Juno News - April 30, 2020


Drive-in pastor speaks out as prosecutors decide whether to lay social distancing charges


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

192.34244

Word count

2,768

Sentence count

149


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pastor Henry Hildebrandt of the Church of God in Elmer, Ontario was involved in a police stakeout at his church's parking lot service. The Crown is now reviewing the evidence and deciding whether or not to lay charges.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I want to talk about this story that we touched on on Monday that really struck a nerve with
00:00:10.180 a lot of people, myself included, and that was the police stakeout in Elmer, Ontario
00:00:15.480 at the Church of God where Pastor Henry Hildebrand oversaw a service in the parking lot, a drive-in
00:00:23.920 parking lot service where all the cars would tune into the sermon on an FM radio and listen
00:00:29.680 to the church service the way they normally would except instead of doing what many churches
00:00:34.400 like my own are doing with having Zoom calls and Facebook streams and all that, they were
00:00:39.120 doing it live and not in the flesh necessarily but live and in the car which I thought was
00:00:44.840 a fantastic way to have the sense of community that church gives and also maintain social
00:00:50.440 distance.
00:00:51.180 Well, Elmer, Ontario Police had a different idea.
00:00:54.540 They were filming every car going in.
00:00:56.720 They were filming the service and now have handed it over to the Crown prosecutors and
00:01:02.380 the Crown is now reviewing the evidence, which means watching a church service, which I guess
00:01:06.980 can't hurt them, and then decides whether they will advance this by laying charges or not
00:01:13.220 or by directing police to lay charges, which is just so asinine.
00:01:16.880 I mean, the title of my show the other day was Criminalizing Church because that's really
00:01:21.260 what's happening here.
00:01:22.180 And the one police officer had said people will be held accountable and they were saying
00:01:27.540 just because no one laid a ticket on Sunday doesn't mean that we won't down the road.
00:01:31.840 So I find this to be just horrendous and such an overreach and I want to talk about this
00:01:36.320 in a bit more depth with the pastor who's presiding over these drive-in services from the Church
00:01:41.420 of God in Elmer, Ontario.
00:01:42.820 Pastor Henry Hildebrandt joins me on the line now.
00:01:45.780 Pastor, thanks very much for your time today.
00:01:48.060 Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:49.300 So these are so difficult, these times that we're living in, for churches, for all organizations
00:01:55.540 and institutions now.
00:01:56.880 And I know that a lot of organizations are finding their own ways to adapt electronically.
00:02:01.720 Why not do that?
00:02:03.400 Why not do the Zoom services or the Facebook streaming?
00:02:06.500 Why do this parking lot drive-in service?
00:02:09.660 Well, it seems to me that we're not alone because all over the world, not just in Canada,
00:02:14.300 but all over the world, you see there's a rapid, rapid moving towards rather doing it.
00:02:21.800 It's when you have the visual, it makes all the difference.
00:02:25.920 It's one thing to sit at home and hearing somebody somewhere, not knowing where they are,
00:02:31.700 or you come to the parking lot and you see the person, you see the action.
00:02:35.460 I mean, after all, when we preach, half of our preaching is by actions, right?
00:02:40.260 Yeah.
00:02:40.560 So I guess, though, there is an element of this where a lot of people are going to think
00:02:45.060 this is just about rabble-rousing.
00:02:46.900 Is it about that, or is there something more fundamental in the service that you're doing here?
00:02:52.560 There's something very, very fundamental here, very fundamental.
00:02:55.840 And that is that when you see that the liquor store is essential and church is not, that is serious.
00:03:06.580 It's an interesting point you bring up there, because when the Ontario order went in initially
00:03:11.480 and we saw the list of all the businesses that were essential, I mean, there were very few that
00:03:16.100 weren't essential.
00:03:17.160 And it is interesting that people waiting in a line in a grocery store, waiting in a line
00:03:22.180 in a Costco, where there's similar exposure to what you could replicate in a church, you
