Looking for growth in all the right places

The Ghanaian Presbyterian Church of Toronto is growing so quickly they have had to move from one building to the next, trying to ease their bursting seams. Since a few people first gathered in a living room 11 years ago, their growth hasn't stopped. "These people were homesick for the way they worshipped back home. They missed the dancing and the African touch," said Rev. Enoch Pobee, the Ghanaian church's minister. Word travelled fast and before they knew it, they had moved three times as more parishioners flocked to the church. "They finally thought, 'We can't keep moving. What's stopping us from getting a place of our own?'" said Pobee, who is in his third year of service.
The search began for a new site and land was eventually purchased in North Toronto. They moved into the newly built $4.2-million structure this fall. "We have 500 adults, children and youth, and we're anticipating doubling our numbers in the near future," he said. They're planning on holding two services on Sunday and running community-based programs to reach out to their neighbours. The project was made possible through a grant at Canada Ministries, a grant from presbytery, a loan, and givings from the congregation. Pobee said looking to ethnic communities as an opportunity for growth is important to the church's future. "There are a great number of multicultural communities in Toronto," he said. "It's a very good vision for the PCC to embark on. It should be encouraged and supported so we can integrate into one and keep the church going."

Gordon Haynes, associate secretary at Canada ministries, said church planting and development works best when it is led at the local level, as the Ghanaian church was. He said this is because community make-up changes across Canada and presbyteries are most in touch with their local communities and know what is needed. "And the national church can help out where it can," he said.
Starting new churches obviously requires researching the proposed area. Particularly when considering Toronto and its surrounding areas, ethnicity becomes a factor. While between 540,000 and one million people are expected to move to Toronto in the next 30 years, relatively few will be traditional Anglo-Scot Presbyterians. In 2001, more than two million immigrants called Toronto home, according to Statistics Canada. The largest numbers came from Eastern and Southern Asia (with almost 600,000), followed by Southern Europe (with about 315,000). Toronto has the highest level of multiculturalism in Canada.
Growing multiculturalism isn't a recipe for the church's disaster. The five presbyteries in the Greater Toronto Area account for about 16 per cent of the PCC's nearly 124,000 members (and almost 28 per cent when including three large presbyteries on the outskirts of the GTA — Barrie, Lindsay-Peterborough and Hamilton). As immigrants continue to flock to the GTA, it seems logical that these areas can provide some opportunity for growth.

However, when the City of Toronto announced its official plan in 2002, mapping out growth of the GTA for the next 30 years, churches and places of worship were conspicuously absent. The plan specifically included residential developments, schools and hospitals, business and industry, parks and waterfront property. City officials argued that although churches were not listed, they were still considered to be part of the city's rapid growth.
The planning team assured churches that this didn't change their ability to build new churches in the city, but the Toronto diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada thought places of worship deserved more certainty than that. They appealed the plan, asking for greater recognition of the vital role faith communities play in the city. In May, the Ontario Municipal Board made a preliminary ruling that the plan has to be amended to specifically include places of worship — both within the plan's overall vision and in the more technical aspects of growth. "We're pleased that anyone can build, regardless of faith group," said Brian Mills, director of Planning and Development at the diocese. "We were terribly disappointed that we weren't included, now we're relieved. We wanted to be part of the language."
If cities need to be prodded to make room for new churches, how do denominations plan for growth? The Presbyterian Church delegates this responsibility to presbyteries, with support and collaboration from Canada Ministries. But with the much-told story of declining numbers, one wonders if this method is the way to go. "This is a hard question to answer," said Haynes. "Practically, in some presbyteries, there has been little happening in developing new congregations. However, I don't think that moving it away from the local area to a more centralized strategy would work. We just need to get the presbyteries more involved in Canadian mission opportunities. Actually, I think we need to put more of the process in the hands of the presbyteries."

Haynes thinks it's time for presbyteries to start thinking outside the Scottish box and dreaming of ways to include these growing ethnic populations. "I would venture to guess that our greatest growth in the church right now is in churches that look to particular ethnic communities," he said, adding that specifically targeting other cultures isn't necessarily the best strategy, but rather learning not to ignore them. "If we wait to start a new church that's filled with Scottish/Irish Presbyterians, we may have a long wait. However, Canada is now a large mission field. There are more than enough of all backgrounds to involve in new churches."

He said Korean, Chinese, Caribbean, Arabic and African (particularly Ghanaian) communities offer some of the best prospects for growth. "The point is that Canada is becoming more diverse, and the church needs to reflect that diversity," he said, "and increasingly it does."
The large Ghanaian church in Toronto draws people from outside its immediate neighbourhood, becoming what Haynes calls a destination rather than community church. "Other multicultural congregations do the same thing," he said. "They come to a place because they speak their language, they do things they recognize and they feel comfortable. They see the church as a community centre, as a place they're tied to. They share meals, talk about their children and care for each other."
The move towards large churches serving even larger areas is a trend Haynes thinks will continue. "It will have to," he said. "We can't afford to put a church in every community anymore. So instead of five Ghanaian churches in Toronto, we have one big one."
The United Church of Canada, with a membership of more than 600,000, reports having some hot spots for growth in Calgary, Victoria and areas north of Toronto. Glenn Smith, program officer for Congregational Mission and Evangelism at the United Church, said there are also "lively conversations" happening in Edmonton, Mississauga, Oakville and Burlington.

