HIM CHURCH PLANTING STORIES: HOPE HAUGESUND

Hello, my name is Steve Mark. I am from Hope Norway in Haugesund. I am pastoring 60 members in Hope Haugesund. I started joining Hope Movement since 2006. I remembered that Pastor Tor from Hope Oslo invited me to a life group, and that was how I started in the Hope Movement. Since I moved to Haugesund, we started a small life group with 6 members, and we also started this church in the community in Haugesund. Since this church started small as a life group, we begin to start reaching out to other people there, especially some of our colleagues and some of the locals there as well. That is how we started to grow as a church. 

In 2013, Pastor Dexter challenged me to start this service in Suede because we were not able to accommodate all the members in one house. At that time, they continuously mentor us on how we could disciple other people and plant other churches in some other city state around Haugesund. Right now, I am here in GC (Global Conference), and I am actually so excited this year because we have the goal to reach 100 members in Hope Haugesund. Here in GC, the theme is “Multiply”, and I am really blessed in this GC because it really helps me on how we could achieve this goal with the help of God, and with the help of the system that I have learned here in GC.. So, that is my story and this is our goal for Hope Haugesund in Norway.

HIM CHURCH PLANTING STORIES: HOPE CANADA

My name is Eric Hebert. I am from Quebec, the French-speaking part of Canada. It started in 2008 when I moved to a region where there was no churches. I started trying to plant churches, but I didn’t know what I was doing, so I cried out to God, and God sent me help. To cut the long story short, God said, “Go to Singapore”. I didn’t know Hope Movement, but I ended up contacting people in Hope Singapore. I met Pastor Ben and explained that I need training for church planting. Over the next few years, he managed to connect me with the Germans in Hope Germany. From there, I went to Germany several times to see what they were doing. I received training there and went back to Canada and tried to implement it. 

For the first 2-3 years, I didn’t know what I was doing. I tried to gather people and tried to start a church. But the mistake was, I was gathering people and trying to start a church. So I learned from my mistake. We shut down the church in 2012, and we started all over again with 2 people. So me and another guy, we went into the streets, we did evangelism and prayed for people. Finally with the teams from Germany and France that came to help us in evangelism, that was when we finally got a team in place We didn’t focus on doing a service. We focused on people. We want to train people up to share their faith. So, we started training people to introduce God into their conversations. We started helping people to create opportunities. We held barbeques and invited people and their families, and people started to come to Christ. Then, we trained them to take responsibilities for these people.

Now, we have one house church in a suburb in Southern Montreal, it is a French-speaking church. Then, I moved back to my region where there was no church, and we started pioneering again in 2014. Now, we have a well-established church there. The team there is actively outreaching and bringing people to Christ. I taught them how to take responsibilities for these people.

Now, I am pioneering 2 other groups that I see potential to form a team, but we are not there yet, so that is my next point for prayer request. So, pray for the other 2 house churches that are well-established, that God will open doors for them to find new contacts, to take responsibilities for new people, and give them a fresh vision. Pray for the 2 other groups that are not established yet, that God will create a heart and a desire to commit, a desire to take the calling of God to make disciples, not just trying to live their lives passively for God, but that people will be willing to take a radical decision, so that we can start working with them and actually make disciples.

Eric Hebert