Orillia church witnesses inexplicable growth

"We're in kingdom mode"

By Mags Storey  |  Ontario Correspondent

Church members distributed gifts to needy single moms and their children during the holidays. PHOTO: FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF ORILLIA

ORILLIA, ON—A travelling musician from Winnipeg was passing through Ontario when he felt the sudden spiritual urge to go into First Baptist Church of Orillia and ask someone how to become a Christian. Another woman was driving past the church when she felt God "pull on her ear" and tell her to go in.

"We've had this weird surge of people coming to Christ," says pastor Paul Carter.

The First Baptist Church of Orillia has seen about 190 people decide to become Christians in the past 18 months. Carter says it has been a trickle effect—impossible to attribute to any one thing.

"People are coming to Christ in such a wide variety of ways," he says. While a few have spontaneously walked in off the streets, many have come to faith through various social outreach projects the church is running, including a support group for single moms and a ministry for recovering addicts.

Influx of converts

The influx of new converts has radically changed the way this church of some 350 congregants worship. "People who remember what it was like to be lost worship differently," he says.

New converts are also teamed up with mentors in the congregation, which Carter says has helped strengthen the faith of many "who came to faith as a child, but had never thought it through in a systemized way."

"Most churches are organized around the principle to go and make disciples but don't have a mechanism for dealing with a large influx of converts," he says. "It's like they expect their main mandate is never going to be addressed.

"Adult conversions are relatively rare," he adds. "Before this started I had been in ministry for over 15 years and could probably count on one hand the number of adults conversions I had seen."

After struggling to find adequate resources, Carter sat down and wrote a manual to help them understand the "handful of changes a person needs to make to get out of whatever ditch they were saved in and onto the narrow way."

Out of emergency mode

What makes this influx all the more surprising is that when it started, the church had been facing a serious crisis.

"We were in emergency mode," Carter says. "We were $50,000 in the hole and [losing] people left, right and centre." He had recently started a new sermon series on dealing with sin. "When you start dealing with real stuff, people leave."

Carter recounts a series of steps the church made following that point which led to the first handful of people deciding to become Christians.

The church had a public repentance service where they repented for the sins of the church's past and started a weekly prayer meeting for their elders. The congregation then devoted themselves to prayer for a woman who had fallen into a coma.

"We laid hands on her and prayed," Carter says. "The doctors smirked at us because it wasn't going to work. And the next day she woke up and was fine. Her heart had stopped beating for six minutes. It gave an adrenaline boost to our faith and birthed a massive prayer movement in our church."

Giving it away

The church's congregation has now swelled from 350 people to around 500. The church has also rebounded from being $50,000 in the red to more than $260,000 ahead.

"It's just insane," Carter says. "We don't keep the money. We give it away. We're not in competition with other churches. We're in Kingdom mode."

First Baptist has given money to help fund and support projects run by different churches in Orillia, including helping one church build office space and another make its building wheelchair accessible. Carter regularly meets with other pastors for prayer. This summer the church wants to start transferring some of its "overflow" membership into churches of other denominations.

It wasn't me

Carter won't take personal credit for the boom in conversions.

"Twenty-two people came to faith while I was away," he says. "It was fascinating. I think it was God making it clear to our people this is not about me." Several members of the congregation took part in these conversions.

"God has done this in a way that has intentionally safeguarded His glory," says Carter.

He also stresses the work his church is doing is not all that different from the work countless other churches are doing across Canada. "The most important thing is to give glory to God. Sometimes God does what He does, and He blesses what he blesses, and the only thing we contribute is the correct assignment of praise."

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