Like the first-century church, we find ourselves living among many diverse cultures, spiritual challenges, and disaffected neighbours who don’t feel that church is relevant to their lives. Yet God is calling us to be sure of our hope in Jesus and to share this hope with our communities.
Evangelism Canada is about planting churches in Canada
For more than 50 years we have been sharing the love of Jesus through church planting across Canada. We have a heart for the lost and desire to see Jesus at the centre of it all. We are planting churches where there are none. We are reaching out by funding new church plants. We are promoting healthy churches by supporting new church plants. We are developing leaders by raising up church planters from within our churches. We are partnering with church planters to accomplish more together than we can alone. Join us in sharing the good news of Jesus.
A church in every community
The Living Room – Montreal
This is a story about a professional drummer in Nashville who is now a pastor in Montreal.
Michael Jones says it is God’s story, because “we didn’t set out to plant a church. We were just trying to be obedient.” A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Michael came to Christ when he was 26, and lost most of his friends as his lifestyle changed. He moved to Nashville, played drums full time, and married his Wisconsin sweetheart, Michele. They found a great church and both became active in ministry. Life was good. Then things changed. When Michael and his band travelled to Edmonton to play at a Christian music event, he “hit it off” with members of a Montreal group. He invited them to visit Nashville and two of them came. Both confessed they had lied about being Christians so they could get the Edmonton gig – but it was clear God had been working already.
“We didn’t set out to plant a church. We were just trying to be obedient.”
First one visitor, then the other, came to Christ in Nashville. It fell to Michael to disciple them by long-distance phone. Then the whole Montreal band came to faith. A pastor in his Nashville church suggested it might be a good time for Michael to travel to Montreal, “even though I didn’t speak a lick of French.” He stayed there for a month. Three more came to Jesus, and people brought friends to their Bible study. By the time the month ended, there were three studies a week, and 30 new believers “all under thirty.” Michael and Michele realized God had called them to Montreal, so they moved – and ended up discipling students at Concordia University. “Reggie’s Bar” for Concordia students became available for meetings on Sundays – free rent in return for weekly cleaning. Numbers grew. One day as a Bible study ended, a student asked, “Is this a church?” No, it was a discipleship class, but Michael and Michele thought maybe it should be, so they carried on meeting.
Currently, about sixty people show up each week, including some families. The church is called “The Living Room,” an ironic name because Michael wants to see it spread out, away from Reggie’s Bar and into the community. His heart for the future is to minister to students and to his neighbourhood. “I also want to see several new churches pop up around Montreal.” And God’s beat goes on.
Photo - Michael & Michele Jones
Church Plant Apprentices – Vancouver’s West End .jpg)
‘It wasn’t dramatic,” says Dennis Wilkinson. He was at Bible school in Wisconsin, and told God he wanted to do God’s will with his life. “All that happened,” he said, “was a thought popped into my head. And it just sounded good to me.”
The thought was - start a church in Western Canada. “I tried many times to shake that idea,” says Dennis, “and I couldn’t.” He filled his life with other things - as a youth pastor in Wisconsin, courtship and marriage to Mistin, a year in Africa (where she had spent a year), seminary in Minneapolis, then pastoral tea
m work at their Minneapolis church. But the Western Canada church plant idea wouldn’t go away.
So Dennis and Mistin spent each summer travelling from Minnesota, by car with their expanding family, to cities in Western Canada. The question in each place was the same: God, is it here? They reached Vancouver in 2009, and the answer was ‘Yes’.
Dennis and Mistin are embarking on a bold plan - to plant a church in the heart of Vancouver’s West End. It’s in Canada’s most densely-populated ten square miles -- 50,000 people within walking distance of Stanley Park. “It’s a church planter’s graveyard,” warned one pastor. Another said, “You might just as well plant a church in Iraq!”
But Dennis and Mistin see God’s hand at work.
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God has provided a house, suitable for their family and for living-room meetings, right in the middle of the neighborhood - and then worked out the staggering costs.
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Through a “chance” friendship, Dennis and Mistin have already led a man and his wife to Christ, and they haven’t even moved in yet!
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God has forged an amazing partnership between BC Mennonite Brethren church planters and the Wilkinsons’ Baptist church in Minneapolis, with support to last for five years.
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God provided the BCMB church planting apprenticeship
structure - and “amazing mentors”, says Dennis - enfolding the couple with support and expertise.
The new work is just starting. Dennis says, “We know it will be a slow process, but God is already doing miracles, and we’re excited.”
Photo - Dennis, Mistin & Family
Faithwerks – Vancouver
In church planting terms, Vancouver’s Marpole area is difficult to penetrate. It is a mix of older-style walk-up apartments and family homes, a mix of economic, ethnic and age groups. It is in transition. The Canada Line rail transit to the airport and nearby Richmond is now complete, so Marpole is likely to grow, adding a new element of high-rise, upper-income residents to the mix. It is here that Faithwerks Church started three years ago, when they were still building the Canada Line. Pastor Nick Suen had left a team ministry for a new church planting venture and he brought friends and acquaintances with him. By now, about one third of the 30 average weekly attenders are community people, most of them there “because they knew somebody”. One or two walked in off the street. Pastor Nick stresses discipleship and community. The little church rallies behind members’ passions. Recently, members overwhelmingly supported the call to take part in the (Samaritan’s Purse) Christmas Shoe Box drive. Now, they are looking to another Christmas ministry – in the downtown east side. “We can’t do a lot yet,” says Pastor Nick, “but our church is becoming a community where we support each other’s passion to be a blessing in the city.” In the meantime, Faithwerks is growing into an “ethnically non-descript” church, and he is happy with that because it’s about Christ and His community.
