Quebec: Mission Not Impossible

by Ron Rust and Michael Di Giacomo

Today’s Pentecostal movement in Quebec originates from spiritual revivals which broke out in many places of the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

In December 1906, Robert McAlister, after visiting the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, received his Pentecostal experience. Two years later, he established a small congregation in Ottawa. His ministry played a primary role in establishing Pentecostalism in Canada and in Quebec, especially as it affected the life of Charles E. Baker, a Methodist lay preacher. Baker brought his wife to meetings organized by McAlister in 1911. At those meetings, where A.H.Argue was one of the speakers, she was completely healed of cancer and filled with the Spirit, speaking in other tongues.

Following this healing, Baker sold his clothing store in Ottawa and entered the Pentecostal ministry establishing the first English Pentecostal Church in Montreal in 1916. Evangel Pentecostal Church became known as "the evangelistic centre of Montreal" helping establish numerous English and French congregations.

The beginnings of the Pentecostal work among French Canadians started with Philippe Charles LeBrocq, whose family had immigrated to Canada in 1912 from the island of Jersey in the English Channel. After being baptized in the Spirit in 1913, he began house meetings in Montreal eventually renting a hall by 1914 or 1915. In 1919, while a deacon in Pastor Baker’s church, he began ministering to a few francophone believers on a weekly basis. By 1922 the group of 25 French Canadian believers, still under the leadership of Brother Lebrocq, began to meet in Pastor Swan’s Upper Room Mission.

A highlight of these meetings took place in November-December 1920, when Pastor Baker invited the Canadian-born American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson for a three-week evangelistic crusade at Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Beaver Hall Hill. Baker reported that, "The first evening meeting revealed an altar filled with sinners seeking salvation, with a prayer room below filled with hungry children of God seeking the Baptism ... shortly the building seating 2000 was too small..." Many francophone, unable to understand the English preaching, were nevertheless saved, healed and filled with the Spirit.

After Philippe LeBrocq left in January 1923 to pastor in Ontario, Pastor Louis Roussy Dutaud took charge of these French meetings. Having previously pastored for 30 years with a Baptist Mission in Quebec, his wife was healed of tuberculosis and cancer during Sister McPherson’s meetings, and both he and his wife experienced a powerful Spirit baptism. When Pastor Dutaud died in 1931, Philippe LeBrocq returned to pastor the congregation he had founded which was now known as La Premiére Église de Pentecôte Française. He remained its pastor for 41 years until his retirement at age 83 in 1972. For several years LeBrocq also served as secretary-treasurer for the French Conference of the PAOC.

In 1941, a new French church, Église de Pentecôte Centrale, began under the leadership of Rev. Walter L. Bouchard. Of French Canadian origin, he lived the better part of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. This church, commonly known unofficially as La mission rue St. Laurent, changed its name to Le Centre Évangélique in 1948 with the erection of their present building.

Pastor Bouchard was also instrumental in founding a French training centre for ministry in Montreal called Institut Biblique de Bérée (IBB) in 1941. Graduates from this institution were instrumental in establishing many new churches in the Province of Quebec. In 1942, several new teachers were added to the staff of IBB: E. L. Lassègues (from California), Mrs. Ethel Logan, Miss Dorothy Tubbs, and Miss Salome Cressman.

The name of E.L. Lassègues bears special mention. Not only was he a teacher at IBB but he also replaced Pastor Bouchard as pastor of Église de Pentecôte Centrale in 1945 and as director of IBB in 1953. He was known specifically for his prayer life.

In the beginning, French churches in Quebec were part of the Eastern Ontario and Quebec District of the PAOC. Their supervision fell under the responsibilities of the district superintendent which, from its inception, starting with Charles Baker, was always filled by an Anglophone. Due to different languages, many ethnic groups developed their own conferences as part of the general structure of the PAOC.

In April 1949, the General Executive of the PAOC approved the establishment of the French Conference under the supervision of the Department of World Missions with the election of its own officers. The first three superintendents of the French Conference were W. L. Bouchard (1949-1952), René Robert (1953-1954), and E. L. Lassègues (1955-1961). In 1962, the credential holders of the French Conference elected Pastor Roland Bergeron; who was the first superintendent born in Quebec.

Outreach in French Canada has met and overcome many obstacles. Following the early explosive years, the French Pentecostal work struggled immensely. Winds of social and political change began to blow after the Second World War bringing about deep transformations in the province of Quebec. A combination of Quebecers becoming aware of the wider world and mounting criticism of a suffocating cultural environment and an authoritarian provincial government in the 1950s resulted in a fundamental social and cultural transformation in the 1960s commonly known as the Quiet Revolution.

The Quiet Revolution did not spare the religious landscape but left in its wake a plethora of new religious groups and ideologies replacing the former omnipresent and socially powerful Roman Catholic Church which had been the de facto state religion of Quebec. The Pentecostal work was one of the major beneficiaries of the French Canadian cultural revolution. In terms of numbers of souls saved and churches planted it was in the 1970s and 1980s that the Quebecois Pentecostal church enjoyed its finest hour. From approximately 1,000 francophone Pentecostals in the 1960s the movement grew to about 15,000 by 1991. From about 18 churches in Quebec in 1960, at the end of the century there were 82 francophone churches in Quebec and another 14 in the other parts of Canada.

Many ministries contributed to the revival in French Canada, including the French Conference, various evangelistic ministries such as Gaspé Outreach, the Quebec Literature Crusade (now Language Literature Ministries), various radio and television programs, Berea Bible Institute and the Formation Timothée Bible College. The election of Robert Argue as executive director of the National Home Missions and Bible Colleges Department at the 1966 General Conference not only contributed in a major way to revival in Quebec in the 1970s, but also began a chain reaction that led to the establishment of the new Quebec District.

Under Argue’s leadership the PAOC’s FLITE (French Language Intensive Training for Evangelism) program was established. FLITE was an ambitious outreach and church planting program that recruited mainly English Bible College graduates to move to Quebec, learn French, and then minister in French Canada. By the end of the program in 1988, 62 families had graduated from FLITE and become involved in various ministries in the French Canada. English churches also participated in the revival planting several French-speaking assemblies which eventually became autonomous churches. Twenty churches founded by the FLITE graduates are still in existence today.

Despite our gratitude for past successes much work remains to be done. Evangelicals constitute only about 1 percent of the Quebec population, with Pentecostals comprising slightly more than half that number. The remaining 99 percent present the greatest challenge for the new District of Quebec, a mission not impossible!

Text from www.paoc.org