Regional Snapshot

Our focus as a fellowship took a big step in moving from reacting to our past, to looking ahead and planning for our future. Though income is still a great challenge, 2000 was not significantly below 1999 in income. A big factor was a substantial increase in estate donations. This was the first year that had not seen a significant decrease in income for more than a decade.

Last year evidenced a growing realization that we need to focus on reaching our youths for Jesus Christ. We saw a marked increase in youth activities and involvement in many of our congregations. Increasing numbers of our youths are committing their lives to Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and are taking the step of baptism.

As members have a more Christ-centered focus, marvelous fruit is being born. Individual members and congregations are getting involved in service and in sharing the gospel with others.

Vision and mission statements

Many of our congregations have worked hard to develop vision and mission statements. This has proven to be a fruitful exercise in focusing attention on the commission Jesus gave to his body. It is helping congregations make plans to more effectively carry out the Christian mission in their regions.

We are of course encouraging a great deal of prayer in this process. It is only when such an activity is truly bathed in prayer that we find the guiding hand of God. To be successful, a congregation must seek to find what is God’s vision for them. As they pursue that vision, they can be assured of God’s guidance and blessing. That way, the kingdom of God is truly being advanced—not just a human agenda.

To create a structure that will support these critical congregational activities, we are moving to link congregational financial donation levels to the amount of money available for their budgets. Though this is causing some painful adjustments, we feel that in the long run, this system will enable congregations to determine the amount of money that will be available to pursue their goals.

This stems from the recognition that the engine for preaching the gospel is no longer the highly centralized media operation we once relied upon. Rather, it is the individual Christian and the congregation that are the primary means by which the commission to the church is expressed. As a direct consequence, we need to adjust our denominational systems—including our financial system—to support this.

We still recognize the need to support one another. We still process donations at our central office, be they mailed in or gathered in congregational collections.

We still use a portion of the money, beyond denominational overheads, to help out congregations unable to meet their costs. However, the amount available is less than it used to be. More of the money is being directed to the congregations from which it was donated.

We still have a strong desire to retain close denominational ties, at the national level, and to our world body. We have walked a similar path, and retain a real interest in what is occurring in other parts of the WCG.

Spiritually healthy congregations

The WCG Canada recognizes that the members of a spiritually healthy congregation should be involved in representing Jesus to the world and drawing people to him. Further, the congregation itself should be a place where believers are led to become committed, lifelong disciples of Christ.

As maturing disciples, they will then become empowered and enabled to use their gifts to reach out to others.

Scriptural mandate

In this way, a congregation can be actively engaged in the scriptural mandate given to the body of Christ. I believe this vision is becoming an increasing reality throughout our 75 congregations.

The vision of the WCG Canada was developed about four years ago, as a response to the implications our doctrinal changes were having on our understanding of Christianity.

Essentially that vision serves as a description of what we were coming to understand a healthy church would look like. From that vision, decisions regarding how we ought to structure our denomination in Canada, including our national office, naturally flowed. We have come a long way in implementing that new vision, though we still have work to do to complete the plan. We have a strong sense of where we need to go to be effective in the service of Jesus Christ.

One of the most effective tools we have developed over the past few years is Northern Light magazine. The magazine is produced 10 times a year, and serves as a tool that edifies our membership, and as well keeps us linked together by including articles about our fellowship throughout Canada, as well as in other parts of the world.

We were pleased when the November-December issue of Faith Today included an article from Northern Light. Faith Today is the primary magazine of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, and is widely circulated. The article featured one of the members of our Halifax, Nova Scotia, congregation, Grace Whitman.

The Faith Today article was picked up by the popular Canadian Broadcasting Corp. talk show Morningside, and was aired twice on their coast to coast radio show. The segment included an interview with Pastor Owen Willis, as well as an interview with Mrs. Whitman herself. It was exciting to see the growing effect of our denominational magazine. It also underlines the amazing ways in which God will use his children as a witness to the world. The interviewer was highly impressed by the loving affection for God and his word expressed by Mrs. Whitman.

Pluralistic society

Contemporary Canada is a multi-cultural mosaic of people from different parts of the earth, and is pluralistic and tolerant. That is good in many ways, but presents a challenge when presenting the gospel. The claim that absolute truths are at the core of Christianity is viewed with increasing skepticism.

It takes much longer to build confidence in people, and longer for them to become fully grounded in the truths of salvation. We cannot presume a base of generally agreed upon truths. Though most people in Canada say they believe in God, and a surprisingly high percentage say they have faith in the Christian message, many have little to undergird those professed beliefs. Even a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible is missing, as we have a generation that, unlike the previous generation, had little religious teaching growing up. People are skeptical of organized religion and they mistrust religious leaders.

Spiritual hunger

On the other hand, people have a real spiritual hunger. Youths seem to have an openness to spiritual answers much greater than even a decade ago. A church congregation that is genuine in its Christianity, offers a loving, caring community and exhibits patience and tolerance over things that aren’t sin, can do much to reach this sort of society with the life-giving gospel.

The key word seems to be authenticity. People will respond when they see a genuine faith, reflected in a humble, caring heart. We know we aren’t perfect, and never will be, in the flesh. In every sense of the word we are saved by the graciousness of God. But as we yield to Jesus Christ and allow him to live his life in us through the transformational work of the Holy Spirit, we know great things can happen.

As U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961) warned, "Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him."