About our Church
We started with only 3 to 4 people meeting in Mrs. Keatley’s basement, in 1975,
led by Andy James, who was the director of the CSSM Bible Camp at the time. (He
spent 20 years in the area and moved to Calgary in the early 1990’s)
A few members who are still active in Dorion Bible Fellowship helped raise a new
Chapel for the Dorion Bible Camp and this became our shared building for
services until 2004. We became affiliated with Village Missions after Andy left
and Walter Dueck and his family were with us for a couple of years, but moved
back west to be closer to family. After he left, Chris Frey and his family came
and were with us for a couple of years also, but sadly they moved on to Thunder
Bay. About 10 years ago we wrote our own Constitution and By-laws and decided to
join the Evangelical Free Church of Canada. Their statement of faith and ways of
doing things seemed to be most like ours of the various churches we considered.
Brian Ray became our first Pastor affiliated with E-Free and he and his family
spent 5 years with us until moving onto a larger congregation back to his home
area of Western Canada. (January 2004)
At that time we, as a congregation agreed to work toward being a larger presence
in our community. We acquired a piece of property (approx 37 acres) and a house
to be used as our Manse for the Pastor and his family. This site is on the paved
road known as the Dorion Loop Rd. and is close to our School/Community Center,
Fire Hall, Town Library and Municipal Office etc. At the beginning of 2003 we
made the step of faith by moving away from our comfort zone of using the Chapel
at Dorion Bible Camp, which is out of the public view on a dead end road on the
shores of Black Bay (Lake Superior). As a temporary site and to become more
visible in the community we started holding our services in the Centennial Hall,
a rented room in the back of the Fire Hall. The site was within 1 Km of our
manse and building. We were fortunate to be able to fill our Sundays with guest
speakers from all over the area until Victor Koop and his family came to our
church. Vic and his wife Gail stayed for 5 years and have followed the Lord's
calling to move back west to be closer to aging family. He was here through the
building process and felt that his work here was complete.
We now have our own Church Building on the property with the manse. We started
holding services here in December of 2009.
We now have an average attendance of approximately 45 people on Sundays and are
hoping to continually increase our membership.
We are also very interested in missions and have a list of those we support on a
monthly basis in different areas of the world.
|