About SEMBEQ.mov

SEMBEQ helps local Churches raise and train local workers for the mission field in Québec.

MISSION

The Evangelical Baptist Seminary of Quebec (SEMBEQ) represents the initiative of the Association of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Quebec (AEBEQ, in French) dedicated to help local churches train their members and leaders in their own church contexts. Our goal is to provide theological education programs and resources for churches to pursue the mission of the Gospel in all regions of Quebec.

VISION

Our dream is to work together in building a Gospel movement in our province that will result in personal conversions, missional communities, social justice and a renewing of culture throughout Québec and the French-speaking world. Québec is home to only 1% of Christians committed to an evangelical church. Our dream is to double this number and attain 2% of Christians committed to an evangelical church.

Québec and the
French-Speaking World

In a province undergoing a spiritual revival, SEMBEQ was born in Quebec in the 1970’s from the burning need to train leaders to care for its numerous new churches. In order to avoid uprooting these leaders from their locations to study elsewhere, we opted to train them within their own communities. We believe, and have seen, that the Church is the best context within which to train Christians according to their gifts. This has become the seminary’s purpose.

Quebec is the only province in Canada that has French as exclusive official language.
They are described as “a nation within a nation”
80% of the world’s maple syrup comes from Canada, but 75% comes from Quebec alone!
French fries, with cheese curds and gravy is called Poutine and is practically an official fast-food delicacy
Many comedy artists come from Quebec and their Just for Laughs festival is internationally renowned

However…

SADLY, IN QUEBEC

We find one of the highest suicide rates in Canada
Abortion is socially approved and tax-funded
The traditional family unit is virtually nonexistent
Divorce rates are diminishing only because practically nobody gets married anymore (even so, the divorce rates are still high!)

These are indeed worldwide problems, but the Quebecois also have no safe place to reach out:

Only 1% of Québec’s population is involved in an evangelical church.
They are the largest unreached people group in all of the Americas
There is only 1 church for every 106,000 people
In Montreal alone, to reach a ratio of 1 church for every 30,000 people, there would still need to be 50 new church plants

About SEMBEQ

As commissioned by its association of churches, SEMBEQ exists to assist in raising up the next generation of Christians in Quebec. Specifically, SEMBEQ acts as a tool of the local churches in the training of their members and leaders.

IN CANADA

SEMBEQ’s ministry is expanding into the rest of Canada by our new Master’s in Biblical Leadership program, which is targeted towards training Church planters and offered from one side of the country to the other.

INTERNATIONAL

Our ministry extends into French-speaking Europe, and in recent years, into Russia through our support of leadership development there, in collaboration with SGA Canada.

The seminary's beginnings

While the people of Quebec were abandoning the Catholic Church by the thousands in the 1970’s, the evangelical movement was reaping a harvest.

Groups of new converts met together across the province, even though pastors were few. On December 7, 1972, a group of pastors and leaders from the Association of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Quebec met in Montreal to address the pressing need for the training of new workers. A training program was needed that would help the fledgling local Churches to equip their own members. Equally important, this program would establish a partnership with those local Churches to train pastors of all ages and walks of life.

At that meeting, Mr. Ivor Greenslade, a missionary in Latin America, shared his experience in the field of decentralized theological teaching courses. The pastors present at the meeting nominated a committee composed of J. Alexanian, E. Beau and W. Phillips that would further study the issue. In the spring of 1973, the committee presented their recommendations to the pastors of the Association, who accepted them enthusiastically. On January 12, 1974, the Séminaire Baptiste Évangélique du Québec was inaugurated at Bethel Baptist Church in St-Laurent.

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