GBCanada Vision and Strategy

Creating a movement of church planting across Canada

Recognizing a need

As the Canadian population continues to grow and diversify, there follows a rapidly increasing need for new and relevant churches to share the Gospel and make new disciples. Shifting societal values and unprecedented immigration rates have resulted in rising numbers of unbelievers. Average weekly church attendance has steadily declined from peaks of 70 percent in 1950 to only 15 percent of Canadians attending in 2006. Contributing to this decline is the fact that Canada is now home to its largest proportion of foreign-born immigrants in 75 years, largely from the Middle East and Asia. These shifts in the country’s makeup have had the greatest impact on Canada’s large urban centers.

Our solution

GBCanada’s vision is to see a reproducing church launched in every major metropolitan area of Canada by 2020. We believe that successful growth is best achieved by empowering our existing churches to multiply. Our mission is to stimulate a nation-wide movement of churches by aiding in the recruitment and training of leaders to pilot that movement.

We have targeted six metropolitan areas for church planting by the year 2020: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. Through a coordinated internship strategy executed within the context of our churches, we will develop leaders who will form and spearhead church planting teams into these six regions. Our churches and their leaders will be guided, supervised and evaluated by our Executive Team and the GBCanada Board of Directors with additional support from the U.S. facilitated by the GBCanada USA Board of Directors.

Requirements for a movement

Substantial leadership, manpower and funding are all required in equal measures to achieve our goals. We are actively seeking emerging leaders and impassioned individuals who share our vision to help with our mission today. Also, in addition to funding already received from supporting American and Canadian churches, we will pursue grants in the U.S. and Canada with a goal to receive a total of $300K per year in grant funding by 2020. These grants will fund our interns and support church planting initiatives along with the funds generated by a sustainable business-based revenue stream, the Emerging Leader Empowerment Program, which is planned to be fully operational by 2013.

Organization

GBCanada was incorporated in 1998 following the launch of our first church in Canada. We now have three healthy and culturally rich church communities located in two of our targeted urban regions: the Greater Toronto Area (Mississauga and Milton) in Ontario and the Greater Vancouver Area (Surrey) in British Columbia. A fourth church is planned for a 2012 launch in Alberta. We continue to drive growth under the leadership of our Executive Team, a group equipped with combined experience in church planting, ministry, mentoring, discipleship, administration and finance.

GBCanada history

Grace Brethren Canada is a church planting ministry dedicated to cultivating a movement of churches across Canada. Also known as GBCanada, the ministry was originally conceived as an initiative of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches. Despite various church planting attempts by the Fellowship – dating back as far as 1916 – no Grace Brethren churches existed in Canada prior to this endeavor.

During the early 1990s, interest began to intensify in the idea of planting the first Grace Brethren church in Canada. The Home Missions Board, who are responsible for the planting of new churches in the U.S. and Canada, assembled a small team under the leadership of Nathan Bryant, Philip Bryant and Bartley Sawatsky, all of whom were interning at the Grace Brethren Church in Waldorf, Maryland.

Following a kick-off of the Canadian initiative at the Grace Brethren Fellowship National Conference in Toronto, the Home Missions Council sent their team of church planters to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Ontario, Canada on May 31, 1997. In September of the following year, Grace Community Church was launched in Mississauga, Ontario and the church planting mission was incorporated as Grace Brethren Canada.

Grace Community Church quickly established itself as a healthy regional church in the GTA, reproducing a second regional church, Community of Hope Church in Surrey, British Columbia, and a daughter church, Village Community Church in nearby Milton, Ontario. Community of Hope Church has developed a leadership team with plans for a new church launch in Alberta by 2012. Co-led by a French-speaking pastor, the Village also has future ambitions for a church plant in Quebec. These healthy urban church communities are highly multi-cultural with Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Hispanic and European attendance. Grace Community Church has also given rise to an ethnic ministry to serve its prominent Portuguese membership.

From a core group of 13 dedicated individuals who formed the original Grace Community Church in 1998, we have seen phenomenal growth in the nearly 600 people who attend our churches each week and find a sense of belonging in a Grace Brethren church community. Within our existing church communities, leaders are developing and new aspirations are unfolding.