Bacon

Ministry Dream

I am a Digital Missionary as well as serving a local nursing home with visitations and chapel. I hope someday to get a degree through CLI

Ministry Journey

My name is Neale Bacon. I live in Penticton BC. I am happily married to a wonderful woman named Bev and we just celebrated 40 years of marriage. We have 2 kids and 5 grandkids.

I call this Testimony of a Dummy because, for most of my life, I was a professional ventriloquist and magician, but also had many opportunities to minister to many denominations with this unique gift. In between my performances, I also worked in Vancouver's Down Town East Side, known as the poorest postal code in Canada. There I worked at shelters and ended up as director of The Salvation Army Crosswalk which was a shelter as well as a drop-in centre. It, unfortunately, closed in 2001 due to funding cuts.

Church wise - As a child, I was SENT to Sunday School, as there was a church across the street. In 1968 my family moved from Richmond BC to Smithers BC. Later as a teenager, I met Reverend Ken Miller who was the first gospel ventriloquist I had ever seen. He taught me ventriloquism.  I attended a Christian coffee house in the 1970’s, and there I made a commitment to the Lord, but none of my family were Christians and so the flame quickly dimmed. It lay dormant until I came back to the Lord at the age of 19 after graduating and moving back to Vancouver BC, and spent a lot of years church hopping. The Lord brought me to The Salvation Army where I did some volunteer work and eventually came on as staff. Long story short  I said to her I had a good experience with the Salvation Army. Why don't we try the local Salvation Army? This led to the Army being our church home since 1993, though I had been around the Army since 1979. We were soldiers in the Salvation Army in New Westminster BC. I am also the Corps Sergeant Major. This is kind of like a lay leader or lay pastor.

I retired (or tried to) in 2020 and we moved to Penticton from Burnaby to be closer to our daughter and her family.

I had gotten tired of driving hundreds if not thousands of miles doing shows. While I am still able to, I wanted to serve the Lord more and to that end took a part-time job at our Salvation Army church as an outreach worker, ministering to families, youth and children. The church has been working with a lot of new immigrant families in Canada. That contract ended but that's ok as God has put another call on my heart.

God has been encouraging me to come off the road, and use my gifts for him. As the Corps Sergeant Major, I got to preach regularly, I got to minister at a local nursing home once a month. I worked with some of our immigrant and refugee families who had come through our volunteer programs and are now part of the church.

My biggest spiritual dream since moving to Penticton is to be able to reach out to children around the world with the gospel. I have a YouTube channel where I share videos for both kids and adults. These are now seen in 23 countries – mostly countries closed to the gospel. I also minister at a local nursing home where I do visitations, chapel services and now and then call the occasional bingo game.

I am ordained as a Commissioned Minister with CLA and a member of the Christian Ministers Association of Canada. We now attend Bethel Pentecostal Church in Penticton.

I was never able to go to college because as they say, I was born with nothing, and still have most of it. I am so grateful to CLI for these courses as I enter these silver years (gold is a way off yet) and focus on my work for my Lord.

It is a new season of life and I plan to make the most of it for my Lord.