By Steve Weatherbe

STATISTICS CANADA reports that only one in five Victorians attend church monthly. Dan Rutherford, pastor at Gateway Baptist in Saanich, believes the weekly attendance rate falls to one in 20. Victoria, he told BCCN, is one of the least ‘churched’ communities in Canada.

While some might see this as a sign of the decline of Canadian civilization, for a group of mission-minded evangelicals, it is an opportunity – or rather, many opportunities – for church planting.

At least a dozen would-be planters turned up for a presentation hosted by Rutherford, who himself hopes to use his spacious and low-slung suburban church as the seedbed for three or four quite independent congregations.

At the meeting were several keen-eyed younger men, all of them second pastors at churches in Black Creek, Saanich and Metchosin – and sharing the hope of starting new churches soon among the young, hip urbanites moving into Victoria’s increasingly livable downtown core.

Also on hand were Gord Fleming and Mark Burch, respectively the director and associate director of Church Planting BC, an affiliate of the BC Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.

Their organization has a $1.5-million annual budget, and a well-thought-out plan for planting new  churches across B.C. Across the province – but mostly in cities.

Some 60 percent of Canadians live in just six cities, they told the group. That’s where the unchurched live, and that’s where the people coming to their organization from all over North America wanted to plant churches.

Until recently, Vancouver was the main target; but in the last 12 months, Victoria has been on the hearts of many young people.

The folks at Church Planting BC play hard to get, and test the prospective planters’ resolve in various other ways. The organization insists that they shelve their preconceived ideas of what church model to follow, until they ‘marinate’ in the communities they wish to serve for as long as a year.

As well, they must apprentice for up to a year with an existing church plant, and find funding from their home denomination, mission organizations, family and friends.

Church Planting BC also provides an advisory board – a temporary elders board for a new church which has no elders yet.

Many of the prospects come from the United States; others are Canadians who want to return to their roots after having gone to Bible colleges and seminaries in the U.S. and even helped with church plants there.

Church Planting BC models itself after Redeemer City to City, the church planting outgrowth of Manhattan’s 21 year old Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC).

Many of the prospects come from the United States; others are Canadians who want to return to their roots after having gone to Christian Bible colleges and seminaries in the U.S. and even helped with church plants there.

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Church Planting BC models itself after Redeemer City to City, the church planting outgrowth of Manhattan’s 21 year old Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC).

Now with 4,500 regular attenders, RPC decided in 1993 to create satellite churches in New York, rather than become a mega church – and then to create a national organization to encourage more urban plants.

One of those at the Gateway meeting was Josh Wilton, who launched The Table in September with plant-partner Andy Withrow and their wives.

They are supported by the Anglican Coalition in Canada (which represents congregations that broke off relations with the Anglican Church of Canada over same-sex marriage and placed itself under the Anglican Church of Rwanda.)

They moved to Victoria from Vancouver a year ago, and began meeting with friends and acquaintances over coffee or dinner in various parts of Greater Victoria.

Slowly, the group has grown from four to 80 people, who gather at several ‘tables’ around Greater Victoria weekly for dinner and discussion.

The plan is for these gatherings to grow into home churches. Right now, about 35 people meet twice monthly for formal services (with dinner before and dessert after) at the Church of Our Lord in downtown Victoria.

But Wilton said he doesn’t care if people never come to the big services. “The heart of The Table is in the home groups. We’ll move communion out to them.”

Asked why he and Withrow didn’t start with formal Anglican services and then invite people to come, Wilton laughed. “Nobody would come. These are people who are two generations removed from having anything to do with churches.”

Wilton compared the traditional way of preaching and worshiping to Betamax, the obsolete video delivery method. It works, but nobody uses it.

The motto of The Table is ‘Christ revealed in the common life.’ The starting point is to build relationships with people, said Wilton.

These will hopefully become small-scale, caring communities – which will evolve, in turn, into spiritual ones where the gospel is openly taught and experienced.

Wilton and Withrow said they don’t expect to grow beyond 120, because the church would become impersonal. When they get above that number, “it will be time to start another.”

Wilton joked about the many “revenue streams” The Table depends on, and more seriously described the need to moderate the expectations of the various donors.

“The risk is that some won’t want to support us beyond a year two. They don’t realize this is like a foreign mission. We will need help over a longer term.”

While The Table is aimed generally at 20-somethings, the three local tables each have their own ‘microculture’ – to the degree that Wilton will match new prospects with the best group for them.

December 2010