About Us
Our history
The Fellowship French Mission is a nationa
l mission agency that functions as a missionary arm under the auspices of The Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada (FEBCC). The FEBCC is a body of more than 500 evangelical Baptist churches that stretches from coast to coast in Canada. The FEBCC was founded in 1953, and just five years later in 1958 the Fellowship French Mission (FFM) was also born with the specific mandate of helping to plant churches among francophones within Canada.
Rev. William L. Phillips, the Fellowship French Mission's first director, wrote a history of our mission in a book entitled, Modern Day Missionary Miracles. He states, "…on November 28, 1958, Dr. Morley Hall, the Fellowship Secretary was authorized to write, 'This is to announce the formation of a Fellowship French Missions Committee by the Executive Council.'" When the mission began, the missionary force numbered 12, including eight anglophones and four francophones.
The visionary leaders that started the Fellowship French Mission believed a special mission agency was needed to minister specifically to French Canadians because the evangelical population of French Canada was then, and still is now, microscopic. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church dominated Quebec society (as well as the other francophone regions of Canada) and the average French Canadian had never had the opportunity to hear and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. Fellowship leaders saw the great spiritual needs and felt the responsibility to reach this "mission field next door."
Even today, the need continues to be very great. Referring to the population of Quebec in the 1990's, Brian Seim of Operation World wrote, "There are approximately 5.5 million Francophones. Only 0.54% of these people have any affiliation with a Protestant church, certainly not enough to be self-sufficient in reaching this vast unreached people group. This is the largest unreached people group in Canada and in all probability North America."
In the early days of our mission, Dr. E. S. Kerr, (an early Mission
Committee Chairman) wrote, "Our missionaries serving in French Canada are confronted with all the opposition and problems that attend missionaries in foreign fields." Indeed, in the early days prior to the formal founding of the mission, the opposition was so great that some missionaries actually spent time in prison because of their bold proclamation of the gospel. God honoured their witness, and the mission grew from a tiny band of five missionary couples and two single missionaries in 1958, to our current force of 29 missionary couples and two single missionaries. Over 100 couples have served with the French Mission since its inception.
From 1958 to the present, the Fellowship Baptist work in Quebec has grown from a handful of churches and a few dozen believers to a mature body of 81 francophone churches with a total attendance of more than 8,000 believers. We rejoice that missionaries serving with the Fellowship French Mission planted the vast majority of these churches. We give God all the praise and glory for this glorious legacy of supernatural growth!
*Prisoners for the Gospel photo from Rev. Murray Heron's autobiography, Footprints Across Quebec. Used by permission, Joshua Press © 1999
In the early days of church planting in Quebec, there were very few French Canadians pastors
The growth of churches and intentional leadership training since the 1970s have produced many pastors and church planters from French Canada.