Fellowship Church Planting in Canada: 2010-2023
If planting churches remains one of the best ways to ensure Canadians come to Christ, I would venture to say we should be encouraged as a fellowship of churches.
With the significant support of our Regions, our churches have planted 127 churches between 2010 and 2023.
God has been good. I want to also thank our Regional Church Planting Directors whom I have the joy of gathering with a few times each year to discuss best practices, share resources, and strategize plans. We’re grateful for the servant leadership of these directors:
- Mike Mawhorter: Fellowship Pacific Region
- Mark Breitkreuz: Fellowship Prairies Region
- Bechara Karkafi: FEB Central Region
- Steve Cloutier: AEBEQ Region
- Brad Somers: Fellowship Atlantic Region
Fellowship National helps support our Regions in church planting by subsidizing several initiatives. Our Final Report of Fellowship National’s five-year Strategic Plan (2015-2020) reported that Fellowship National:
- Supplied $186,177 in church planting grants to those church plants approved by our Regions
- Brokered 65 partnerships between English churches across Canada with Francophone church plants in Québec (2015 to 2021), and support generated from this was $1,540,464 between 2015 and 2021
- Significantly subsidized the sending of Fellowship domestic church planters to “Momentum” Canada’s premier biannual church planting training and equipping conference. Eighty thousand dollars was used over the past six years for training planters
During my first President’s Address at our Fellowship National Conference in 2011, I called on our churches and Regions to make the Fellowship a “church planting machine”. One of our Regional Church Plant Directors reminded me of my “call to arms” last year. I believe you heard my plea. Over 100 church plants in a dozen years. At our recent FNC 2023, I reminded our churches of this call back in 2011 and I made a new prophetic call. I asked Fellowship Baptist churches to move from:
Being committed to planting churches
to
Having a plan to plant churches
Please read what I shared with our delegates at FNC2023:
“Studies continue to support the reality that one of the best ways to win people to Christ is to plant churches. We are committed to church planting because we’re committed to winning spiritually lost people to Christ. BUT having a commitment and having a PLAN are two very different things. I may be committed to the idea of losing 25 pounds, but if I don’t agree to a specific plan, it’s probably never going to happen. My prophetic call to our pastors and churches is to develop a plan.
“Every Fellowship Baptist church develops a plan to be involved in the planting of a church either directly or indirectly—‘directly’ in the sense that your church is planting a daughter church, or ‘indirectly’ in that your church is supporting the planting of a new church through your Association or your Region.
“In my first President’s address in November 2011, you may or may not recall I declared, ‘The coffee break is over!’ – we needed to become a ‘church planting machine’. With the support of our Regions, our churches have planted 127 churches since 2010. So many wonderful stories of churches who caught the bug and experienced the joy, struggles, victories, and disappointments of church planting. However, this commitment is not universally true in all of our Fellowship churches.
“My ‘call to action’ is to move from a COMMITMENT to church planting to every Fellowship Baptist church having a PLAN for church planting. Start by talking to your Regional Church Planting Director while here at FNC – Todd, Mark, Bechara, Steve, and Brad.
“You may not be in a position to daughter a church at this point in your church’s history, but all of us can support church planting indirectly. Consider a partnership whereby your church supports and finances a church panting project in your Region, in Québec, or among some Arabic-speaking peoples. Start by making a church planting line item in your church’s missions budget in 2024.”
Oh, by the way, I’ve been addressing domestic church planting in this blog. Some other good news is that our Fellowship International missionaries helped establish 16 church plants in the fields where we serve in 2023. God is good.