VEA MINISTRIES

790 North Road, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada V0R 1X3

Celebrating 29 years (1993-2022)

The Church On The Rock began on Gabriola Island in July of 1993, as a small house fellowship in the home of Irene and Bill Mirkovich. The church’s founding pastors were Alice and Gerrit Verstraete. The Verstraete family et al, as well as close friend Bernice Dewinetz, moved to Gabriola during the summer of 1993. Theirs was a faith and vision for a fellowship that invited everyone on the island to embrace the renewing and transforming work of the Spirit of God.

With roots in the Charismatic Movement that began in the 1960’s and then swept the world to touch every denomination, the Church On The Rock offers a family-friendly, non-denominational, yet profoundly Christian experience whose hallmark is a new way to worship, an unfolding view of faith as it applies to daily life, and a ministry of encouragement and healing to those who are searching for a greater awareness and experience of God in their lives.

Worship at the Church On The Rock is an invitation to participate and express oneself in a freedom of the Spirit that encourages “singing in the Spirit,” also known as singing in tongues. The gifts of the Spirit of God, also known as the gifts of the Holy Spirit are acknowledged and everyone is encouraged to exercise these empowering gifts. These gifts are available to every believer with the expressed belief that gifts turn into the abundant fruit of the Spirit knowing no boundaries in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

The unfolding view of faith is a willingness to be led by the Spirit of God, whether such leading is by understanding, experience, the ability to hear God speak directly and personally to one’s heart, the belief that God speaks to His children, and a confidence and abiding faith in the truth of God’s word known as Scripture.

The church’s ministry of encouragement and healing is grounded in the belief that every believer has the authority to pray and proclaim God’s prophetic word through prayer, the laying on of hands, and through words of knowledge, comfort, and wisdom, regardless of age or gender. Children, teens, young adults, and adults are free to speak whatever the Spirit of God may say to their hearts.

Together as a fellowship and as a community of faith, we encourage one another to be hungry and thirsty seekers of the Kingdom of God, as manifest in our daily lives where we readily admit that on our own we are so limited. Yet, empowered by the Spirit of God, we are able to experience the impossible as possible as a result of the governing truth of Jesus Christ in our lives

All pastors in the Church On The Rock are ordained under the auspices of VEA Ministries and the Religious Representative Registry department of the British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency.