Ottawa Prayer Breakfast

It wasn’t what I expected to see at this year’s national prayer breakfast. A crowd of 1,400 people packed the hall, waiting for the platform guests to arrive: the Prime Minister, the leader of the Parliament’s loyal opposition, MPs, speakers, and musicians.

I’ve been to a few of these events over my years of serving Canada’s Evangelical community, but since I’d shifted primarily to a global focus for the past 13 years, this annual rite of spring had fallen off my schedule. During those 13 years, I’ve heard many gloomy assessments of Christian witness in Canada. Commentators and pollsters have consistently reminded us that faith is declining, that younger generations are walking away from any kind of religious observance, and that COVID-19 pounded a nail into church ministries that has not been reversed. But you’d never guess any of that from this year’s prayer breakfast. There was a palatable excitement in being together.

The leadership dinner the night before, I suppose, was a warning of—or perhaps a warmup for—what was to come the next day. Music, testimonies, and friendly jocularity set the tone. We were assured that there was nothing to be afraid of in this gathering and with testimonies bold with no sign of anyone being afraid of overstatements, answering the call to serve Jesus was visibly OK.

At first, I wasn’t sure of how to read this event. Was it too evangelistic? What would those from more liturgical traditions make of this? But also, how in the world could the federal parliamentarians of Canada – who led and organized the event, by the way – lead an unabashed celebration of Christian faith at the very time when faith seems to be, at best, restricted to one’s private belief and is not openly expressed in our nation’s capital?

But then it occurred to me that possibly this event might be signaling a new wind of faith in my home country.

I recall a prayer breakfast when Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister. The speaker, Henri Nouwen, stood and spoke words that I thought were somewhat audacious: “I have a word from God from you today.” Imagine, I wondered to myself, if I tried to pull that line as speaker. But in response to his opening statement, we hung on to his every word.

Here’s my point: decades ago, at such an event, the historic churches set the tone. Nouwen, as a Roman Catholic, had cultural prestige which gave him standing, and then by the power of his word he commanded presence. The evangelical church simply didn’t rate.

But then as the 1990s rolled on, pollsters noted a decided shift. Historic churches – for a myriad of reasons – lost presence and their social and political clout.

In the intervening years, three major influences have served to push back against public credibility of faith as a national instrument fostering goodness and well-being. Roman Catholics have been damaged by sexual abuse case and secular pressures. Mainline Protestants, specializing in social accommodation, lost their Christological center. Evangelicals, warped by a hyper-conservative political swing seen most strikingly in the US, have maintained our church membership, but our credibility in the public square has been seriously questioned.

Recent public discourse in Canada has been dominated by such issues as the redefining of marriage, assisted suicide (we call it MAID or medical assistance in dying), permitting the deliberate ending of life, the legitimizing of transgender identities and self-selected sexuality, and stories of injustice committed against Indigenous people and their communities. One would think that these and other issues would dismantle any kind of enthusiastic, Bible-based public witness and testimony, especially on a national public stage. Such behavior would seem not only anachronistic but downright out of step.

But not so in Ottawa on this spring day.

I walked into the morning prayer breakfast feeling sure that the unmitigated enthusiasm of the night before would not carry over. I was wrong. The event chair, Richard Bragdon, bounced to the podium radiating warmth and an invitation to us all. A member of parliament from the Maritimes, he couldn’t have been more excited to see us, to extend his welcome to heads of parties, and to affirm their importance in the land. Although I wondered how he actually gets along with colleagues in parliament, it was evident that they responded favorably to his gesture of collegiality.

Within the marked enthusiasm and dynamic and emotionally charged worship, one might have expected a message devoted to personal spiritual well-being, or a reminder of the importance of biblical orthodoxy. Instead, we heard a very different, challenging presentation on human desperation and our corresponding need to seek justice. Anu George Canjanathoppil of the International Justice Mission engaged us with her story of rescuing those trapped in slavery. Her messages left no room for any of us to escape the personal responsibility to foster justice in our own worlds. The celebration of faith in music and witness was naturally blended with the call for justice here in this land and the world. It was a tough and unrelenting expression of how the gospel should bring freedom and liberation. The enthusiasm and celebratory worship inclined our minds and hearts to the heart-wrenching stories of slavery and the Gospel call to justice.

The event reminded me of Elijah, pressing king Ahab to look for rain in a time of extreme draught. Seven times he looked, and finally he saw a cloud, “as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea,” telling of the latter rain (I Kings 18:44).

The prayer breakfast was nothing like I expected and surely, in our times, something I would not have thought possible. As I sat there, quite moved by it all, I looked at the stage and wondered if I was seeing a small cloud of promise.

Brian Stiller
Global Ambassador, The World Evangelical Alliance
June 2024