In this episode we chat with both Andrew and Vanessa Hoyes about church planting in Montreal, moving to a new country, the family dynamics in a church planters home and so much more! Check it out!
In this episode we chat with both Andrew and Vanessa Hoyes about church planting in Montreal, moving to a new country, the family dynamics in a church planters home and so much more! Check it out!
Transcript of Podcast by Multiply Network
Created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-
making communities across Canada
2018 – Andrew and Vanessa Hoyes
Paul Fraser: Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast, a podcast created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-making communities across Canada.
Hi there. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast. My name is Paul Fraser, the host of the Multiply Network podcast. We so appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. You could be doing a lot of other things. You know that. I know that. But you are deciding to listen to this so we do appreciate that.
We love telling Canadian church planting stories and this month’s focus is on Quebec. We have a couple of new friends to the podcast; Andrew and Vanessa Hoyes from Australia. They have been in Canada for 3 years. They planted Resurgent Church 3 years ago. They've already got a couple of campuses; the church is growing. They’ve got lots of church planting experience. But moving half-way across the world is significant, and we talked with them a little bit about that and their decision to come and plant in Montreal, and the challenges.
You are really going to enjoy what they have to share. Their interview is coming up right now.
We are so excited to have back-to-back podcasts, with great friends from Australia, Andrew and Vanessa Hoyes. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. It is so cool to be here, honestly, it’s great to be part of this. And it’s great to be in Canada, too.
Q. Yes. We’re going to talk about that. It’s good to have both of you on the podcast today. So why don’t you introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about you, your family, where you are from and how you ended up in Canada?
A. That’s a great question. I might get Vanessa to start with that one.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Andrew and Vanessa, we are forty-two, forty-three, Andrew forty-two and me, and 4 gorgeous girls. So we have a range in age from fifteen right down to 8. We have been entrusted with daughters. We have been in Canada 3 ½ years. We arrived in February, 2015. It was the coldest winter on record here in Quebec for a hundred years.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. There was a blizzard for a whole month, like literally. Sad story. The first 3 days I opened up the door to go out and get groceries. We didn’t have a car for 9 months. We had just landed. We didn’t know Montreal at all. We knew not one soul in the city. I opened up the door for the first 3 days, shut it and said, “Have we got enough food?” I was going to have to walk out in a blizzard and get lunch and dinner. Thankfully we had enough for 3 days. It was crazy.
Q. Sorry about that. That is Canada weather. We do apologize.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. You apologize all the time. (Laughter)
Q. And that is another thing that we do very well and that is something we don’t apologize for!
Andrew Hoyes:
A. (Laughter) Yes. We figured that out too.
Q. Good. So you are from Australia. You’ve got a beautiful family and all of a sudden you show up on our radar screen in Montreal. Why don’t you tell us how you ended up there?
Andrew Hoyes:
A. That’s a great story. Long story short, about thirteen or fourteen years ago I really felt the call of God to plant a church somewhere. We were in a great healthy church called Hillsong Church in Australia. We were sort of released to go and see what was on our heart in regard to that. So, I’m a kind of a red-light-green-light guy. I’ve always had a heart for France. My dad was part French so we thought maybe God was leading us there. We went to France and really felt like every door shut on us in France. We actually came back quite disappointed. So I really waited on the Lord. We were happy where we were. We loved what we were doing, but we felt this God-call.
Then, a pastor from Canada, Leon Fontaine, came and preached at the church and said how they needed more churches in Canada. So I looked at my wife and said, “Let’s go to see what is happening in Canada.” We sold our old car. We were younger then and just had one child. We came to the west coast and when we were there we really felt the Lord speak to us about planting a church in another state in Australia. We had always felt it would be somewhere on the other side of the world. It was strange. I love Australia, but I personally have always felt like a foreigner in my own country and always felt God called me somewhere else.
