profound conversion moment, Ali started a church with three other families that was called Jesus Way Fellowship (JWF).
Pastor Ali Balandy
To Max, Ali is Pastor Ali.
“We welcome [refugees] and we cover them with love. We knew that this is something that God will use for his purpose”
From the early days of JWF, Pastor Ali and the team made a vow that their community would grow not through Christians transferring from another church to their own, but from new conversions alone. “We wanted to reach out to the people that belong to nowhere,” said Pastor Ali. In 2016, the Canadian Government welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada - people who truly felt they didn’t belong anywhere. This struck a chord in Pastor Ali’s heart. So through City of Refuge, a Sponsorship Agreement Holder, JWF decided to sponsor families to come to Canada. This was the beginning of a trickling effect, where refugee family after refugee family would come to know Jesus and be baptized, ultimately calling JWF their home. From 2016 on, ministry to refugees became the focal point of their mission. “We welcome [refugees] and we cover them with love. We knew that this is something that God will use for his purpose” says Pastor Ali.
Today, the Jesus Way family is around 120 people, with roughly 70% of those people being refugees like Max.
Oh! And I didn’t mention - Pastor Ali volunteers as the senior pastor of JWF, while working a job in I.T. as a Systems Architect. When I asked him about the difficulty of balancing these two roles, Pastor Ali quickly and humbly honored the leadership team of the church. Can you see why I think he is such an inspiration?
Now the story could end here. All of that, in and of itself, is beautiful and soaked in the values of God’s Kingdom. But it gets better. Why was Max, a refugee connected through JWF, at the youth retreat of Fleetwood International Church (FIC)? Well in the early days of JWF, they were kicked out of the clubhouse of a townhouse complex and it was FIC that opened their doors for this budding community to gather.
“FIC has been so generous with us - there are no words for me to express how kind they are.” - Pastor Ali
“We are seeing that there is a huge harvest.”
FIC and JWF began to run a number of ministries in partnership with one another, one of them being their youth ministries. Here enters the last person I want to introduce you to - Buena. Buena is the youth pastor for Pursu1tyouth, the youth ministry of FIC and the one who invited me to speak. It is a diverse group that I didn’t know was really two churches working together and a hub of healing for refugees like Max. Buena, who considers herself a “big sister” to these refugee youth, can share story upon story of refugees hearing the Gospel for the first time and coming to know Jesus, with their families ultimately following suit. Max, for example, came to know Jesus, and his aunt, mom and uncle shortly thereafter. In Buena’s words, “We are seeing that there is a huge harvest.” And they are seeing it because they decided to partner with a church in need.
Pastor Buena Tupe
“God was doing a great thing in my area, using some great churches, and it wasn’t on my radar.”
Now there is one last thing I want to highlight about this youth ministry. I mentioned above that they are diverse. And I wrote that very intentionally. According to Buena, at the same youth camp I spoke at just a few years later, there were 15 (or more) different countries represented. She herself is Filipino-American, and the students she pastors are Indigenous, Mexican, African, Asian, Arabic, Kurdish and the list goes on. Now that kind of community of course comes with unique challenges, but it profoundly echoes the Apostle John’s words about the redeemed Church - “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9)
And this is what baffles me. These two churches in humble partnership, with inspiring evangelistic convictions, where the displaced were finding healing, with a youth ministry that looked a lot like Heaven was just 20 minutes away from me …
… and I had no idea.
God was doing a great thing in my area, using some great churches, and it wasn’t on my radar.
There are many important lessons and reminders that might have surfaced reading this story about Max, Ali and Buena. Perhaps one of them is that God is always doing much in His Church, and often right under our noses. And in the same way that was true for me, it is likely true for you. Who knows what the Lord is doing in and through the churches around you right now; stories that if you knew them, would widen your view of His Kingdom and fill you with hope.
God is on the move in our nation and we don’t need to look far to see it. It reminds me of the prophet Isaiah, sharing the heart of the Lord “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
My simple prayer in closing is this “Father, would that be true in Canada, and would you help us see it. In Jesus name, Amen.”
Thank you to Buena Tupe and Ali Balandy for sharing this story.