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VILLIAGE MISSIONS
Preach the Word. Love the People
Villiage Missions goal is to glorify Christ by developing spiritually vital country churches in North America. We fulfill this aim by placing pastors in small towns and rural churches that might otherwise have to close. Villiage Missions has kept the doors open of over 220 churches across the United States and Canada.
BRAD BERGEN, VILLAGE MISSIONARY
Serving the Least Reached in Canada
WHERE I CAME FROM
I was born in Terrace BC to Terry and Bonnie Bergen in 1998. I was born in Terrace only because they couldn't help with twin births through C-section at the Smithers hospital. My twin brother Justin and my little brother Riley Bergen and I all grew up in Smithers BC, where we enjoyed the outdoors, good friends, a Christian school and a stable home life. From a young age, growing up in the Evangelical Free Church of Smithers BC, I had felt a calling into pastoral ministry, so with the encouragement of my pastors and the desire to grow in my faith and become equipped for ministry I went to Bible college at Peace River Bible Institute. There I met a beautiful girl, many close to this day friends and an increased certainty that God was calling me forward into pastoral ministry, especially back to the land of my childhood, northern BC
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VILLAGE MISSIONS
I was married in the summer of 2020 to Cristyn and while working as a landscaper I was asked to preach at Lakes Community Church, 20 minutes outside Prince George BC. I was in love with the area and the church on my first visit because of the natural beauty and the friendly congregation.
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Over the course of the next year, I was asked to come and pastor at the church, but as it was a Village Missions Church, I had to go through training with Cristyn in order to pastor the church which we did in the fall of 2020. After that, it was diving into the ministry and seeking to know what God had for Cristyn and I as we started to mesh with the community.
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For much of our first days, we were learning the ropes, attempting to get to know and understand what God had for us in a Covid plagued ministry, as three Sundays into my first pastorate, we were kicked out of the church by Government regulations and all of our services went online. We eventually figured out online services and all the trappings that came with it and were even able to start up the youth group again in the spring of 2021. As the only pastor in the church Preaching and Visitation are the mainstays of ministry for me.
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Rural missions has a much heavier importance put on relationship building and the preaching of the word on Sunday morning than on programs and so I spend much of my time in the office on sermons and much of my time on the road or at kitchen tables or helping with farm work or similar chores. All of this of course that I might know Christ and that they might know him through me.
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Village Missions motto is Preach the Word and Love the people, and this has really resonated with Cristyn and I as we have sought to do God's will in the place where he has called us.
A passage that has always called me forward into ministry for the sake of God's kingdom is Phillipians 3:7-11
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"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."
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