Celebrating what God is doing around the world
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English Transcript below | Français
Hi everyone.
As you can see, I’m wearing something a little different today.
In fact, I came straight from the airport here to film this right after returning from our global Alliance family gathering—the Alliance World Fellowship’s 50th anniversary celebration.
Our Congolese sisters and brothers gifted me this shirt just two days ago as we celebrated in Kinshasa.
Not only did we mark 50 years of the Alliance World Fellowship, but I was struck by the fact that this is where it all began—the place Simpson first sent workers almost 150 years ago.
And today, the Alliance Church in Congo has over one million worshippers.
It's incredible—and yes, every one of them dances better than me.
Some of you may be new to the term Alliance World Fellowship.
It’s what we call our global Alliance movement—and it’s amazing to realize that together, the Alliance family now includes 60 national church networks, over 22,000 churches, in 88 countries, with 6.2 million worshippers gathering every week.
Altogether, we have 184 theological schools, training 30,000 pastors and national workers, and more than 1,000 international workers serving cross-culturally around the world.
When you stop and think about that, it’s breathtaking.
The Church is global, it’s growing, and Christ is on the move.
In a world that often feels uncertain, moments like this remind us—remind me—that there is something so much bigger happening than what we see in the headlines.
Personally, these days with our global family were a powerful reminder of the unity, joy, and deep sense of connectedness that exists—especially across the Church in the Global South.
And I have to say, that there’s a healthy and beautiful pride in belonging to this movement—to this slice of Christ’s worldwide Church.
I also want to give a quick shoutout as well to Jeremy Cook from Sherwood Park, who spoke powerfully at the gathering, calling us toward deeper life and mission.
Now, bringing that sense of global family home—our next Canadian gathering, General Assembly, will be held June 8–12, in Calgary next year.
And we’ve made a few intentional changes this year.
First, Assembly is going to begin with the International Workers Dessert Night on June 8.
It’s no longer an optional add-on—it’s now included right in your registration and marks the official start of our time together.
We want to begin by celebrating what God is doing around the world.
Secondly, there’s something that I’m especially excited about:
Our first plenary evening—what will officially be now night two—
Here's what that means.
While all delegates will be part of this evening as a plenary session, the focus will be on students and young adults.
We’re inviting 500–800+ students from across Canada to join us on what might be a powerful night of time of worship, prayer, teaching with Keithen Schwahn, who's a student pastor at Church of the City New York.
This will be a shared moment — delegates and students together — worshipping side by side as one family, united in mission and passion for Jesus.
Now I’m praying this becomes a Spirit-empowered moment, calling Gen Z and Gen Alpha together — into the life and mission of Jesus and inviting all of us to respond together.
Now, here’s some logistical details.
Students can attend and they can come for free, and their registration also includes supper before the event and a special morning session the next day with Keithen Schwahn as well.
For youth pastors and churches, especially those in Alberta and nearby provinces, but yes, for all of us.
This is a moment to gather your students, to plan a trip and be part of something bigger.
Whether you come just for an evening or stay overnight, we're working on housing options through local churches as well as that bonus morning session, the next day for students and leaders who can stay.
I know it's not easy to coordinate a midweek event.
Actually, it goes against most common sense, doesn't it?
But after seeing the intentionality of our global family, particularly in Africa, I’m convinced that this is worth the effort.
So I'm asking churches not to quickly say “no” because it's hard, or parents watching this not to quickly say no, but to prayerfully consider whether this might be an opportunity for your students to experience the wider Alliance family, to grow in understanding our shared history, and to catch the vision Jesus is calling us toward.
I am already planning to bring our two youngest at home — one who’s in high school and the other in university — because I believe so deeply in this next generation moment and our Alliance family.
Because this is new, we want to over-communicate details.
So we’ve created an interest form on the General Assembly website for anyone, that’s parents, churches, pastors, lay leaders, that want to bring students, or to stay updated along the way as you discern how you might participate.
So you can please fill out this early form, for us to help us plan for space.
I’m not sure if First Alliance is our largest room in the country, but I’m praying that we would fill it.
You can find all the details on the Assembly website below, and if you have questions, connect with Geoff Stewart, our National Youth Network Leader.
His contact information is below this video.
I want to end with a story now of faithfulness.
A glimpse of how God is working through our international workers in hard and dark places.
So we’ve really built a family here, and that has been such a blessing of being here such a long time.
We fell in love with the people, and that was the answer to the prayer that we had asked God.
If you will give us your love for the local people here, then we feel like we can come.
