2 churches down, Kinngait’s Christians come together in one space

Martha Jaw first attended a service at a Full Gospel church in Kinngait at the age of 28. It was 1978.

“My heart was touched,” she recalled recently of the experience.

Full Gospel is an evangelical doctrine that preaches the belief that God’s acts through the church, described in the New Testament, continue today.

Before that, Jaw had only attended Anglican services. But as the time came to “get serious about the church,” she converted to Full Gospel.

Martha Jaw is the pastor at the Cape Dorset Full Gospel Church, that is currently the only working church in Kinngait. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

And she stayed with it, even after the Full Gospel congregation moved to a different site in Kinngait and its former location became a Living Water Church.

That’s why it was personally “very, very difficult” when in January 2023 she learned the Living Water church site — her former Full Gospel home — was in flames.

Living Water was one of three churches in the community, along with Full Gospel and Anglican. The Living Water denomination is a Pentacostal and also holds evangelical beliefs.

The fire at the Living Water Church was reported at around 6 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2023.

Three days later, on Jan. 9 at around 7 a.m., a fire was reported at the nearby St. John Anglican Church.

Kinngait firefighters extinguished both fires, but damage to the Anglican church was severe and the building was later demolished. The Living Water church now sits empty, with the smoke and fire damage rendering it unusable.

Just like that, the community of about 1,400 residents had lost two of its three churches.

Only the Cape Dorset Full Gospel Church is still operating and Jaw, who was ordained as a Full Gospel pastor in 1984, is the community’s lone pastor.

An RCMP investigation did not “generate sufficient evidence to support the laying of criminal charges” even though the incidents were “suspicious in nature,” RCMP spokesperson Cpl. George Henrie said in an email to Nunatsiaq News on July 29.

Jaw said she opened her church to everybody in town after the fires. Now, Anglican ministers often fly in from Ottawa to host funerals, confirmations and other church events at the Full Gospel church.

Kinngait Living Water Church is closed after the fire in 2023. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

She’s also noticed some people from the other church congregations are now attending her Sunday services.

In good times, 30 or 40 people attend, which is slightly more than she had before.

“In summer, church slows down,” she added, and with people going out on the land there are usually fewer than 20 at her services.

At the same time, the Anglican community in Kinngait is determined to rebuild its destroyed church, said Ezeballu Oqutaq, the chairperson and treasurer.

Oqutaq said that along with the insurance money from the fire, the Anglican community is fundraising and hopes to rebuild the St. John church on the same site as soon as possible.

Ezeballu Oqutaq, chairperson and treasurer of the Anglican church community in Kinngait, says he is determined to rebuild the St. John Anglican church in the same spot after it was damaged in a fire on Jan. 9, 2023, and later demolished.
(Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

“It still hurts,” he said of losing his church.

Oqutaq said he knows some Anglicans who are going to Jaw’s Full Gospel church, but added many are just staying home.

In 2023, after the shock of the two fires three days apart, many residents were afraid that the last remaining church might also burn down, Jaw said.

“Somebody’s going after churches, I guess,” Mike Hayward, who was then Kinngait’s senior administrative officer, told Nunatsiaq News at the time.

Jaw asked the hamlet office and RCMP for increased protection of the church property. For a few weeks, there was a hamlet truck driving around the church “from late evening until next morning,” she said.

But now, Jaw feels safe in her church.

She said she doesn’t feel the burden of being the only ordained pastor in the only working church in Kinngait.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“I don’t try to do it with my own strength. I have to pray about it”

There are three main religious communities in Kinngait: Anglican, Full Gospel and Living Water. All three used to have churches there but after fires in 2023, only the Cape Dorset Full Gospel Church survived. (Image created by Arty Sarkisian)