So I was hugely disappointed. I was in a beach area. I liked the beach, but I’m not a beach guy. I’m actually more of a city guy. So we went and did that for 10 years and got the blessing of our pastor, Pastor Brian. We started 3 campuses, a church well over a thousand or so, campuses overseas. And then we always felt tied to this dream God would call us somewhere else on the other side of the world one day. Ten years on, we felt the release of the Holy Spirit. Okay, you did what I asked you to do. I’m going to give you your dream. But for whatever reason, Montreal leapt into my heart. We had to look it up.
This is going to sound ridiculous but we thought it was in Brazil! We never really knew where Montreal was. So we looked it up and it was like God had taken us from our first 2 trips - to France and Canada - and brought it together into the one place. Every statistic we saw was negative. Vanessa cried about that. I got excited about that. And we felt to offer our church back to the church we had planted from, which is Hillsong Church. (It is now Hillsong Gold Coast) And we started from scratch with our kids and about 9 people over the course of 6 months who came to help us plant.
But to start again and this would be long term. We were learning French and a whole bunch of other things. God has been great and we really believe this is how we are equipping our lives to changing the statistics here in Quebec and Montreal.
Q. I absolutely love the fact that God drops a city in your heart but you don’t know what country it is in. But you just know you are supposed to be there.
So, Vanessa why don’t you unpack the process you guys worked through as a family. Because kids are involved in this, and they are involved in planting; they are involved in moving. You are uprooting them from something they are super familiar with. I think there are a lot of planters out there who have kids and are wondering ‘how did you process this in a healthy way?’.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. For sure. My tears were the heart of a mother and that immediate thought of ‘what is the cost of this?’. We were so healthy where we were. We had 3 kids under 3 when we planted. When the church we planted hit a thousand people, so like they were growing with that over those years, you know. The little ones ---
Wel,l we also needed to keep this really close to our hearts at first and so once we were starting to negotiate it more, we actually came for 5 days first. Andrew brought me to Montreal and God spoke to us in May. He brought me to Montreal in July - because he’s smart, so he brought me in summer to Montreal.
We came home and we decided to tell just our eldest because she was pre-teen and so that age, that pre-teen age, just about to hit high school. We had just bought our dream house. We were nearly forty. We just registered her for high school so all these big, big deals.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes. A new building at our church ---
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Oh, the new building.
Andew Hoyes:
A. The campus.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. We decided to talk to her. And to be honest, we trusted her relationship the she had with the Lord in the way we said to her, “We want you to pray about this. We believe God has spoken. The details are unfolding, but we would like you involved in this process”. So, she actually took a few days, and one night I was tucking her into bed, and she said, “I believe this is what God wants us to do.”
Q. Wow.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. So, yes, we involved her. I’ll talk super-quick. The others were like, ‘Oooh, we’re going to do this’. It was more pump-factor. Right? They were a little young. They trust you. Where are we going? They had two questions.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Is it close to Disneyland?
Q. Yes.
So what was the answer? What did you tell them? We don’t know?
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Yes, closer than Australia is to Disneyland.
Q. That is actually true and that is a fair comment. Well done. Well played, friends.
So that’s such a cool story because kids are such a big part of ministry, family. We say it over and over again; family is so important. Yet we don’t involve them in any of the decision making. It is something my wife and I have done for every single one of my jobs is that hey, dad is thinking of making a change. What do you guys think? How is this going to impact? They asked good questions so I think involving them is wise. Great advice.
So living in Australia, a post-Christian nation, obviously we hear in Canada – I haven’t personally seen it – a move of God is happening there. Beautiful things. We see of course all the different Movements coming out of Australia. So, coming to Canada now, what are some of the things you learned there in Australia that are helping you here in Canada in certainly probably our most post-Christian province?
