BCBP CANADA: OUR DESIRE TO HAVE AN EVANGELISTIC LIFESTYLE

by Etchin Sumagang, BCBP Canada, Greater Toronto Area

I would like to greet everyone a blessed, joyful and prosperous new year. I also would like everyone to thank God for the tremendous individual and collective blessings He bestowed to all of us in the past year. We also thank Him for allowing us to overcome various challenges we encountered during the year.

For the past two years, we joyfully worked together to lay down the solid foundation of our BCBP Community in Canada. Everyone actively participated and savored the splendor of BCBP activities that many of us missed for years. God honored our heart’s desires and allowed the elevation of our group into a full pledged BCBP Chapter. We really had lots of reasons to celebrate during our 2nd year anniversary last year, October 2014.

However, our recognition as a new chapter is just the start of a much bigger task ahead. God gave us a much bigger mission area – the whole dominion of Canada – the 4th largest country in the world. Days after our elevation as a Chapter, BCBP Edmonton, Alberta Mission and BCBP Vancouver, British Columbia Mission were started. We now have three regular BCBP Breakfast venues to work on. We believe that God will add more within the next few months as He will definitely expand our territory.

Spreading the BCBP in this huge country is an enormous task. We need a lot of workers and logistics. With our numbers right now, we can easily justify that the task is really difficult to do and may not be sustainable. Fortunately, it is in this kind of situation that divine intervention happens. God will always show His presence and cover our weaknesses once we humbly submit to Him our human limitations in doing the task. We just have to offer our willingness to serve and our desire to help each other so that collectively, we can pursue our mission.

As we prepare ourselves for the big tasks ahead of us, we cannot avoid reflecting on the very reason why we are in the BCBP – that we are witnesses, evangelizers and triumphant warriors for Christ in the marketplace. We are “alter Christus” or the face of Christ to others.

We know that we can only become effective evangelizers once we consistently live out the BCBP way of life. Our actions, behaviors and spoken words should align with Christian values. Once we have this evangelistic lifestyle, we don’t have to open our mouths or push people to enter in our community since our actions, behaviors and spoken words would already encourage people to join the BCBP.

Since our membership comes from different spectrums of society, living out the BCBP way of life could be a complicated endeavor. That is why our leaders recommended a very simple guide – by referring to our BCBP commitment cards regularly so we can constantly evaluate if what we are doing and behaving are the right way. Our Chapter will also provide spiritual formation programs that will help all of us achieve an evangelistic lifestyle.

We also need to remember that Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi taught us that evangelization is not complete if we will just invite a person to recommit his life to Christ. Evangelization reaches its completion when that person is integrated into a Christian community, has been formed in the basics of Christian life and equipped to share in the mission of the Church through his community. We should therefore aim that our sponsored participants to the BCLPs will make their full commitment to the BCBP to complete the evangelization process.

All of us have different levels of struggles in our desire to live out the BCBP way of life. But if we work hard and help each other in our spiritual journey, we will be able to prepare ourselves individually and collectively as worthy evangelizers ready to spread BCBP all over Canada.

We will work on this together this year and beyond. No one should be left out. With God’s promise in Isaiah 58:11 that He will guide us continually, we will surely be triumphant. God bless BCBP CANADA and all its missions.

Source: TRUE NORTH Newsletter, Issue 2, January 2015