“The first time I went to a Salvation Army church,” says Jason Sabourin, “there was a fellow there who looked to be in his 30s with a nice suit on—but he had a tattoo of a scorpion that stretched from the back of his ear all the way around to the front of his neck. I thought to myself, Hoo boy, you better get out of here. You’re not going to be welcome. My idea of church then was that that was where all the good, clean people went. People are going to kick him out once they see that big tattoo.”

But what Jason saw was the pastor treating him the same as everybody else.

“It was like it didn’t matter,” he recalls. “The pastor saw him as an equal.“

That made a very big impression upon me.”

Thrift Store Church

Born in Toronto, Jason grew up in Ajax, Ont. His father was a police fficer while his mother was a medical staff secretary and administrative assistant.

“I grew up pretty middle class,” he says. “Played hockey, that kind of thing, but church was not a part of our life.”

Because the family was half-Catholic, half-Protestant, they never discussed religion.

“We celebrated Christmas and Easter, but religion never entered our lives,” says Jason.

That is, until he met a girl and found out that Tammy was the daughter of Salvation Army pastors.

The Salvation Army? For Jason, that was a thrift store.

"I couldn’t deny the feeling that I was being called to something more.“I was running out of excuses not to be a Christian.” MAJOR JASON SABOURIN

New Beginning

Jason and Tammy started to date.

“She was in her own wilderness time,” says Jason, “trying to find her faith and working through her journey.”

But he started to attend Army church services with her.

“Tammy’s father, Major Doug Butt, was a wonderful guy, very kind, very welcoming. We got along very well,” says Jason. “But I wanted to make a good impression on the parents, so I started to go to church on Sundays.”

That was when he witnessedTammy’s father and how he interacted with the man with the tattoo.

Maybe there was something to this Salvation Army, Jason thought.

Intrigued, Jason started to read the Bible.

“I started to realize that this Jesus fellow was actually not who I thought He was. He was a lot more heroic in the way He pushed against the establishment, and I resonated with that.”

No Excuses Left

God was working on both Jason and Tammy, who were now happily married. One day Tammy told Jason, “I feel like I want to get back to my roots, to my faith, like there’s something missing”

As it happened, The Salvation Army was opening a new church plant in Ajax, where they lived. The couple decided to attend the meet-and-greet.

“The first thing I noticed was people my age, who had the same interests I had, such as hockey,” Jason recalls. “It wasn’t a stuffy church, either.  The music was upbeat, and people seemed excited to be there.”

This could be OK, he thought.

The couple started attending church on a regular basis, and Jason’s life started to change.

“I had stopped drinking altogether,” he says. “I was reading my Bible and I even devoured volumes of Salvation Army history. My spirit was already committed, and I couldn’t deny the feeling that I was being called to something more.

“I was running out of excuses not to be a Christian.”

“All In”

As Christmas Eve 2000 approached, Jason realized that the evening service was going to be where he had to take the next step.

He knew that, for Tammy’s parents, the altar call, where you declare your faith in front of the entire congregation, was important.

“I felt that, too.“

In my spirit, I had already committed to God, but I needed that outward peace. You have this connectivity to God but by going forward at this time, you completed the transaction—like closing the loop in electricity.

“Was it a necessity? No. Was it a necessity for me? Yes. This is something I needed to do. This was the last step.

However, it was one thing for Jason to know what had to be done, and quite another to do it. And as he held his wife’s hand in the pew that night, he knew what he had to do.

Tammy had been going through her own journey and was ready to recommit her life as a Christian, but she wasn’t going to do that without her husband.

“At that point, I just grabbed her hand and said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ ” Jason says. “And so we went.

“Internally, spiritually, it was quite a moment because I realized I held nothing back anymore. There was nothing left. I was all in.”

Full Circle

The Sabourins attended the College for Officer Training in Winnipeg and became Salvation Army pastors. Eleven years ago, they were appointed to lead The Salvation Army’s Hope Church in Ajax, the very place where they had started their faith journey so long ago.

“Hope is the place that I came to faith and then went out to pastorship from there,” says Major Jason.

“To come back almost 10 years later to give leadership, to walk with people in town who have watched you grow up and helped you on your journey, is quite an amazing thing.”

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