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Absolutely. One of the statistics we heard when we were first being led here is that per capita, more people go to church in Pakistan than they do in Quebec. So that’s huge. So, I think Australia, seeing what God has done over the last twenty-five years - I got saved and became a Christian twenty-five years ago at Hillsong Church. So, I’ve only ever been in 3 churches; the one I got saved in and the 2 I have pioneered and pastored. I have travelled a fair bit, so I have seen some expression of Hillsong around the world. But really Pastor Brian, Pastor Phil Pringle with C-3, Pastor Andrew Evans, like there have been some key --- Pastor Frank, Pastor Brian’s father -- there have been some key pioneers with the Movement in Australia. And, of course, the many other Movements that are around as well, so many helping (?) in Australia, that I think twenty-five years ago what we have now in Australia people probably wouldn’t believe that was possible. So I think for us, being people of faith, believing and trusting God that He wants to do greater than He’s ever done before, we are just sort of carrying that spirit here. And maybe at times seen as a little bit arrogant, what I call godly arrogance, but choosing to not necessarily listen to everything that is being done or can’t be done here with grace and a smile, saying to people who have carried the burden over the last couple of decades that we’re so grateful and thankful for, but coming in like a blank canvas going ‘okay, there are some things I actually don’t want to know - I just want to believe God and bring that faith here and see what he can do and learn along the way’. So I think that Australian spirit as well, I think does help us.
Q. One of the things that Ben from Avant Life, last month, said is one of the things that people don’t know about the move of God in Australia that a lot of New Zealanders were missionaries to Australia that helped started Movements.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes.
Q. He kind of brought up there’s a heart in Australia that is growing for Canada. He even said ‘we need to build a highway, you know, a bridge to get Australians to come plant churches in Canada because there’s a faith, there’s pioneering, there’s an expectation that God is going to do something in a post-Christian context and that there’s hope’. I think for the Canadian pastors, and probably for those like you mentioned in Quebec, they feel weary. They have been carrying the burden for a long time and they are tired. So sometimes our past experience actually dictates what we’re feeling about the future. But I just love the idea that you’re bringing that fresh perspective and to see what God is doing there.
So you planted Resurgent Church. I’m curious. The name. Vision. What was tied to that? Either of you can answer that. What is significant about Resurgent for you?
Andrew Hoyes:
A. I think each time I have planted a church we have tried to get the Word of the Lord around it for the name, all of those things, the connection point for it. And in my last service at my previous church which was called Regeneration Church, one of what I call our apostolic oversights and friend, Pastor Steve Penny, who is from Australia and preaches around the world and has a prophetic teaching apostolic gift, his message last Sunday was the difference between a resurgence and revival. So I felt like it just dropped straight into my spirit: Resurgent. And then I went and looked at it, looked at what it meant and then - I’m a website sort of guy, I like to name names sort of guy - so I bought every domain name around it. I thought this was for us. John 1:13 about Jesus coming and embracing truth, one of our signature scriptures. So that’s sort of how it came to pass.
It means a revitalization; a reawakening; a renaissance - and that was also the part of the history of Quebec with the Catholic Church originally was them starting a New Jerusalem, a New France in Quebec, starting a renaissance of the gospel of grace. We didn’t know that at the time and it just fit.
Q. That’s amazing. So why don’t you tell us a little bit how the church is going? You started, 3 years ago was it?
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes, 3 years ago as of the 20th of September.
Q. Yes. So how is it going today? Tell us what is in your heart. I know because I have been following you on Instagram - you have interns that come and help you and a leadership team. Why don’t you unpack a little bit about what is happening in your church these days?
