The Mission

God warns us that in this world we will have suffering. Sometimes the suffering we face completely changes our world. We have a miscarriage. Our business fails. We receive a terminal medical diagnosis. We are overcome by mental illness. We lose a spouse or a child to suicide. Christians are not immune from tragedy and horror. Where is God in the midst? Is there life after trauma?

The Bible does not shy away from the face of horrific evil and suffering in the lives of God’s people. It faces it head on, in all of it’s terror and ugliness. God has not left us alone. In the midst of our darkest nights, in the depths of Sheol, God is there.

The Bible gives us the language of lament, to exercise faith in the wilderness of the turmoil that befalls our life. God’s graces and mercies reach down to comfort us as the infinite God of the Universe walks with us through our trials.

The mission of Sparrow Falls is to help the suffering find refuge in God and his Word, and to grow in maturity through the afflictions of life, and to learn to walk with joy and hope in this world of pain.

The Founder

In 2020, Todd Shaffer lost his 18yo son to suicide after a long battle with depression. This traumatic event changed everything in Todd’s life. It loosened his grip on this world and drove him to cling more fiercely to Christ.

During the years of recovery, and through meeting many other Christians in the throes of grief and trauma, Todd and his wife Melissa realized how inadequate the church is in handling severe affliction, and how so few resources there are that help sufferers understand their pain from a biblical vantage point.

Sparrow Falls was launched with a desire to provide biblical help and comfort to those who have been battered by the storms of life and for those whose lives have become a horror.

Todd is a past bi-vocational pastor for Renaissance Church, and is currently an elder at Grace Church Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.