EDITOR’S NOTE: This year’s Week of Prayer for North American Missions is March 1–8 and is focused on the theme “More Than a Gift” and the theme verse of Ephesians 3:20–21. The emphasis spotlights the spiritual needs and ministry taking place on the North American mission field leading up to the annual Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. All gifts given to the offering support missionaries and resources on the mission field. The AAEO provides half of the annual funding for the North American Mission Board. Gifts to the Annie offering can be given through local Southern Baptist churches or online at give.anniearmstrong.com. This year’s goal is $80 million.
“The beginning of the story is good. But the ending is even better.”
That’s Andrew Mark Adil’s opening line when people ask how such an unlikely man ended up in such an unlikely place doing such an unlikely thing.
Born in the Middle East and raised in a strict Sunni Muslim household — “By the time I was 14, I’d memorized two-thirds of the Quran,” he said — Adil and his family emigrated to Canada, where a childhood friend introduced him to Jesus.
“I’d never, ever been to a Christian church, not until he invited me,” Adil said. “The people at that church gave me my first ever Bible, and I still remember the exact moment I was reading the Gospel of Matthew and understood that Jesus was crucified for my sins.”
Years later, after returning to his home country, a place that was closed to most overt forms of Christian witness, Adil was discipled by International Mission Board missionaries — “They were the ones who really helped me understand the gospel” — and he met Petra, a Slovakian flight attendant.
“At first,” she said, “I thought he was a little crazy. Every time we had a date, we’d end up watching sermon videos.”
Adil led Petra to Christ. They got married. And then they decided to return to Canada and plant a church in Montreal, one of the most unreached cities in North America.
“Montreal is in the province of Quebec, and Quebec was once a Roman Catholic stronghold,” Adil said. “But in the ’60s and ’70s, people here rebelled against the church. It’s what’s known now as the Quiet Revolution. Pretty much everyone turned their backs on anything having to do with religion, and now three generations later — God, Jesus, the Bible — those are completely foreign concepts to people here.”
‘No better place than this to plant a church’
Today, less than one percent of Quebec’s population identifies as evangelical.
“When you come here, you are truly coming into an unreached people group,” Adil says. “Maybe that’s why it seemed to us there was no better place than this to plant a church.”
That’s the beginning of Adil’s story. But, as he says, the ending is even better.
In 2023, Grace Church in Verdun, Quebec, sent Adil, Petra, and a team of 24 others to downtown Montreal to plant a new work.
“Having a Sending Church and a core team around us was huge,” Adil said. “It meant we were able to hit the ground running on day one.”
For Adil and his brand new church plant evangelism team — “and when I say team,” he said, “I mean the whole church” — hit the ground running on day one.
They set up shop every Friday night, rain or shine, on a busy downtown Montreal street corner amid the shops, restaurants, and office buildings and struck up surprisingly deep and lengthy gospel conversations with passersby. It’s an evangelism approach they continue to practice.
“When we started talking to people here, we learned they were genuinely curious,” Adil said. “Lots of our conversations weren’t just, ‘Here’s a tract, have a nice day.’ People would actually ask all kinds of questions like, ‘How can I know the Bible is true?’ or ‘What’s the difference between your God and my god?’
“We were able to go really deep with all kinds of people.”
Since immigrants make up nearly 25% of Montreal’s population, Adil and his internationally eclectic core team were ideally suited to do street evangelism there.
“We met people who had all different kinds of belief systems and who came from all over the world,” he said. “That was perfect for us, because we had team members from the Middle East, like me, and we had Latinos, Slavs, Haitians, Africans — no matter what language people spoke, we always had someone who could share with them in their heart language.”
In 2023, Adil and his team launched Christ Covenant Church, a congregation full of recently reached people in a still very unreached place.
“I love what God has made us into,” he said. “So many of our people are new believers, and with my journey out of Islam, I can show them that counting the cost, leaving your old life behind, and following Christ — it’s all worth it.”
‘Better’ ending
As Adil noted, the beginning of his story was good. But now, the ending is even better.
“What’s happened since we started this journey is nothing short of miraculous,” he said. “We baptized ten people in one year, and we doubled in number after two years. In a hard place like Montreal, those things are unheard of. From the beginning until now, it’s crazy how we ended up here. Only God can do such amazing things.”
The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is used for training, support and care for missionaries, like Andrew Mark and Petra Adil, and for evangelism resources.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Tony Hudson and originally published by the North American Mission Board.