Vanessa will answer that.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. We came over here. We brought our family of 6 plus 9 Aussies. Those Aussies, we thought they could stay up to 2 years with us; young people as well as a revelation of semi-retired couples that we had always raised, in the last decade - People who, we’ve always said, when you are in that season, you are not retiring, you are re-firing with the gospel. So they all paid their way. Couples like that were incredible culture carriers. But Quebec was very tough for them because of the language barrier to work in Quebec, actually work in Quebec. But they carried culture. We just, literally, did social media, Facebook videos, launched strategy, built a team, launched really strong. I think we had like ---
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Four hundred three people at our launch.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. That was amazing 3 years ago. We were downtown, reaching downtown, but people were driving from all across Montreal, like 4 million people. They were driving through all that traffic – the crazy traffic here. So we ended up at the end of our first year deciding to actually move and begin a second location in the suburbs so that we could reach families in the English-speaking pocket; a million English-speaking people in Montreal. And we decided to come out west and launch a morning service and then keep a downtown service in the evening that was reaching hundreds of students as well as young professionals downtown.
So we did that. And in our third year in the two locations, we have just gone to 2 morning services, so that has expanded in the morning, and we have started a mid-week service on a Wednesday night - A little bit less of the seeker-friendly type Sunday service and a little bit more for a move of the Holy Spirit, teaching people about Holy Spirit. We call them revive nights. Teaching to that, prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and we just knew it was something we wanted to do more significantly and we run training courses on that same night where our interns pray for our needs as well.
Q. So fantastic, just in a three-year window, I’m sure God surprises you all the time with the blessing and the growth. You take a step of faith and bring the right leaders with you - and over and over I hear from church planters of the faithfulness of God, bringing the right people at the right time.
So I’ve got lots of questions but the one that I want to jump in on because I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately - We tend to want to have our Sunday gatherings to be very guest-friendly, which I think is brilliant. I think it is absolutely brilliant. But we don’t create other spaces for people to take the next step, you know. You talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, places for gifts to be developed and released. Kind of talk a little bit about what led you to the Wednesday night service. How did that birth in your heart?
Andrew Hoyes:
A. That is a great question. For us there is so much you can’t do on a Sunday; one because of time, two because these people turn up trusting you every week and we want to keep a consistency that people know every week, without some tweaking and some creativity, they know pretty much every week what they are going to get so they’re not sort of embarrassed if something happens and they have brought their next door neighbour. So we are very strategic in that. So there’s so much we can’t cover because of that.
We’re doing a series on heaven in November in our church, which we want to give people a theology, for want of a better word, but creatively showing how great the promise of heaven is. But with heaven you sort of have to teach on hell as well and I just don’t think people will bring their friends, that aren’t Christ followers, to a message on Hell necessarily. So what we have created is this mid-week space to be able to have the expression of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, all the great gifts of the Spirit in a safe environment that anyone could come to but would encourage people to forewarn them and teach them what it’s about and then teach them on some of the heavier topics, some of the things that I think aren’t necessarily appropriate for a Sunday, for the way we do things anyway. And then be able to, with the gifts of the Spirit, you know, what we call our Upper Room – So Sundays, for us is like a lounge room, where you can bring anybody. It’s a party. Everyone is feeling comfortable. There is great music. But the Upper Room is a bit more insular. So, we are creating the 2 different spaces for that, as well as our discipleship and training and programs on what we call our growth journey at Resurgent.
Q. I love it. One of the things I’ve been tracking as a Fellowship - and of course you guys are new to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada - but as I have been tracking the last fifteen or twenty years of data that is coming in, we’ve seen a significant decrease in salvations being reported from our churches. With that we’re also seeing fewer baptisms of the Holy Spirit. They are tracking almost identical. As we decrease in conversions, we are also decreasing in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Of course we don’t want to just center on one theological point because there are so many things about the Holy Spirit that are beyond that one experience. But it tells me that you have identified it correctly. I don’t think we can ---
We can’t do everything on Sunday. So where are those other spaces for church planters to allow people to take the next level, next step, whatever you want to call it in their journey in discipleship - to understand that there is power that gets released for witness. It’s tough to do that on Sunday mornings.