Richard Choe, executive minister for Ethnic Ministries at the UCC, said the church is trying to promote cultural diversity in its congregations, rather than focusing on a specific ethnic group to build a new church around. "By encouraging diversity, we're saying you don't have to be somebody in particular. Come as you are. We'll work with you so you can find a place where you impact us and we can impact you."
He said cultural diversity shouldn't be an end in itself, but a means of furthering the ministry of Christ. He said the United Church has experienced an influx of immigrants from mainland China. They often join white congregations, rather than those with large Chinese contingents, saying for them, it represents becoming Canadian. "But how do we provide services for minorities? You can't assume a Christian background anymore. You have to start from scratch, and that impacts the larger church community."
Although it's the largest Protestant denomination in Canada, the United Church experienced an 8.2 per cent decline in numbers between 1991 and 2001 according to Statistics Canada. Liberal attitudes towards homosexual ordination and marriage are often sited as the catalysts for emptying pews. But just like the Presbyterian Church, planning for growth is still an active endeavour.

New church development is a presbytery responsibility in the United Church as well. The national church is mainly there to discuss and provide loans. Grants for new church developments are rare. This hands-off approach is complemented by presbyteries themselves (which often have funds to loan new churches) and by regional bodies. In Toronto, the Toronto United Church Extension Council buys and holds land for new congregations to purchase, provides technical support regarding development, building and municipal requirements and gives advice to developing congregations whenever asked.
The Toronto diocese of the Anglican Church has an ambitious and comprehensive growth strategy that helps monitor, encourage, foresee and pinpoint growth. It is meant to help them determine where their ministry might be effective in the future. The diocese spent a year and a half collecting reams of data and is now busy analyzing the results. A large map plotted with all 238 parishes in the diocese reveals detailed information. Varying colours, graphics and shapes indicate where Anglicans who identified themselves as such on the national census currently live, what the future population growth of the area will be, the type of churches already in place (regional, community, neighbourhood or rural), and whether attendance at those churches has dipped, plummeted, remained steady or grown.
The current challenge is getting the information out to congregations, helping bishops interpret it, deciding where to go next and determining what resources are needed to get there. Exhaustive charts and tables sent to each parish detail municipal plans for their area, Statistics Canada information regarding church affiliation, ethnic background and age of their communities, parish statistics regarding givings, attendance and age and a comparison of the age of the population in the area in relation to the age of the congregation. The information shows parishes what they're doing right and what they need to improve.
In the past, growth was generally handled locally. Usually, a congregation would notice a need for a new church, and some parishioners would simply break off to start one. "Because of the speed and magnitude of population growth in Toronto, the radical shifts in culture and the very real decline in church attendance, we have to be more strategic and coordinated when it comes to growth, with input from top-down and bottom-up," said Rev. Canon Dawn Davis, director of Ministry Resources at the diocese.
Municipal ideas regarding city development, therefore, are of particular interest to the church. "It's certainly in our sights, and we're going to cooperate with it," said Davis. "The official plan will affect how we do church. Church is different in the suburbs than in a low-income area or in a high-rise neighbourhood. The official plan gives us the context, so we need to reflect on that and see where our ministry will be suitable."
A growing Presbyterian congregation in New Minas, Nova Scotia, is the result of similar foresight. Created in 1990 by a small group of locals who wanted a Presbyterian church in the area, it was accepted as a new church development by the national church three years later. The congregations' second and current minister, Rev. Tim Archibald, arrived in 1995. They had their own building in 2000. As their grant from Canada Ministries ends in 2007, they are almost finished being labeled as a new church development. Their journey from being a congregation of 30 people when Archibald arrived to the current group of about 115 has involved a change of focus and a new approach to growth.
"It used to be a group of tried and true Presbyterians, and that's what they looked for to grow," said Archibald. "If that continued, they would have stayed the same. So they began to open up to the wider community, recognizing they have something to offer to people from other traditions or those with no church background."
Archibald said they started to reach out to young couples with children, and making visitors feel at home. "Kids can be kids here without anyone looking sideways at them. It made an impact and people began telling others. One gift of a new church to the wider community is that it's open and willing to receive new people."
This openness is one thing Archibald loves about being part of a new church, recognizing that more established congregations often struggle with change and incorporating new ideas. The task of creating something new, dreaming up ways to reach out to the community, and not being stifled by cries of "we've never done it that way before" energizes Archibald and his parishioners. It is this willingness to experiment with a new approach that Archibald attributes to the congregation's health and expanding size.
Reaching out to ethnic communities is something Archibald sees as a great growth strategy. "The face of new church development is changing in Canada," he said. "We shouldn't give up on mainstream society, but ethnic congregations are a wonderful gift to the church. They bring tremendous energy that we're in need of."
Ideally, Archibald would like to see the national church play a bigger role in the growth process. "I would like to see more of a plan," he said. "We invest a lot of power in presbyteries, and in some presbyteries, new church development is happening. And the support is great. It's very difficult to get off the ground without it." But in presbyteries where growth isn't a specific focus, developing new congregations can be forgotten. A national plan and more training given to ministers and presbyteries, especially when it comes to helping ministers in a new church environment, are improvements Archibald thinks are needed.
Despite the difficulties, Archibald loves being part of a still-developing congregation. He said continually "living on the edge of existence" is what makes new congregations so special. Whether it's just getting started and trusting the money won't run out, justifying your existence to the wider church, or making a huge investment in a new building, the perils of starting something new have a way of strengthening the faith of those involved. "It's about taking risks in big ways," said Archibald, "and seeing God come through in big ways.