I’m Wade Kennedy, and this is my wife, Kara, and we are doing business for transformation here on the Silk Road.
We’ve been living here for just about 18 years with our kids in tow.
We started a service company here, that employs a lot of poor people in society here.
It's a very difficult environment to do business.
There is a lot of corruption.
You can’t really survive here if you work aboveboard and have everything aboveboard.
You really need to hide things.
To be honest, as we started with a local partner here, we really did have some of those practices built into our business.
But after a while God really began to kind of convict our hearts that wasn’t the way to do things and that he didn’t need us to do that, that he could show himself powerful, if we just trusted in him.
And it was the head accountant, he turned to me and he said, “But aren’t we testing God?”
But as I thought about it, the answer came back to me.
No, I think it’s the other way around.
I think this is God testing us and our faith.
And we were struggling, many months to make our payroll, to make our tax payments.
And, one month we were called in to the tax department because we hadn’t been able to make our tax payments yet.
We had bills outstanding that our clients hadn’t paid.
So as the accountant and I were ready to go into this meeting with the tax department, we just stopped and I said, let’s pray.
Let’s talk to God.
Let’s ask God to bless us and to open a door here and to give us favour with the tax department.
And the accountant on our behalf advocated for us, said, “You know, we’re trying to make these payments. As soon as we get this money, we’ll pay you.”
Then as we left the meeting, the accountant got a phone call.
We found out our customer had paid the outstanding bill.
And so he quickly ran back into this tax official and told them, “We’ve got the money. We’ll make the payment to you the next day.”
It really had an impact on him because a year later, COVID hit and we were again struggling to make tax payments in the difficulties of COVID, when again, the tax department came to us looking for money.
It was the same accountant who said to them, “Mr. Wade is praying, and when the money comes in, you’ll be the first to get it,” and recounted for them the story of what had happened the year before.
So God glorifies himself.
When we put our faith in him, we trust in him to provide for us.
The first seven years of our time in this country, we saw no spiritual fruit.
It was around year seven we saw the first local lady kind of step forward, and she really fell in love with Jesus.
Through her love for Jesus, she immediately began sharing with her cousins, with her sisters. And now in her family network, I think we’re reaching ten, and all of these friends have Muslim backgrounds.
The first lady who came to faith—her next oldest sister a couple of years later—had been walking with the Lord and she said to me one day, “You know, I went back to the mosque where I used to go, to tell the god there that I’m not coming here anymore, that I am following Jesus and my life is committed to him.”
I feel like God is at work, and we’re seeing it within the lives of the people we’re working with, and we’re seeing it spread within their family networks.
And they’re learning to share.
There are still many that are struggling with that, though, and I think that’s one of our heart's cry—to really see the local believers truly understand the surpassing value of Christ and be willing to give everything for it.
But the blessing that we’ve seen in being here almost two decades is that this longevity of walking with people has really built this foundation of trust.
People can share their hearts so openly.
And we’ve seen them go through divorces and remarriage, and we’ve seen children be sick and recover or not—and so just really hard things.
But we’ve been a part of their lives and they’ve been a part of our lives.
And so it’s just—we’ve really built family here.
And that has been such a blessing of being here such a long time.
I’m so encouraged by their story—years of serving with little visible fruit, choosing the hard and faithful road when it would’ve been easier to give up.
And then, in God’s timing, a miracle—a life redeemed.
I love the boldness of the woman in that story—
Returning to the place where she once worshipped her old god, standing there and declaring,
“I’m not coming here anymore, I now worship Jesus.”
Friends, because of Jesus, we are not only called — we are also equipped to be courageously faithful.
To walk with people as Jesus did.
To love extravagantly.
To embrace costly followership so that He might increase.
And we do this together.
Speaking of together — I had to break out another shirt they gave me!
Again, the global Church is so joyful, so proud of their Alliance family.
Thousands in matching Alliance shirts, Alliance dresses, hats, and scarves.
Maybe it’s not quite our Canadian style, but there is something I believe we can learn from their joy in their togetherness.
Friends, I love the global Church — and I love our Alliance Canada family as well.
My prayer is that the Spirit will deepen our love and commitment — not only to Jesus, yes, but to one another across this movement.
And I’m praying that perhaps even in this moment, that you would feel the Spirit granting you an increase in love, confidence, and joy for this unique slice of His global Church called The Alliance Canada.
Lord, would You find us faithful.
Where we lack faith, give us more.
And continue Your mighty work among us. Amen.