Go ahead, Vanessa.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. I was just going to add to that. We turned up and you teach what kind of church you are and we pretty quickly connected to the PAOC. But people didn’t even know what that necessarily meant. So I remember doing one of our launch teams, these are people who are going to launch with us, volunteers on the team, but new to us - C’mon let’s stir up the Spirit. This is just in a team meeting, c’mon we’re Pentecostal. You should have seen the looks I got, even from team. Right. There are 2 swear words we have discovered here in Quebec: Pentecostal and prosperity. They are the 2 swear words that people freak out at when you even say it. So, we realized ‘man, okay, how far back are we starting from this thing?’ So then we did - We had to start to teach into it. Teach what is the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
So now like last night maybe twenty people were on the altar being baptized in the Holy Spirit, and the week before twenty-eight people were being baptized. And I agree. It entirely equates to soul-winning. Because the boldness and the passion is not selfish. It is all about outreach, you know.
Q. Right.
A. So it is the immediate fruit in that.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. I want to make one correction. It was a year in that you did that.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Yes.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. So that’s why they were shocked. People looked at us and went ‘We’re Pentecostals? Why?’ Wow.
Q. (Laughter.)
A. It helped us to realize okay, we’re going to have to really teach into this and labour this in the right places, at the right times. Because you taught us -- we are totally Pentecostals -- but we are also looking when we’re looking at scripture, Jesus wasn’t weird and I think people equate Pentecostals with weird so we had to reframe that.
Q. Right.
A. Jesus was the life of the party and we can have power without weirdness. But we just had prosperity and Pentecost, what we really believe was for people’s lives, we had to reframe and re-represent on how that works scripturally.
Q. It doesn’t have to be divisive. Right? It doesn’t have to be a divisive thing where we say, ‘well, you are either in or you are out’. We have to have journey thinking. I think, to be honest with you, a lot of it is we just have to teach on it. Teach in a really healthy way, a clear way, an authentic way and I don’t think people are going to get weirded out by that. But there are some things about it, some things in scripture that are just weird. They are supernatural. I always tell people ‘Look, if you want to experience the Holy Spirit you’ve got to be willing to experience more than you can explain’.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes, that’s right.
Q. And if you can’t do that you’ve got a very, very small God. Sorry to just zero in on this, but I get energized by this because I think there is a direct correlation to the empowerment of the Spirit and the boldness to witness. And we’re seeing our numbers decrease and I’m just wondering ‘hey, maybe we need to get back to some of our roots, some of the things we pioneered, some of our DNA’ and not be weird about it but to teach in a way. That is refreshing for me to hear that it is happening in a church plant that is very guest friendly on Sunday mornings. But people still have the opportunity to encounter the Holy Spirit.
I just want to honour you for that. Thanks for doing that.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Thank you. It is who we are. I think we are doing people a disservice if we give them the gospel without the power - giving them Jesus without the Holy Spirit - and teaching them Holy Spirit isn’t a weird uncle or the spooky uncle. The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are so important for us to have a revelation on that and to see them as three persons that we get to have a relationship with. That’s been a mission of ours.
Q. Wow. I just want to encourage you. Keep going. Keep doing it.
Vanessa, go ahead.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. The extreme of that is that people think when you don’t move in all those overt gifts, the gifts on a Sunday, that extreme judgment is ‘oh, we’re not seeing the Spirit move on a Sunday because you are not doing it on a Sunday’. But we say the greatest move of the Holy Spirit is when a soul is saved because that is only the work of the Holy Spirit.
Q. Amen.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. So don’t ever say Holy Spirit is not evident in our services, because every week people get saved. So there are the 2 extremes, you know, the judgment of that as well.
Q. Yes, it is the power. We can’t draw anyone to Jesus. We can’t convince. It is the Spirit at work that draws a soul to salvation. Well said. Thank you for doing that.
