Annie Armstrong Easter Offering 2025 – Week of Prayer Day 5
Sometimes, the best way to figure out what God is doing is to look back. That’s what Christian and Laura Rowland learned after planting a church in a fast-growing, multi-cultural Vancouver suburb. “When we first came to Langley,” Christian says, “we didn’t recognize how perfectly God shaped us for this work. But now, we look back and see how he used everything from our past and present, and we know this new church was part of his sovereign plan.”
Everything in their lives led to this. But Christian and Laura Rowland might not have realized that when they began planting a church in Langley, British Columbia, a Vancouver suburb with a diverse ethnic population and a desperate need for gospel witness. “When we moved here,” Christian says, “we were just trying to figure out, ‘Where do we start?’”
Fortunately for them, God had already started long before they arrived.
“Something that we could only dream—God made that dream come true.”
Christian and Laura both grew up in foreign countries. As college students, they participated in GenSend, a North American Mission Board program that puts young people on the mission field alongside church planters. They were sent to Vancouver. Then, shortly after they were married, their church in Texas announced plans to plant a new church. In Vancouver.
“We grew up overseas just like so many people here, then we did GenSend here, and we ended up in a congregation called to plant here,” Christian says. “So we can look back and say, ‘Oh, that’s God.’” “Now, people are coming to the Lord here,” Laura says. “And we can see this was all part of His sovereign unfolding plan.”
NAMB, AAEO, Langley, BC
Pray for…
- Continued unity as New Song Community Church experiences growth.
- The resources Christian and Laura need to do ministry in one of North America’s most expensive metro areas.
- Encounters that lead to gospel conversations.