00:03:27.300 could put the same spacing there, that the two are, from a health perspective, very similar,
00:03:32.320 but from a legal perspective now or not.
00:03:35.440 Exactly, exactly.
00:03:36.400 And that's exactly where we should be right now.
00:03:38.920 It's exactly where we should be, is we should be in our church buildings and space like they
00:03:45.660 want us to do it.
00:03:47.200 But we are left far behind, and that's what troubles me extremely very much.
00:03:53.560 Okay, so you raise an important point there.
00:03:55.300 This isn't because you don't agree with the importance of social distance, or because you
00:04:00.580 don't agree with the seriousness of the pandemic.
00:04:03.880 I see what they're saying, I listen to what they're saying, and I want to cooperate far fully.
00:04:10.680 Because you said in a press release that went out yesterday that no laws were broken and
00:04:15.400 all safety guidelines were followed.
00:04:17.500 Did you get legal advice on this before you did these drive-in services, or at least before
00:04:22.280 the story blew up like it did last weekend?
00:04:25.840 Well, we were there, we started, you know, at first was where the 50 people were still
00:04:31.260 allowed, and then it went down further, and then five people and whatnot.
00:04:34.520 So then we had these drive-in services, and the police came and checked it up, and they
00:04:41.780 said, all good.
00:04:42.960 So the police actually were at the previous services and raised no issues, and this is,
00:04:50.500 I think, the one last Sunday, the third, as I understand it.
00:04:52.860 But police had been to the first two and flagged no concerns.
00:04:56.520 They were there for the first two, checked it up, because obviously they have to respond
00:05:00.280 if the call comes in.
00:05:01.720 They came, and they found no breaking of the law in any shape or form, and they said, enjoy.
00:05:08.120 So it was all good until this last one.
00:05:10.220 So why now?
00:05:12.040 Why change?
00:05:12.720 Because the messaging that we saw from the police in the National Post, in the London
00:05:16.840 Free Press, that one line that really sends chills down me is, people will be held accountable,
00:05:22.380 as though some mass subversion of the law has taken place here.
00:05:26.360 Why has the tone changed from those first two services to the one most recently?
00:05:30.700 So the police had no problem with it whatsoever.
00:05:34.200 Like we said, they were there before.
00:05:36.400 But why that all of a sudden changed was because of the Facebook postings that people do, and
00:05:43.100 we all know how much value, how much weight they carry.
00:05:47.040 But anyway, so they responded to that, and the police thought that there was so many calls
00:05:54.540 that came in.
00:05:55.160 I think it was 15, so they thought that that was enough reason to shut us down, I guess.
00:06:00.780 And I don't know if you know who the complainants are, but you're convinced that these were
00:06:04.300 just people that saw it on Facebook, not even people necessarily that were in the community
00:06:08.700 and impacted by this, or drove by and saw it firsthand.
00:06:11.700 Yes, the chief admitted to that, that it was that.
00:06:17.560 So people were driving by and making assumptions, and we followed that all Sunday afternoon,
00:06:24.020 exactly, saw exactly what was happening.
00:06:25.680 So we were not surprised when the police said that.
00:06:29.220 We knew exactly where he got his information from was Facebook, because people said, well,
00:06:34.540 there was nobody in the car.
00:06:36.400 We were all in our cars.
00:06:37.900 The building was closed.
00:06:39.480 So that was an assumption they made, and that's what the police chief based his information
00:06:44.720 off of the, I guess we could say, fake news of the Facebook.
00:06:49.140 And I noticed that you even had signs telling people to put their windows up.
00:06:52.840 So even if there was a possibility that someone would say the windows being down posed a risk,
00:06:56.760 you seem to have gotten ahead of that one.
00:06:58.560 We were ahead of that one.
00:07:00.160 We were very, very careful.
00:07:03.020 We were actually the safest, safest place in town at that point.
00:07:06.600 Let me ask you then about where you see this going, because the story in CTV as of this
00:07:13.820 morning is that the Crown is assessing whether you've broken the law or not.
00:07:17.640 There's a lawyer quoted in the story who says, because no one got out of their cars, it's