I want to ask you a couple more questions. Some of the things maybe you’ve noticed about Quebec. And some of the things that maybe have surprised you about planting in Quebec, and maybe some of the challenges you have found. You have mentioned some already but are there others that have popped up for you? So, what are some of the things that have surprised you and encouraged you - those types of things.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. There has been so much that has surprised us, both super positive and other things that just weren’t a part of our context culturally. One of them was that their main swear words are Catholic terms. So we actually did a whole series on this one month. And went through every word, being wise about it, but explaining mainly what it means because most Quebecers don’t even know what the swear words mean. So the worst one, which I won’t actually say, but means The Tabernacle - so helping them to understand it means God with us, that every time someone uses that you can have an opportunity, in a cool way, to ask ‘do you know what that means?’ Most of them don’t even realize that.
So I suppose one of the challenges for us is they hate religion here. I actually think they are super open to Jesus but they hate religion. So they are Catholic, but they are not Catholic. So we’re not here to beat up on anybody. But they all talk about how much they hate church.
But if you were to say I don’t like Catholics, all of a sudden they are Catholic. So there is this identity thing. Same with the French. We’re French but we’re not French. So for me as an outsider ---
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. We are Canadian but we’re not Canadian.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes, we’re Quebecois, we’re Canadian but we’re not. So just working with the dynamics with a melting pot multi-culturally in Montreal, people from all over the world, French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, English-speaking and so on, working the nuances of the culture that is actually changing, but also so beautiful with its roots of what has happened here in this province. We’ve really had to become great learners - to not just come in and be ‘hoo-hah, we’re from Australia, we’re going to change the world’. We want to change the world for Jesus. We want to bring something fresh but we also want to have people to have a listening ear and understand the culture so we can reach the culture. I think that has been challenging and exciting all at the same time for us.
Q. How have your kids adapted to the culture difference there?
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. To speak in to that, taking them on the journey, that has been the hardest part for sure of our journey here. You can do something with young babies in tow. No worries. They just don’t sleep when they’re young. But when they are older, to plant a church the emotional reserve and the spiritual of you are carrying for them, the language and ---
Okay. We had to protect our children every time we met – we still -- someone on the street and we would say this is our family, ‘Why would you move from Australia to Quebec?’ You have to literally say immediately out of your mouth, ‘why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we do this?’ Because your kids are hearing, like, ‘You’re crazy. You’re stupid. Why would you be here?’ You know. So you are guarding constantly the negativity. And then you’ve got them in, like, a smaller world so - to be honest - the smallest of the youth ministries; smallness; everything is starting. You are having to teach them how to carry and not complain about ‘but I had this, I don’t have that’. Then you are dealing with their friendships, their emotions, their spiritual formation that is happening, and you are discipling them. You are discipling them in the process and you are trusting God that if He called us to this and ‘You called our whole family to this’ but we’re not going to ignore that this is a journey we are on together.
Q. I love the fact that you are not ignoring that it is difficult.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Yes.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Yes. I would say planting this church has been the hardest thing we have ever done but the greatest thing we have ever done in respect to ministry. But it pales into insignificance the challenge of readjusting our family, learning French. They are all in French school. One has just transitioned to an English school. But we started them all in French school. I was the dad who ripped the band-aid off and said ‘okay, the younger they are, you know, the better it is going to be’ - and then walking them through that. I still stand by my decision with that. But the oldest 2 being almost teenagers when we arrived, it has been a challenge learning French. I am learning French as well. I just finished my MBA recently, and that was a walk in the park compared to learning French for me. So it is a challenge but we do trust God in it and believe God is going to give them a new understanding of faith even through it. We made a decision to be so available, to always put their needs first. We’ve had to readjust things in ministry for them when necessary and to never make them feel like they are a distraction for us.