Hope Community – St. Jamestown
It serves a poor area in the urban core of Toronto, but it’s not an inner city slum - and its diversity is staggering. The Hope Community church plant, which started just over five years ago as 614 St. Jamestown, ministers in a neighborhood of 90 nationalities and 120 languages. It is not a surprise that one of its ministries is English as an Additional Language. But Hope Community also ministers to the 25% caught in generational poverty, to youth and school kids, to the lonely and the needy. “It’s practical gospel,” says planter Kevin Moore. “If you like things cut and dried and ‘just so’, you’d be wise to run! This is about fluidity in ministry.” Moore and his team always look for new ways to make meaningful contact. Taken together, their ministries put them in touch with about 150 people a week. And those whose lives are touched also become ministers to extend the reach, often in a language that matches that of a newly arrived family. Many who home to St. Jamestown’s cheaper rents use the time to acclimatize to Canada, then move on. But the ministry of Christ brings visible growth in peoples’ lives. “We see change happening,” says Moore. “We see the lights go on.”
North Shore Pacific Grace Mandarin Church – Vancouver
The influx of Mandarin-Chinese speaking immigrants into Canada over the past decade as been remarkable. Metro Vancouver had a number of Cantonese MB churches, but with the appearance of many who spoke Mandarin, some churches started services in that dialect, as well. North Shore Pacific Grace Mandarin in Vancouver was one of those new plants. It started in 2000 as a home bible study and within five years, launched in North Van’s Delbrook neighborhood as a new church plant, under the leadership of Stephen Cheung and his wife Amy Shao. Pastor Stephen had been a committed volunteer in Hong Kong before coming to Canada. The Mandarin pastorate was his first full-time ministry after he joined Church Planting BC. He finds joy in the work. They celebrated another two baptisms on Thanksgiving, and about fifty people attend services each Sunday. The joy of the ministry is to reach out in welcome to new people, but there is a sadness common to many congregations that minister to new Canadians: their members all too soon “move on” and settle elsewhere in Canada. The Cheungs aim to provide a loving and forgiving environment as they disciple people in their relationships with God, family, and church. And they help to socialize Mandarin-speaking newcomers into their Canadian community.
Westside Church – Vancouver
Norm Funk will tell you Westside was pretty well the first church to be planted as part of the Key Cities Initiative in Vancouver - and now it’s the first church plant to plant a church! Reality Vancouver, in the city’s Broadway and Main area, came out of Westside. Pastor Norm will also tell you the big discovery: “People desire to hear the scripture taught, to be called to a radical commitment to following Jesus. They love the teaching of the scriptures and the call of Jesus.” Another discovery from Pastor Norm: It’s not true that young adults are disinterested in church. Seventy percent of Westside’s church family are 20-30 year olds. Norm grew up not many miles from the Kitsilano neighborhood movie theatre they rent for church services. “My passion and my desire,” he says, “is to make Jesus known in Vancouver.” That’s happening at Westside at two sites, four services. “Just preach the Gospel and see what the Holy Spirit does.”
L’Intersection – Terrebonne
Patrice Nagant confesses he had to overcome a “huge fear of failure” when he gave up the security of a successful business tobecome a church planter. But Nagant and his wife Cindy Bucci answered God’s “very strong call” to bring the Gospel to French-speaking people. Today, under Nagant and U.S. Brethren in Christ co-planter David Miller, L’Intersection church is a thriving new faith community in Terrebonne, north of Montreal. “We have seen something incredible. New people are coming to Christ, not old Christians just church shopping,” says Nagant. Quebec was the site of many church plants in the seventies, but the movement failed to take long-term root. Nagant is excited by the results of this new outreach. So is Miller, who with his wife Patricia ministered in the Quebec City area in the 1980s and 90s. Patrice is also Director of Church Development in the Quebec Conference. “I have a prayer request,” he says. “I hope to see more franco churches on the Island of Montreal.”
MoveIn.To – Toronto
Sociologists would probably call this Acts-style
outreach a movement.
It is evangelical outreach, but not a program. It focuses on the poorest areas of town. For those answering God’s call, it is an intentional life style, “a new life,” says Nigel Paul, founding director. Paul was mentored as a church planter but started with a “very clear vision”. He sensed God’s direction in it. First, move into a resid ential “patch” of unreached people. Second, “pray.” That was less than two years ago. Paul now serves as director of 18 MoveIn teams (most of them in Ontario) and he doubles as an MB church-planter, himself. But it’s not “churc h”. When individuals start to become ‘regulars,’ the result is a “Christ- following community”, meeting in a living room, not a “church”. It is usually organic, informal, and effective in meeting needs. Most MoveIn movement members are younger (median age is about 25 or 26), and some are middle-aged or more. They have jobs. They just live and serve in their patch, their mission field. And they watch God work. “Prayer is the main thing,” says Paul. Team members meet for an evening each week to pray for their patch, for specific people and for needs. “We’ve seen a lot of answers to prayer.” Click here to sign up for Evangelism Canada's monthly Prayer & Praise update. Get involved Make a donation Be a part of the Advent Conspiracy Project Email Evangelism Canada for more information
