Who Am I?

Second Generation Missionary. Polyglot. Pioneer. Church Planter. Father. Disability Dad. Husband. Professional Coach. Mentor. PhD. Friend. Storyteller.

The way I introduce myself is as varied as the environments in which I’ve served over 22 years of missions on 2 continents. How others introduce themselves to me has not changed. Local friends always identify themselves with their local culture. As the first residential AGWM missionaries in Québec, we learned that people will fight to preserve their self-identity. Québecers, fewer than 3% who name Jesus as Lord and Savior, represent the least evangelized area in North America, and evangelical numbers resemble the least reached areas in Europe.

A friend tells me “Charles, if a Québecer has his wine, his cheese, and his time off, he’s good.” How can we share Jesus in a culture whose identity is based on being content and not changing?

Over the COVID years, we lived through successive shutdowns and some of the highest vaccination rates and strictest laws anywhere. We lived among them. And we saw fissures in the satisfaction, fissures in the society that prides itself in being different. Desperate to maintain their francophone identity in the sea of anglophones, the ideas of who belongs and why are ever-present.

In this context, we learned that to lose ourselves is to honor when we may not enjoy the local culture. Losing ourselves meant following rules that mere miles away across the border no longer applied. Losing ourselves was recognizing the distinctiveness of a Québec that is Canadian but is something else as well, francophone but also connected to the anglophone world, secular but not in the same way as continental Europeans are secular. We learned to truly see our friends, even as they struggle with who they are. We learned that we need to learn again.

The good news doesn’t change. But in considering how we can reach Québecers, we’ve had to lose some of our answers, choose to let go of some of our experiences and history and once again come before the Lord and ask: Lord, may we decrease that you might increase.

By Charles Porter