Q. Bringing them along on the journey ---
Obviously you want to guard them ---
Sharing some of the ‘hey, this has been difficult for us too’. I think it is all wise to really keep the communication lines open. Love the fact that you are putting time as one of the values for you. We’re just going to spend time. Very well said, very well thought out.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Like right now it’s a bit of therapy, dealing with anxiety, stress - like you’ve got to give this stuff that is weird for them the time. But at the same time, build what you are building because you are building it for them. That’s the thing. You can’t draw back from what you are building, kind of like bringing God to build, because it is about them. It is for their future as wel,l so it is that constant wrestling out of bringing them on the journey and involving them without pressure that they’ve got to do everything as pioneers, you know, what they are modeling. It’s kind of ministry stuff but you just add layers because you’re pioneering from scratch.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. But if I can also say, you celebrate the wins with them.
Q. Right.
A. So it’s like look what we’re a part of. Look what Jesus has done for us personally, for the church. I think those things so matter with them. Let’s be honest, as a pioneer pastor, unless things explode overnight, you have more time in certain areas. You are the master of your own destiny if you are boundaried. So, I can be around home at certain times more with pioneering a church than when my church ten years on than it was before, and there were still boundaries then. But I’m going to be around for the really significant things that maybe I wouldn’t have been able to in the last season. They really see that as well. So I think it is a special dispensation on the season if you see it like that.
Q. Yes. Encourage your kids to focus on what they have and not what they’re missing out on. We’ve always done that with our kids and they have loved ministry as a result. Has it always been easy? No. But they never hear us complain. They never hear us talk about other pastors, or churches, or leaders. Obviously we are not perfect. We make mistakes. But celebrating the wins with them is a huge deal.
Why don’t you give us - because we’re just finishing up the podcast here - give us, each of you, maybe your one minute. Convince somebody out there to church plant. It’s a sale. You’re trying to sell them on church planting and you each get a minute, just to talk with Canada about church planting.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. OK well, personally, there is no greater mission work than planting a church. You do not need to go overseas to fulfill the call of God on your life. What is happening in this nation - people are hungry; people are ready. The fresh thing we can do as church planters cannot be done in any other context than planting into a new community or a new city. There is something that is so powerful about it, where you literally are fulfilling the Great Commission. You do it with incredible wisdom, voices into your life - Don’t ever do it alone. Don’t ever do it out of the right time, but also there is no perfect time. So those who are feeling stirred, you are part of an incredible Movement. Don’t ever do it not part of something; not part of a Movement. But when you do, just watch the grace of God all over it. And if you don’t, there could be people who would not hear the gospel if you don’t.
Q. Okay. I’m planting a church. Andrew, your shot.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Of course not everyone is called to plant a church. But when God calls you to plant a church, I think it is the greatest adventure you could ever be on. You get to put a dent in the universe. You get to start something; be a part of something. You pay a price, but the reward - you can’t get anywhere else in this capacity. To be a part of something from the ground up; to see people rise into leadership and calling; and to really change the trajectory of a city and the mindset and the spiritual climate and just to be able to go ‘I’m in this. I’m part of this. I’ve broken ground here. I’ve got some blood in the soil here’. I’m sorry, I just can’t think of anything better to be a part of. I love church planting. I think it is the best thing when you are called to it that you could ever do.
Q. I wish our podcast listeners could see the smiles on your faces right now. Folks, they are smiling ear-to-ear, like, giddy about what they get to do. Do you want to say something else Vanessa?
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. We are in the process of looking at forming a title for a book on it and I think we’re going to call it ‘Crazy or Called, or a Little Bit of Both’; the advenutre of church planting.
Q. In Canada!
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. In Canada.
Q. In Canada. Guys, so appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us. I know our podcast listeners are going to be blessed. Keep going. Thanks for being a part of this and we’ll definitely connect in the future.
Andrew Hoyes:
A. Thanks so much for having us. Honestly, it is a blessing to be in Canada. It’s the best country and the best truly is ahead of it and we are so grateful to be a part of its future. Thanks so much for having us.
Q. We believe that too. Thanks so much.
Vanessa Hoyes:
A. Thank you.
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