Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 5
November 19, 1953
NUMBER 28, PAGE 5c

Opportunities In Canada

Roy E. Cogdill, Jordan, Ontario, Canada

The Owen Sound, Ontario, meeting closed Friday night, October 23. Four were baptized into Christ and one was restored. Together with a few Christians living there already, they will meet in a rented hall to worship the Lord. Brother Keith Thompson of Jordan, Ontario, has gone to Owen Sound to carry on the work until other arrangements can be made. He will continue to speak over the radio each afternoon, Monday through Friday, at 5:15 to 5:30. This program is doing much good through the whole area. Jordan congregation will support Brother Thompson as they have been doing and will carry on their own work while he helps in this new place. What a worthy example that is.

Griersville, a small country congregation where we held a meeting earlier in the year will help pay for the radio. Meaford congregation has also been fine to help. We still need some good church to get behind the work at Owen Sound, either support Brother Thompson or send a preacher of their own selection, arrange for a permanent meeting place and stay with this work until it has been firmly established. It has a good start for a city of nearly 20,000 people where the Gospel had never been preached — that is, not in the last 75 years. If any church is interested in this challenge — write Brother Thompson, c/o Radio Station CFOS, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. Or if you wish you can write me, either at my home address or at Jordan, Ontario, Canada.

I am at the present time in the second week of a meeting at Collingwood, Ontario. This is a splendid little city of 7,500. The congregation here numbers about ten members, men, women and children. They have worked faithfully to build up the church. They have a small but neat and comfortable building debt free. We are having a pretty fair hearing in the meeting and yesterday we baptized a man 65 years of age. This is another place where some church that wants to do some "missionary work" could easily satisfy their desire. There are hundreds of square miles thickly populated in this section of Canada, filled with good towns and cities, where the Cause of Christ has never been known and the Gospel has never been preached. Some of the larger denominations are waning and gradually losing out. A real opportunity is here for the furtherance of the Kingdom. Is there some good church that will send a full time man to work here in Collingwood and the surrounding territory? Such a work would pay big dividends in good accomplished.

We are preaching every day during the week over the radio station at Barrie, a city of 15,000 people where there is no church and in the center of an area of other towns and villages where the religion of Christ is utterly unknown. Radio work offers a wonderful opportunity in this whole country. The few small congregations throughout this province can be aroused and are being to a sense of their responsibility, but there are only 2,000 members in the whole province of six million English speaking people. They cannot do the job by themselves that needs to be done now. It is about time for the congregations to be making up their yearly budgets. Why not include one of these great opportunities in this needy and challenging field in your plans for another? We will be glad to furnish you any information you wish and put you in touch with some of these places that need help and assist you in whatever other way we can.