BCCN’s ‘State of the Canadian Church’ feature (pages 4 – 5) drew upon the expertise of many leading observers, including Brian Stiller – president of Tyndale University College and, at one time, head of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Following is his response to two key questions.

What is the attitude of the larger Canadian society to Christianity?  

If 911 taught us anything, it was that religion matters. In that case it was destructive. But this does not camouflage the larger reality that faith is important to a lot of people.

One day I received a call from a vice president from the University of Toronto. He asked me some questions on how to proceed on building a prayer room at the university. I was surprised, for it seemed to me that this would be the last place where such a room would be created.

They were driven by the Muslim community, who said that prayer was an essential part of life and they therefore needed a place to pray. These newly imported religions are creating a beachhead in society, giving Christianity, in an ironic way, an opportunity to give witness that in past decades was largely lost by way of secularism.

The pendulum of secularism has swung as far as it can and it’s now in retreat. We see this in the newspapers and reports in media on a variety of issues that often have nudged up against discussion of religious faith.

While even a few years ago a politician who had a conservative theological view was lampooned, now we have a prime minister who is evangelical, and it’s a non-story. I see this as evidence that the community is not so afraid of who we are or what we believe as they once might have been.

The question before us now is, “How will we respond now to this less alarmist view of us, and the increased openness to matters of faith?”

As an evangelical community we must realize that if we are going to truly affect our world we need to raise up men and women who can take rightful leadership in places of business, industry, unions, media, arts, education, sports – and the list goes on.

Will church leaders have sufficient vision of what it means to prepare the people of God to go out into the world as Christ’s witnesses?

What are the bright spots, encouraging trends and new movements in Canadian Christianity?

The first bright spot is the extraordinary amount of prayer activity. This is by way of community prayer groups, multi-prayer groups within the church, prayer networks and organizations that are dedicated towards prayer.

Never in my 45 years of public ministry in Canada have I seen this interest and unquenchable thirst for prayer. Indeed, this can be the most important element – establishing a strong beachhead of witness that Canada has not seen since the 1800s.

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The second bright spot is the multi-level activity of witness going on across the country. Springing up are agencies, small groups, and parachurch missions (community based, provincial, or national) looking to witness of Christ – from the arts to helping the poor.

These risings often happen because people, frustrated by bureaucracy or by simply observing a need, bring together like-minded people. And out of their passion to do something, they create small units, and indeed even movements in reaching those objectives. This is a prime example of the work of the Spirit in bringing answers to questions, fulfilling needs in the vacuum created by enormous wants.

The third bright spot is the number of church plants and church expansions taking place across Canada, including Quebec. I believe increased witness comes by way of increased church plants.

A church plant in a changing community is often a new wine skin for new wine. Churches insensitive to change or unwilling to be innovative by necessity will die.

Creating new congregational life developed in a variety of ways is vital. I was at a large church recently that now has four church plants. It began by sending a bus into a poor community to provide assistance in completing income tax returns.

These churches were built based upon meeting the needs of the community and as a response to peoples’ request for church. While some consider larger churches to be something that smacks of Americanism, many communities need one or a few mega-churches as a way of meeting needs.

These mega-churches apply creative solutions to the needs of communities, which require significant financial and personnel resources to accomplish.

The fourth bright spot is the many voices of witness. These come from sports players, business people, politicians, those in theatre, and media. I was recently on a television show in which there was discussion about the so-called ossuary of the bones of one Jesus’ family members.

I sat next to a nationally known journalist with obvious liberal leanings. I expected that I would need to defend an orthodox Christian view on the resurrection.

Before I was invited to respond to the matter of the trustworthiness of the biblical account of the resurrection, this person made it clear that without the physical resurrection of Jesus, there was no Christian faith.

His orthodoxy surprised me and humbled me. I realized I had already concluded his social liberalism would lead to a theological liberalism. These many voices are creating a sense of legitimacy about the nature of the gospel witness.

February 2008