Officers Serving Overseas – Majors Matthew and Fiona Kean (Canada)
The Australia Territory has 32 Aussie officers serving overseas, one at International Headquarters in London but based in Australia, and 10 overseas officers serving in different appointments here. Over the coming months, Global Focus will feature many of these officers – who they are, where they’re serving, the joys and challenges they face and what life looks like for them in their unique corners of The Salvation Army world.
Majors Matthew and Fiona Kean have been corps officers in British Columbia, Canada, since 2018. Matthew, originally from the island of Newfoundland, Canada, and Fiona, from Melbourne, both grew up as children of Salvation Army officers. They have been serving in Australia and Canada since 2010 along with their three children, now aged 14, 12 and 10. They coordinate the Chilliwack Corps, which alongside church services, runs a 68-bed homeless shelter and a food pantry that feeds 150-200 people per day. KIRRALEE NICOLLE recently caught up with them to find out how life and work is going as Australian officers serving overseas.
Tell me a little bit about each of you – what makes you tick and how did you end up as officers in The Salvation Army?
Fiona: Being born to officer parents, I grew up living this kind of life. When I was around the age my kids are now, we even did an overseas exchange to Scotland, where my mum comes from. Then, when I finished school in Melbourne, I studied teaching and worked in that field for a couple of years, then ended up in Toronto where I met Matt. I’d always said to the Lord, “If you want me to go into full-time ministry, then you’d better bring me a husband who’s going to do that” because that was the way I’d seen it modelled. Then I met Matt, we quickly began dating, and then he said, “By the way, I’m going to be an officer, so if you’re not, this should probably stop now.” But it didn’t! We got married, then we became officers. That’s the short version!
Matthew: I was also raised in a good Salvation Army home, but I like to march to the beat of my own drum. I went off the rails for a number of years in which I developed a drug addiction. Then a pretty dramatic change took place when I had a spiritual experience with Jesus and the gospel. From there, my whole life was tipped upside down for the better. I met Fiona while doing ministry work in Toronto, and we began ministering together. Then after we got married, we trained to be Salvation Army officers in Melbourne. We started at Box Hill Corps as youth and young adult pastors while training at Eva Burrows College. After that, we had our first appointment as corps officers at Hobsons Bay Corps in Altona, where we were for seven and a half years.
How was your time in Altona?
Matthew: It was really fulfilling and so positive. We saw many Muslim attendees convert to Christ, built a new building and saw the community there morph into one, which really reflected the demographic of the local area. When we came to Canada, it was a lot to leave even though it felt so right. Everything in Altona was in a good place, and we didn’t need to leave, but Chilliwack has been so much the perfect place for us to be.
Fiona: I loved Altona. I couldn’t believe that I’d spent so much of my life growing up in Melbourne, yet I didn’t even know Altona existed. When we moved there, I said I never wanted to move ever again! We loved the church, the community and our children’s school, and I loved the beach. The ocean is what makes me tick. I love summer, I love the beach, so I felt like, “How could we ever leave?” But then, by the time we were approached to take up an appointment in Canada, God had lined things up for us so that when it happened, it was just the right time.
Tell me about your move to Chilliwack. How did it feel to make that shift?
Fiona: I was a bit nervous because I’m a big-city person, and Chilliwack only has about 100,000 people. To me, that seemed small. For Matt, coming from Newfoundland it was more familiar to be in a small place. There’s lots of farming here, and agriculture is huge. It means that for the first time in my life, I have farmer friends, who have dairy and chicken farms. A large proportion of the population are Dutch immigrants who moved here after World War Two.
Matthew: There’s a huge Christian community here, too. When we first googled Chilliwack, we saw a quote that said, “If you want Jesus and drugs, Chilliwack’s the town for you.” There are churches all over the place, yet there is so much work for the gospel to do. It was kind of shocking to us when we first arrived how many of the churches in the area didn’t have much of an outreach focus, but that is changing rapidly. We now have a great relationship with all the local pastors, and the tables have turned. We’ve been very blessed to be a part of turning those tables.
You’ve already touched on this a little, but what are some of the challenges you have faced in Chilliwack?
Matthew: Since COVID-19, we have seen a new kind of client using our services. We call them the ‘working poor’, as they are people with jobs but are finding themselves unable to pay rent or put food on the table. To be quite frank, we’re seeing poverty being created by poor government policy.
Fiona: The other category we are seeing more of in the shelter are seniors who are unable to afford to live anywhere else. Those are the two categories of people whose circumstances have really changed since we arrived.
What are you finding encouraging in your lives and work?
Fiona: One thing that has been a huge blessing is the Christian school our children attend. It has been really great for us to have actual Christian friends outside of our church. We have a great church and a great team, but it has also been really helpful having that Christian support outside of ministry, too. In our ministries, we also have a lot of growth: new converts in the community, our youth programs are well-attended even by teenagers from outside the church, and recently our Vacation Bible School program had 37 children attending with only about five or six coming from our corps. Also, our chaplain is doing a fantastic job bringing people together with Bible studies and creative ways of learning about Jesus.
Matthew: We have been very blessed here with a ton of community support. We have deliberately been very overt with our message about Jesus. At one point, we were guilty of ‘hiding behind the Red Shield’ a bit, but we realised we didn’t like that and wanted to be more Jesus-centred, so we began to put the cross in front and the message of the gospel forward in every meeting that we went to and every boardroom we sat around. We prayed and exalted Jesus, and we began to get the respect of people who were not believers and believers alike. We rely on private funding, and people have been giving generously. Churches are also jumping on board because they see that we’re true to our convictions for Christ. It’s incredible what is happening at our corps – God is opening so many doors. We’re really seeing the fruit of our hard work for the last six years, but also answered prayer. On 25 August, we are hosting a celebration of The Salvation Army’s presence here for 100 years at the request of the local council and businesses. We are putting on a church service in the public park with food trucks and free New Testaments, and we are expecting 3000 Christians to come along!
What encouragement do you have for your fellow officers back in Australia?
Matthew: If there was anything we could encourage you with, it’s that we have seen the most fruit from removing the veil from the gospel message and being more blatant, more bold and more unapologetic with why we do what we do and who we do it for. For instance, we have a bank that donates huge cheques to us. When we received their first donation, we prayed for the team in the name of Jesus. The manager told us that no one had ever done that before. It had such a profound impact that we are now not just receiving monetary support from them, but we’re friends. And that’s just one small example of what can happen when you lift up Jesus without apology. I hope our story can encourage other officers to keep Jesus at the centre, too!
