Thirty years in the Wilderness

By Shannon Bell

From concrete to forests; gang territory to bears; neighbours in the next apartment to neighbours kilometres away; worship in an urban community centre to worship in the living room of our log cabin in the bush; reggae and jazz to Indigenous drums.  When God called our family to move from ministry in the inner-city, black neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in the heart of Montreal to the Cariboo in the Central Interior of BC, we had no idea of what the next thirty years would hold for us. 

We stepped off a small plane in Williams Lake BC on September 1, 1994 to join a ministry of house churches spread throughout the region. Each night of the week we traveled by 4X4 truck to outlying areas to bring worship and discipleship to people in remote areas. Meeting in living rooms and occasionally community halls we sang, prayed, studied the Bible and encouraged Christ-followers to reach out to their own neighbours. My husband Jon and I took a special interest in the community of Nazko, a remote Dakelh reserve one and a half hours from the nearest town of Quesnel. We took on an after-school kids’ Bible Class, started a women’s craft and prayer group, and eventually were able to start up a house church on the reserve.  Alongside the founding pastor, we were putting on over 125,000 km a year bringing the church to where people lived beyond the reach of the traditional church.

Five years in, God called Jon and I and our two small children to move to Nazko full-time and focus on ministry among the Dakelh people. The challenges have been many and the struggles very real, but God honours faithfulness and uses us even in our weakness. Two generations of children have heard the gospel through the kids’ program and we have walked with the community through countless tragedies and traumas including deaths by suicide, murder, drug overdoses, cancer and in recent years the threats of wildfires and floods.  

Thirty years bring to our minds so many faces and personal stories.

Bruce grew up in a small village where he lived a rather ‘wild’ life. Weekends found him playing guitar and singing at the local Legion bar.  Eventually he encountered God and in connecting with the Cariboo House Churches learned about the grace of God. He began to use his music for the Lord and studied the scriptures endlessly. Bruce came into full-time ministry with us in 2013 and found himself holding a house church every Sunday night in the same Legion bar that he used to play in, only then he was singing the gospel and enjoying a whole different ‘Spirit’! 

Jim (not his real name) has long struggled with the pain of his past and in recent years found himself trapped in a life of addiction which he just can’t seem to beat. One day Jon was visiting and read to him from Romans 7 where Paul describes the struggle he has in doing the things he didn’t want to do and not doing the things he wanted to do.  Jim immediately identified with Paul. “That’s exactly how I feel”, he said, giving Jon the opening to share the hope of Christ with him. 

An extended family lived on several remote ranches far from any town or church gathering. They sought the Lord but when tragedy hit their family there was no church to support them.  A pastor from the Cariboo reached out to them in their grief and started to gather with them regularly for worship and they developed into a house church that encouraged one another in their faith and reached out in love to their neighbours. 

            Several years ago the Nazko house church built a large Indigenous drum together as an act of worship. We scraped a moose and deer hide and wrote the words of Psalm 149:1-5 inside the drum frame before we strung the drum together. It was prayed over and dedicated to the glory of God. We began to play that drum in our worship using traditional Indigenous sound. We were invited to more and more events to drum and we shared that God loves Indigenous people and so we sing and drum to show our love for Jesus. We were even asked to be the opening drum for the Northern BC Indigenous Health Conference! What a joy that we can share the love of Christ in places we would never otherwise have access to. 

            After thirty years we have many, many more stories of how our Creator God has been at work in this ministry. We are blessed to work with a younger pastor, Mark Carter, as we cover the vast expanse of the Cariboo/Chilcotin region to bring the church to people where they live.  Our mission is Drawing remote people to wholeness through the love of Jesus. We’d love to share more of these stories with you if you would like to receive our email newsletter a couple of times a year.  Visit us at: www.cariboohousechurches.ca