Gary Smith and his 11-year-old son, Caleb, tooled down the Trans-Canada Highway in their rented Toyota on a winter’s day. They were in the middle of a 12-hour, 600-mile road trip from Quebec to Prince Edward Island when reality hit the 41-year-old missionary and he suddenly started to cry.
Gary Smith, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, rides a ferry with the skyline of Halifax, Novia Scotia, in the background.“What’s going on, Daddy?” asked an alarmed Caleb, the oldest of Gary and Sue Smith’s four children. “What’s happening?”
Through his tears, Smith asked his son, “Caleb, do you realize that in all of these towns, cities and villages we’re passing by, there are no Christian churches to tell the people about the gospel? There are no Sunday school classes for kids. There’s nothing like you’ve known all your life.”
As he looks back now, Smith thinks that’s when Caleb finally got it – realizing why his daddy was gone from home so much. “He and I stopped and prayed together for those towns, cities and villages,” recalls Smith, “and it was a precious time for just the two of us.”
It’s a fact, Smith said, that some 1,000 communities in Quebec – spread across hundreds of miles – have no evangelical church at all.
The Smiths are national missionaries for the North American Mission Board and the Canadian National Baptist Convention, responsible for planting churches all across Canada.
Smith, a native Kansan, realizes he’s not in Kansas anymore when it comes to the difficult challenge of planting new churches and sharing the gospel amidst a vastly “lost” Canada.
“In eastern Canada, there’s a spiritual void,” he says. “If you’re under 40 years old and in Quebec, you probably don’t know who Jesus Christ is. I’ve had some people literally tell me, ‘Oh, that’s a curse word.’ That’s all they know about Jesus. And this is where we are trying to evangelize, witness and plant churches.
“It can be a hard place, but it gives us an incredible opportunity,” said Smith. “Can you imagine the sweetness of sharing Christ with someone who is hearing for the very first time? They have no concept of Jesus. They’re a blank slate.”
Smith says only 8 percent of all Canadians are connected to an evangelical church, compared to 28 percent in the United States.
Smith says sharing the gospel in Canada often calls for creative tactics in lieu of traditional “hard-sell” methods. In a country where so many know of Jesus Christ only as a “curse word,” tangibly reflecting the love and compassion of Christ proves more successful.
Smith’s church-planting role for NAMB and the Canadian National Baptist Convention is much bigger than himself – to the extent that he partners with fellow missionary Jeff Christopherson in Toronto, and oversees volunteer church-planting “advocates” stationed in other Canadian provinces.
“Toronto is the most culturally diverse city on the planet,” according to Christopherson. “In 2001, over 50 percent of the Toronto population was born outside Canada. By 2016, there will be more than 1 million Mandarin-speaking Chinese from mainland China living in the Greater Toronto area. But 95 percent of them will be unchurched.
Gary and Sue Smith“People don’t realize it, but there are more Italians in Toronto than any place else in the world outside of Italy. You go to Brampton, a city of 400,000, and there are 90,000 Sikhs there. There are 50,000 Bengalis in Toronto.”
Christopherson said Toronto is also Canada’s headquarters for the country’s major corporations, media outlets, the Canada Stock Exchange and the major banks – making the city a combined New York City and Los Angeles. As such, Toronto impacts the rest of Canada.
“In Toronto, we need to see an explosion,” Smith said. “We don’t have enough people, resources, or staff. It seems impossible to reach Toronto. But like the Old Testament says, ‘I’ll make a way where there seems to be no way.’?”
And what does the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering do for church planters in Canada?
“I’m thinking of a guy in New Brunswick,” said Smith. “His is a dynamic church plant, supported by the Annie offering. They’ve led over 200 people to Christ in this one church plant. And that’s because of the Annie offering that supports that church plant.
“I believe a church-planting movement can arise out of Canada that would turn the tide for North America.”