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By Alexa Gilker
IT’S no secret that Victoria is one of Canada’s least ‘churched’ cities. However, the Vancouver Island Church Planters Network (VICPN) is
working to change that statistic.
The multi-denominational group, consisting of current and potential
church-planters in Victoria, meets once a month to spend time in prayer,
planning and building relationships.
“We want to be trained together. We want to learn things together – learn from each others’ mistakes,” says Scott McDowell, a member of VICPN. He is currently an associate pastor at
Providence Community Church, but is raising funds to start a new church plant
in the downtown core.
“If we’re all on a similar page for sharing the gospel in our city, it creates a
stronger voice for non-Christians to hear,” says McDowell.
Jeff Candell is also a pastor at Providence Community. “Planting churches is the best way to reach new people for Christ,” he says.
“New churches have dramatically higher numbers of decisions for Christ, and
quicker penetration into unchurched or less churched areas and peoples.”
Candell says Providence is looking to plant another church because “Victoria is so desperately in need.”
At VICPN, says McDowell, “we joke that you could plant five different churches on top of what [each plant]
is doing, and we’d still have lots of people to reach.”
He thinks the biggest challenge in Victoria is that [churches] think people don’t want to go to church or hear the gospel.
“Instead,” he says, “we need to relearn how to invite people, how to be liberal in sharing our faith.”
He believes new churches have the ability to adapt to their neighborhood, “creating a new church with the same old gospel message, just given in the terms
of the local area.”
Members of VICPN work in a range of neighbourhoods.
The Table is a church plant in both Langford and downtown Victoria, headed by
Josh Wilton and Andy Withrow; church planter Marco Faasse is currently at the
Tsawout Reserve, up the Saanich peninsula.
“God uses us in different areas,” says McDowell. “We spend lots of time talking about what parts of the city we are reaching, and
what parts are unreached.”
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McDowell says his particular church plant is looking to target people in the
service industry, a largely secular demographic. “The downtown bartenders, people working in hotels . . . I have a friend who
works in an adult sex shop. Those are the people we are hoping to reach.”
Part of the agenda for VICPN meetings is sharing the models and methods that
prove effective for reaching Victoria.
McDowell describes his method as “going out, serving the community, sharing your faith.” He says that “as you do that, you begin to see a church grow out of it.”
“Church-planting was probably started by a guy who just saw the need for more
churches, and went out and did it,” says McDowell, although he admits the process now is a bit more structured.
He went through two different assessments with his denomination, designed to “test your character.” He says “you need to be able to build things from scratch, start an entirely new
ministry. It takes a certain type of personality, usually Type A folks.” If that’s true, it means VICPN is filled with individuals equipped to get things done.
McDowell ends with a comment for those in established churches, who might be
feeling like their church is struggling or hurting, and question the reason for
planting new churches. “There is no competition,” says McDowell. “We are not against you, we’re for you. Church planting is the evidence of new leaders rising up; it’s in support of the total church of God in this city.”
Contact: westsong.ca/webs/planters.
January 2010
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