00:07:21.740 not a gathering in his view.
00:07:23.280 But I think the one thing we've learned in the last few weeks is that a lot of people
00:07:26.860 are making this up as they go.
00:07:28.360 So I don't know if anyone knows the actual definition here.
00:07:31.140 But is there a part of you that is wanting to get ticketed just so you can fight it and
00:07:35.900 prove the point?
00:07:36.820 Or do you just want everyone to leave you alone so you can go back to doing these Sunday
00:07:40.780 drive-ins as long as that's what's required?
00:07:43.180 Well, I think I proved my point that the first few weeks that we were there, we didn't try
00:07:48.060 to get any attention.
00:07:49.280 The police came and they said, enjoy, it looks good.
00:07:51.580 So we were just happy to continue right on.
00:07:54.880 It wasn't us that caused this.
00:07:56.720 It was the police that said, no, no more.
00:07:58.980 Before it was good.
00:07:59.760 Now it's no good.
00:08:01.340 And like I said, there's many, there's other provinces, a number of them in Canada, there's
00:08:05.700 other countries in Europe and others that are going this way.
00:08:10.020 It's just, you can't have proper fellowship sitting at home and just listening to someone.
00:08:15.160 You can do it for a time or two, but that's not holding through.
00:08:19.420 We need to see one another.
00:08:21.660 We need to have that fellowship, if you will.
00:08:25.460 Yeah, that is such an important part.
00:08:27.260 And people don't understand if they aren't from within the church, I think, the importance
00:08:32.000 of that.
00:08:32.440 I mean, people get speaking with their friends and stuff.
00:08:34.800 And my church has moved to a lot of Bible studies online and fellowships online.
00:08:38.960 And you can replicate some of that community, but it's not the same thing.
00:08:43.520 It's not the same thing as shaking a hand, as breaking bread, and doing all of these other
00:08:47.340 things that are as much a part of church as the sermon.
00:08:49.740 That's exactly it.
00:08:51.760 You just cannot do it.
00:08:53.420 And that's why I'm saying this issue now goes far, far beyond me or our church.
00:09:00.640 This affects all of us.
00:09:02.760 And when we put the police in front of the church building to make sure nobody enters,
00:09:08.920 but we have the liquor store open, that to me is, now we're talking, this is serious.
00:09:15.500 It's not about me or our church.
00:09:17.300 It's about religious freedom.
00:09:19.140 And that's very, very serious, where we are now.
00:09:22.200 When you mention religious freedom, I guess I have to ask if you think that this controversy
00:09:26.460 is only taking place because you are a pastor and this is a church, or do you think this
00:09:31.020 is just a general overzealousness from law enforcement that would happen in any circumstance?
00:09:36.740 Well, I think they took it for granted that they could do with that whatever they wanted
00:09:41.360 to, that the church people would be glad to just stay at home.
00:09:45.160 And they definitely found one in me that is not happy to stay home, and the same with our
00:09:50.140 people, and the same with many, many, many other people.
00:09:55.140 Church is essential to us.
00:09:57.600 The Bible says man shall not live by bread alone.
00:10:00.320 So we don't live just off of the grocery store.
00:10:02.680 We have to have our spiritual food.
00:10:04.600 Have you had a discussion or a thought process, or have you reached a decision, if you get
00:10:10.200 a ticket, as to whether you will pay it or whether you will fight it and make this bigger
00:10:14.440 point, if necessary, in court?
00:10:16.720 I am not concerned about that at this point at all.
00:10:20.580 We have tremendous, tremendous support coming in from all over.
00:10:26.340 I am not worried about that.
00:10:27.760 That's not my concern.
00:10:29.380 I want to make sure that I, as a pastor, fulfill my duty in feeding the people.
00:10:34.060 And do my best I can, the way we're going about it.
00:10:37.360 But they'll have to figure all of that out.
00:10:39.660 I'm a preacher.
00:10:40.440 I'm not a lawyer.
00:10:42.160 Let me ask you here something, Pastor.
00:10:44.020 How big is your parking lot?
00:10:45.400 Because it sounds like there are a lot of people that might have the only opportunity
00:10:49.460 to have this type of service by driving to Elmer on Sunday, or in a couple of weeks,
00:10:54.220 perhaps.
00:10:54.640 So can you accommodate the influx?
00:10:56.560 If a lot of people say, hey, you know what?
