Pastor Darcy Reimer and his wife, Kenda, chat breezily with each other over coffee at the packed Bean Brackendale Café.
Darcy is founder of The River Community Church and chair of Community Christmas Care, the long-time Squamish organization that delivers hampers of toys and food to those in need each winter.
Kenda heads pastoral care and spiritual direction with The River, as well as with the church’s women’s and kids’ ministries. The couple also has four children.
The Squamish Chief sat down with Darcy for a chat about the church and his thoughts on religious belief in a changing Squamish.
What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Q: How did you end up in Squamish?
A: We came July 15, 2005. There were eight to 10 people here who wanted a church, who knew us and had a connection to us from North Vancouver.
They had approached us in 2002 and asked if we would consider moving, but Kenda and I didn’t feel like it was the community we wanted to be part of at that time.
We came full circle in 2004 and ended up here.
Q: What brought Squamish back as an option for you?
A: We had put it on the backburner for about two years and then we were in Whistler holidaying with family. We were coming back through Squamish and stopped at Tim Hortons. Out of the blue Kenda – and she will tell you she was totally joking – said to her brother, “Why don’t you quit your job, move to Squamish and help us start a church?”
What went on for me, when she spoke those words, was a flutter of emotion. My heart skipped a beat. The joy that emerged in my heart startled me. We hopped back in the car and I said, “Kenda, you wouldn’t believe what you have just started.”
After that I would come to Squamish and walk the river dike in Brackendale and try to get a sense of if this was for us. Every time I came, it was – this may sound corny –it was as if Jesus was there waiting for me. It was tangible.
Q: You have said if it wasn’t for finding Jesus as a teenager your life would not have turned out as it has. How did that come about?
A: He completely transformed my outlook and my view of myself. It was Grade 8 – and I know this is really abnormal – but I looked at what I saw my parents experience in their marriage, I looked at the effect of alcohol abuse and what that was having on my family and my dad in particular, and it created this longing for more.
I knew there was more.
I was invited to a youth event and I heard about Jesus and his forgiveness and his grace, his love. It filled this gaping hole in this teenaged boy.
Q: Your church is unique in that you don’t have a brick-and-mortar building. Do you meet in homes?
A: Every time we were at a place where we felt like we needed to rent a space and go big, we kept getting a sense that we needed to start another simple gathering in a home – not do the big show and the big program-driven thing that we were quite used to from the [Fraser] Valley or from North Vancouver. Squamish is a different deal.
You can’t come in here and transpose a model that may fit somewhere else and think it is going to fit here.
We continue to encourage our groups to meet where they actually do life. So, we encourage people to maybe gather and do something on a mountain bike trail or beside Smoke Bluffs. Something as simple as reading a psalm, hear what prayer needs people have and then climb and ride or do whatever. For a lot of people in this community, their sanctuary is the forest. I don’t believe in fighting those kinds of things. We need to listen to that.
Q: As you referenced, increasingly people – especially on the West Coast – don’t attend traditional church. How do you address that and what do you make of it as a religious leader?
A: That is a challenge. So, if our goal is just to get people into a building then we may as well close up shop. Early on we had a saying, “The church has left the building.” The goal is far bigger than that. The idea is we are to be a blessing, regardless of if you are coming to my church or not. As soon as people get a sense that there are strings attached, people smell a rat from a mile away. Our church tries to find ways to bless Squamish. For example, one of our house churches found out how many kids are on youth agreements in town and took it upon themselves to adopt those 25 kids, and they put together hampers for them. Again, with no strings attached.
Q: So for someone who has never heard of The River, can you provide a snapshot of what you are about?
A: We are part of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. It started in the late 1800s in New York City where a fellow was a Presbyterian and he was reaching out to the Irish and Italian immigrants. If you know your history of that time, it was pretty rough there then. He was reaching the roughest of the rough – the poor, immigrants and refugees. He started bringing those people into the Presbyterian Church and he got booted out, they fired him. He was too radical. He started a movement where like-minded people would be out doing missions, caring for the world and blessing people in the margins and giving them the hope of Jesus.
That is where we come from. But, we are really just a group of people who want to orientate ourselves around the person of Jesus; he is our hero and we want to be like him.
Q: Looking ahead, what do you hope for The River?
A: It has been my dream right from the beginning to have a community centre where we would offer after school care. Not a traditional church. We would rent that facility on a Sunday morning, but we would run all kinds of programs out of there and make it available for the community. We would have dirt jumps and a skate park. That is what I would love to see happen in Brackendale. As land prices continue to climb, I have to hold that vision loosely, but I haven’t felt like I have been able to let go of that vision so I am continually looking at land and praying.
Q: What do you think of Squamish’s recent growth?
A: We are having some growing pains, and we feel it; infrastructure, the high cost of housing that is really limiting those of a lower income to be here – that is a huge concern for us. But early on we had a fellow who lived in Whistler and he had this prophetic kind of an edge. He had this vision that he was standing, overlooking a community and he saw all these beautiful packages: some with ribbons, all different shapes and sizes, all coming to this community. He held on to that and didn’t know what it meant and then he moved to Squamish. He climbed the Stawamus Chief and as he was standing at the top he realized that Squamish was the community in his vision. What he believed was that God was bringing and will bring beautiful people to this community – each uniquely different, in a wide assortment of colours and shapes and sizes – and they will continue to make this community even more beautiful than it already is.
I believe that to be true.
