“I had a dream from the Lord, directing me toward Francophone ministry.”

Craig Macartney
Spur Ottawa Writer

The Quebecois are North America’s most unreached people group, with fewer than one percent attending an Evangelical church. Quebec is also Canada’s worst-hit region by COVID-19. Jonathan Camiré, and his wife Renée, are undeterred. On July 31, (a day before their second child arrived) they moved from Ottawa to Saint-Lazare—a Montreal suburb—with a mission to plant Saint-Lazare Bible Church.

“A lot of people have said this is a crazy thing to do,” Camiré states. “I think it is a very important thing to do. We have really bought the narrative that there are some services that are essential and that the Church is an unessential service, but we can’t just retreat. The Lord is still saving people; He is still calling people to Himself. There is a mission that is still happening.”

Camiré has good reason for his hope: although he grew up in Ottawa, he found Christ through a professor, while studying music at McGill University. He moved back to Ottawa and, in 2014, joined a team of MoveIn missionaries in Lowertown.

“We are called to show people that there is a god who is near to us. A pandemic cannot stop us from that mission.”

Shortly after, he began an internship at Church of the Messiah. The church’s pastor, George Sinclair, is also the principal at Ryle Seminary, where Camiré soon began studying theology.

“I was really poor in school my whole life, but [at Ryle] I just loved studying theology,” he says. “George shared the idea of church planting with me and some other interns. He kept promoting it as something we should consider.”

Camiré began working toward planting a church in Kanata, but God interrupted that plan.

“I had a dream from the Lord, directing me toward Francophone ministry.”

God’s direction was confirmed by two things: a C2C Collective church planters assessment and a local pastor who “respectfully grilled” Camiré about why he would choose Kanata over Quebec.

“The Lord has a harvest in Quebec. He is looking for harvesters and people who are willing to go.”

“[Camiré] has a great passion to connect the Gospel with the arts,” Sinclair says. “I think these different passions of his—for the arts, the Gospel, and evangelism—are wonderful. He is going to Quebec and he will need all those gifts to reach a very post-Christian culture.”

Last fall, an Anglican pastor from Montreal approached him about planting a sister-church in Saint-Lazare. After a lot of discussion and planning, Camiré and his wife are now settling in to a new community (and adjusting to having a second baby, born the day after they moved) and preparing for outreach in a COVID-terrified world.

“We are called to show people that there is a god who is near to us. A pandemic cannot stop us from that mission. We can’t [seek to] preserve our lives in the way that secularists think. The Lord has a harvest in Quebec. He is looking for harvesters and people who are willing to go.”

Camiré was ordained in July through the Anglican Network in Canada. With support from their sister-church and from individuals in Ottawa, He and his wife aim to plant both an English and a French congregation to reach Saint-Lazare’s diverse community.

“Jonathan is a very godly man,” Sinclair states. “One of the things I love about him is that he is completely unashamed of the Gospel. He has a great concern for people who don’t know Jesus yet. I think he is going to do a great job.”