In 2012, two professors at ETEM-IBVIE (now ETEQ) (Jean Biéri and Richard Lougheed) along with three students and spouses began a Mennonite Brethren church-plant in the ETEM building in the school cafeteria. It eventually took the name L’Essentiel with a vision to be a non-traditional congregation to reach disengaged Québécois. They met around small tables to improve fellowship and encouraged questions and comments even during sermons. The teachers were cautioned not to use their position as teachers at the school to recruit students away from other churches. Progress was slow with many Québécois adherents briefly attending. All strategies for outreach (inviting friends, banners outside, widespread mailing, and public meetings on topics of science and religion and urban churches) in the end brought no committed members. In November 2015 there were only 8 discouraged people.
However ETEQ recruiter Véronique Beaudin (not a member herself) would sometimes mention to students not currently connected, and if they were looking for a congregation, that L’Essentiel existed. As a result two incoming students brought their recently arrived families to church, one from Haiti and another from Ivory Coast. Another Haitian couple found L’Essentiel with a GPS. Then two Québécois women looking for a local church found the church on the Internet. Almost simultaneously they all arrived, unexpectedly, not knowing anybody in the congregation nor the Mennonite Brethren denomination. Now L’Essentiel Church has a very good worship band, a Sunday School, 2 small groups and 25 attending regularly from 9 different ethnic groups. They rent space and cooperate with ETEQ for audio-visual material and other equipment.
On January 22, 2017 they had their first baptisms of the two Québécois women. The council of L’Essentiel is composed of the two professors and three students of ETEQ from five different ethnic groups. Of course the challenge of working by consensus is great but God has blessed in abundance and beyond any strategies. There is the core for a multi-ethnic French urban church with the potential soon to move out of the cafeteria to one of the bigger classrooms. The congregation has two professors and six students or graduates of ETEQ to provide strong leadership for urban mission.
Richard Lougheed, Ph.D