00:10:58.220 I'm not getting this anywhere else.
00:10:59.420 I'm going to check them out.
00:11:00.840 So what we're going to do is we're actively looking into finding a huge place, huge parking
00:11:05.600 lot somewhere, putting up big screens.
00:11:07.660 People are calling from all over the place.
00:11:09.440 People are coming for this Sunday from hours away.
00:11:12.520 They said they feel the same way as we do.
00:11:14.260 We cannot do.
00:11:15.240 We cannot do without gathering at least sometimes.
00:11:18.160 So we're going to accommodate that.
00:11:19.780 We're going to do what we can.
00:11:21.300 Our parking lot, I'm not sure how many it holds.
00:11:23.580 It's probably about 70 cars or so, I would think.
00:11:26.860 So we're going to do, we're looking into to see what we can do, where we can accommodate
00:11:30.340 people, because it goes far, far beyond 70 cars at this point.
00:11:34.940 People from all over want to attend the service because that's just the nature of your heart,
00:11:41.700 your soul desires to be fed.
00:11:43.940 Like I said, man shall not live by bread alone.
00:11:45.780 So people want to be fed and they want to gather somewhere.
00:11:49.440 That's just part of it.
00:11:50.260 And we'll do it in the safest way possible, just like we have done.
00:11:53.580 I think there's a drive-in movie theater not far from you.
00:11:56.760 And I was actually wondering a couple of weeks ago if they might be allowed to reopen,
00:12:00.080 but that might be your way forward here to accommodate this, because I'm noticing that
00:12:05.300 there are a lot of people, even people that aren't particularly religious, this has just
00:12:09.560 been anecdotal on my part, that are really starting to ask a lot of questions.
00:12:14.040 And I think whenever there's a mass event like this, it does shake people's, not shake
00:12:18.840 people's faith in a negative way, but I think can shake people's faith in a very positive
00:12:22.580 way.
00:12:23.580 And I'm wondering if you're seeing that, people reaching out to you that, you know,
00:12:26.520 aren't even necessarily religious, and not even necessarily because of the drive-ins
00:12:30.640 you've been doing, saying, you know what, I have questions right now and I'm not sure
00:12:34.860 that the world in its earthly sense is answering them.
00:12:37.760 That's exactly it.
00:12:38.760 That's exactly it.
00:12:39.760 So we are taking all things into consideration right now to see where we could accommodate
00:12:44.760 the people, because there's, as a pastor, as you can imagine, there's absolutely no way
00:12:49.260 that we're going to turn people away.
00:12:50.760 I realize that they don't want us to do it, but I also on the other hand clearly see our
00:12:56.440 rights to do it if we do it within the confines of what the thing is that we're dealing with.
00:13:01.920 So we're looking at all opportunities, see which way we could do it.
00:13:06.520 Like I said, there's a strong, strong support for it.
00:13:10.260 Not just support, but people are flocking in wanting to hear because it's just not normal
00:13:14.760 that we would cut it out like this.
00:13:17.640 And I know that we don't know how long this is going to last, how long the lockdown is
00:13:22.540 going to go on.
00:13:23.380 We've heard in the last few days a little bit of a discussion about, they call reopening
00:13:27.960 the economy, and I find it interesting because no one's talking about reopening churches, which
00:13:32.280 I would say are not part of the economy per se, but you're planning on doing this, it
00:13:36.420 sounds like, as long as you need to.
00:13:39.340 That's exactly what troubles me so much.
00:13:41.660 When churches are put down as non-essential, they are number one.
00:13:47.880 If we don't have God, we have nothing.
00:13:50.220 If we lose God, we lose everything.
00:13:52.680 So absolutely our church is essential, so we must, they must come first, and then we
00:13:58.820 see how we can accommodate everything else.
00:14:00.960 I know not everybody would agree, but that is the way it is.
00:14:04.880 Joining me on the line, Pastor of the Church of God in Elmer, Ontario, Pastor Henry Hildebrandt.
00:14:09.720 Pastor, thank you so much for your time.
00:14:11.100 God bless you, and best of luck in your future drive-ins.
00:14:14.360 Gladly, Don.
00:14:15.260 Lord bless you.
00:14:16.120 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:14:18.200 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:14:23.400 Thank you.