By Pastor David Fields
Summit Drive Church in Kamloops, British Columbia
On the corner of my desk, I have a stack of baptismal testimonies – twenty-one of them – that I rescued from beside the tank after the happy cheers, hugs, and joyous chatter faded from the sanctuary after the service. Some testimonies are handwritten and others printed. One is nearly illegible due to a large tearstain, as the man from the Philippines read his story with both grief for what had been and joy for this fresh new reality in Christ.
Some represented stories of those “born-and-raised” in Christian homes (two were my own sons!), while many others were recent coming-to-Jesus-as-adult stories – each story indelibly stamped, in a unique and beautiful way, with the Spirit’s work.
One young woman, reading with her Persian accent, told her story of a miraculous healing from cancer in 2015 after calling out to Jesus. She had been given a Bible by her brother, who had been sentenced to death for his Christian faith. Fortunately, while out of custody, he was able to flee the country. As she read the Gospels, her heart was softening to Jesus.
But it was in Canada where she had the freedom to dig into her questions. As we sat in Booster Juice one spring afternoon, I realized the level of intellectual rigor in her wrestling. Perhaps it was the Spirit who prompted me to search up, of all things, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 (say that five times fast). We talked through what it means that God is, in very nature, Love – the eternal community of Father, Son, and Spirit, each pouring themselves out in humility for the sake of the other in joyful delight. God, three times over. I’ve never seen someone burst into tears while reading a theological treatise quite like she did that day.
Last year, we were preparing to launch a Sunday evening service to create more space in our services, bringing our total services to three. At one interest night, I drew on my love for surfing to talk about a wave of the Spirit’s work we were preparing to catch. It’s very difficult to quantify the Spirit’s work, of course. But a wave of people coming to faith in Jesus or re-engaging a commitment to Jesus and his Church is something tangible we can see. We launched that service in February of 2025, and though it’s not a massive group who meets in that community, when I compared the average in-person attendance for the same period in 2024 and 2025 (January–September), we have seen a 22 percent increase overall. Our response? We want to paddle hard into that wave, being faithful to Jesus and his ways, and continue to ride what God is up to in our neighbourhood.
Our thanks to British Columbia Baptist Association Executive Minister Dave Mohr for passing this story along to us.