Our History Summarized

Overcomers Assembly started as a prayer meeting in the living room of Ade Sobanjo and his wife Olu our lead pastors. On July 10th 2005, the first public service was held. At that time, we had a clear vision from God that this church is to be a network of small churches. What we did not know was how small those churches were to be and how difficult it would be to have many smaller churches in several cities.

As we tried to fulfill the vision that God showed us, we planted a second church in Cote St-Luc, QC in 2008, Kingston, ON in 2010, Kuje, Nigeria in 2014. A church was planted in Saint-laurent, QC in 2015 by Pastor Alain and his wife Lydie and another church in Douala Cameroon by Pastor Emilie Ekedi in 2017. All these churches meet weekly in large groups and also in small groups which we called Lifegroups.

Using this model of worship, we noticed 3 things that gave us a lot of concern.

1. We attracted a lot of Christians who had either relocated into the city, or had cooled off in their walk with God. We wanted to see new people come into a relationship with Jesus and get baptized. We were baptizing mostly our children and those who had not been water-baptized when they got saved.
2. We also noticed that, only about 50% of the church members benefited from the lifegroups.
3. We found that the current leaders of the churches were not motivated to plant new churches and they were getting burnt out because they found it very difficult to pastor a church and keep their secular jobs.

With these concerns, we began to pray and ask God to guide us.

In 2014, we felt the Lord begin to lead us to focus more on the life groups. So we started to have what we called the Lifegroup Sundays. On these Sundays, we would not meet as a large group but we would meet in the lifegroups instead. The Lifegroup Sundays were a great hit. We did it once or twice in the year.

By 2019, Ade and Olu who had gone to plant the church in Kuje, Nigeria,  felt that it was time to release the church to the local members, so that they could go to the city of Cornwall, ON to plant a new type of church. A church that meets in the house and trains other believers to make disciples and meet in the homes. This network of churches would then meet as a larger group once a month.

But God had another plan. At the end of that year, the global pandemic began and the world went into a lockdown. We could not meet as large groups anymore. So we took the opportunity to learn more about simple churches and began to meet in small groups online for about 2 years.

We could not start the Cornwall Church until mid-2022. So we spent a lot of time in prayers, training and learning how to transition our thinking and actions to the simple church way.

We do not claim to have all the answers, but we seek to be a family of believers who are willing to live our lives totally for the glory of God. We also seek to be a family of people who connect with God and learn to make a difference in the society.

Now 90% of the members can participate in the simple churches on Sundays and enjoy the large group Sunday worship together on the last Sunday of each month.

In mid-2023 one of the pastors in Montreal, Andrew and his wife Jacinta were led to move to Ottawa, and with our new way of thinking about church and a deeper understanding of what God showed us at the beginning of the church, they were happy to trust God for grace to plant a simple church in Ottawa. They have started the church and are now serving the community and trusting God for new disciples of Jesus to join the church.

At Overcomers Assembly, we are always looking for ways to get you to experience God’s love more so that you can live the full lives that God has called you to live.