Chris Baker said this holiday season has been extra special for one main reason — he wasn’t sure he would live to see it.
Baker, who moved from Alabama to Montana with his family in 2014 to plant Summit Life Church in Whitefish, was diagnosed in December 2024 with pancreatic cancer. He underwent treatment, but the prognosis wasn’t good — the tumor was wrapped around his mesenteric artery, and that meant it wasn’t operable.
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That is, until it was. In July, after a week of intense radiation, he learned that the cancer had shrunk enough for the surgery to happen at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
So his team went in to remove the tumor — and the operation was successful.
‘A new normal life is possible’
“I am four months past surgery, and all indications are cancer free,” Baker said. “What a year it has been watching God direct our steps and going from no chance of surgery with Stage 3 pancreatic cancer to a surgeon in Baltimore that only does pancreatic surgeries that involves arteries and veins. Not only was the surgery successful, but God has so knitted all the pieces back together that a new normal life is possible.”
He thanked Alabama Baptists for praying for him.
“It was a year ago today that I was laying in a hospital bed and the doctor came in and said, ‘We’re sorry to let you know that you have pancreatic cancer,’” Baker said in a Facebook video Dec. 5 alongside his wife, Kim. “We have seen the faithfulness of the Lord in such a real way this past year. From inoperable to maybe six more months to live to here I am a year later … Last scans and bloodwork, no evidence of disease. Praise be to God.”
‘Consider it all joy’
Throughout the past year, he has regularly shared videos on Facebook encouraging others to trust God’s love for them in the midst of hard times.
“This last year has been a dark valley, and we’d just like to come and encourage you, maybe you’re walking through a season that is dark and heavy,” Baker said in his Dec. 5 post. “Keep walking, keep trusting. … We know those long dark nights, we know the hopelessness of the moment on this side of eternity, but we just want to encourage you today to consider it all joy.”
Baker said on the nights when he thought he might not see the morning, he knew God was with him.
“I am not yet what I want to be, and certainly not all that God desires of me, but today I am better than I was before,” he said. “Though my body bears the marks of a fallen creature, my soul bears the marks of the Master’s chisel.”
God might not change the circumstance, but He “changes us,” Baker said. “I know that he has changed us this year for His glory.”
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