Ministries & Missions
Family Ministries: Directed by our Family Ministries and Life Group Pastor, Jamie Stinson, we offer Sunday opportunities for children aged 0-12 through our Nursery, Waumba Land, and UpStreet programs. Our vision is to help children experience and realize the love and nature of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in age appropriate ways and to partner with parents in guiding their children in their spiritual development. We aim to intentionally empower parents to shepherd their kids in their spiritual walk. Our Family Ministries Pastor supports parents through regular communication (e.g., newsletters, parenting life groups, etc.).
Prior to the pandemic, on average, 50 children attended our Sunday programs. During the pandemic, Pastor Jamie facilitated some outdoor meet-ups, videos, and common activities (e.g., bake-off packages). We returned to in-person Sunday activities for children in February 2022 and are continuing to rebuild the Sunday activities, while also supporting home-based learning.
You can read more about our Family Ministry's vision and our Sunday programs here.
Youth Ministries: Led by our Youth Pastor, Connor Price, we offer a Sunday program for students from Grades 6-8, and weekly programs for Grade 6-8 students (Tuesdays) and Grade 9-12 students (Fridays), wherein youth engage in Bible study, worship and various games and activities. During the pandemic, youth activities were held outside, weather permitting, and in-person meetings resumed in fall 2021. You can read more about these programs here.
Long-term Life Groups: We facilitate long-term life groups of 8-12 individuals who meet on a regular basis to engage in Bible, book, or video study; discussion, and prayer. Currently, we have 15 long-term life groups, led by a variety of lay leaders. Some of these groups have been ongoing for several years, and new folks at Bethel are encouraged to connect in a life group.
Short-term Life Groups: We offer a series of two or three short-term life groups in the fall season and another set of short-term groups in the winter. These short-term life groups focus on particular topics, such as parenting advice, biblical response to various current topics, financial soundness, and marriage health. (Examples may be found here.)
TEDD Talks: From time to time, we offer TEDD talks. [Theology Education Discussion Discipleship], an evening discussion/talk about various issues.
Prayer Ministry: A weekly collective prayer time occurred prior to the pandemic and has moved online since Spring of 2020. The lead pastor and his wife oversaw this prayer ministry.
Missions: Our missions program includes outreach programs facilitated by Bethel, partnerships with local Christian charities, and support of missionaries engaged in short and long-term mission work in Canada and abroad. We describe each of these outreach, partnership and missionary components below.
Bethel House: Bethel Church owns the two houses adjacent to the church building (318 and 324 Johnson Street), which is the site of our Bethel House outreach program. Bethel House provides stable, secure, drug-and-alcohol-free transitional housing for men who are in recovery and have completed an eight to twelve-week treatment program at the Salvation Army Harbour Light Centre in Kingston, Ontario (or similar approved program), or are recommended to us through our partnership with Prison Fellowship Canada. With up to eleven men living in our houses at any given time, this ministry has seen approximately sixty men pass through our doors in the last three years, the majority of whom have successfully transitioned back to independent living in the Kingston community or elsewhere. Recently, the Bethel House Support and Accountability Partner (BSAP) program has been implemented, which partners the residents with men from Bethel Church for friendship and support. Bethel House is operated by committee, and day to day management is led by Steve Cousineau, who is also Bethel Church's Building Superintendent. Learn more about Bethel House here.
Refugee Program: We partner with another local church, Bay Park Baptist Church, to privately sponsor refugee families. To date, we have sponsored one family who arrived in March 2019, and we are in the process of raising support and processing applications for a second family.
Partnerships: We provide financial and/or volunteer support to Camp IAWAH, which is where many youth retreats occur, and many youth, including our own, attend camp programs. We also partner with Iawah to send a team of individuals to provide summer programming to Constance Lake First Nation.
We also support a post-secondary outreach group on Queen’s campus, Geneva House; the Kingston Pregnancy Care Centre that supports women of all ages who are facing an unplanned or stressful pregnancy; nightlight, an adult evening drop-in centre; Prison Fellowship Canada, including its Angel Tree Christmas and Angel Tree Camping programs; and Lionhearts that provides programming to support basic needs such as food security, warming-centres, and drop-in cafes in the Kingston community.
We provide financial and prayer support to 16 missionaries serving with various agencies at locations across Canada and around the globe. Many of our global workers were members of Bethel Church during their post-secondary or young adult years, before they moved into global ministries.
We also support our congregants who are interested in engaging in short-term missionary opportunities and, prior to the pandemic, Bethel has organized and sponsored short-term missions’ trips to Honduras and Constance Lake First Nation.
Read more about our partnerships here.
