Is God reshaping -- and reviving -- his church?

A panel discussion at the National Church Planting Congress, held November 19-21 at Vancouver's First Baptist Church. Left to right: John Caplin of Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada; Bob Logan of the U.S.-based CoachNet; Glenn Gibson of Outreach Canada; and Martin Robinson, of the U.K.-based Together in Mission. Photo by Dan Bennett.

By Frank Stirk

OVER ADVENT, people across Germany did something very out-of-character for most of them: they went to church. What drew them was the novelty of stepping inside the world's first polyvinyl inflatable church. Invented by a British entrepreneur, The Daily Telegraph reported, it "has a blow-up organ, altar and candles, and plastic 'stained-glass' windows."

Although its original intent was to promote a chain of nightclubs, a German priest who bought one of them discovered that it drew people who had perhaps not darkened the door of a traditional church for years. He decided to take it on tour.

"It allows us to take God's message everywhere, and reach people who usually don't go to church," said Gerhard Maier, the bishop of Stuttgart. "The whole idea is to surprise people and meet them at places where they wouldn't expect to find a house of God."

And while the thought of worshipping in an inflatable church may seem undignified to some, its success underscores a growing universal awareness that God is leading his church in some new and surprising directions, as it seeks to reach a postmodern culture. The end result, say many observers, may well be a radically transformed church.

"People have rejected what we've shown them as the church, but I'm not sure what we've shown them has to be the only way that we do church, says Cam Roxburgh, senior pastor of Southside Community Church in Surrey and B.C. regional coordinator of Church Planting Canada.

"For too long we've defined 'local church' as a place where I go on Sunday morning to attend a religious service, and oftentimes the bigger the better.

"I don't want to rip that apart, because so many good things have been done through that model, but I'm not sure that's the approach that's going to win the day in our country over the next generation or two."

Recent polling bears out that concern. According to one survey, 77 percent of Canadians said that having an inner spiritual life was important. But only 48 percent agreed it was important to belong to a religious group--a figure that rose to 65 percent among young adults.

Roxburgh believes part of the answer lies in motivating the church body to go out and consciously build relationships. "We've got to be a group of people who infiltrate neighbourhoods--and that's bound to make 'church' look a whole lot different," he says.

First Baptist Church (top) and St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church. Photo by Dan Bennett.

It is a way of 'doing church' that can take many forms.

One approach is to meet in people's homes, often with a meal being part of the worship. "It's a growing thing," says Ken Stade, the Winnipeg-based Prairie regional coordinator of the recently formed Canadian House Church Network.

"Many people who are committed to community, to deeper relationships and more accountability in their lives are finding this is a very effective way to meet together as the body. Church programs and big, slick services and so on aren't really that exciting to them. Just because there are lots of people doesn't guarantee relationship."

Currently, there are only about 125 house churches in all of Canada. But Stade believes the movement is uniquely designed for dramatic growth.

"The house church has a ready-made discipleship factor built in, and has the ability to multiply rapidly," he says. "We believe that there's going to be 10,000 house churches here in Winnipeg in the next 10 years."

In Montreal, meanwhile, a group of Quebec Roman Catholics began meeting in October with the blessing of the archdiocese for a non-traditional mass called the 'Repas de Fraternite.' As The Montreal Gazette reported, they gather for "family-like meals" which also include Bible readings, singing and discussion, "often in the absence of a priest."

A manifesto signed by about 110 Catholics states that these meals fulfil the original purpose of the traditional eucharist to build community within the church.

Eddie Gibbs, who teaches church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, says such "intensely eucharistic" meals -- in homes, but also in restaurants and cafés -- are becoming a key feature of these new churches.

"In the context of the meal, the bread is broken and the wine is blessed," he says. "It is a participation; it is a means of grace. It can be powerfully evangelistic.

"We're always just glancing sideways and making room, because there are lots of lonely people out there."

New churches are also springing up on university campuses, as students show a renewed interest in developing their spirituality.

"It is quite broadly characteristic of post-modernity and the emerging generation, where the skepticism of all things institutional -- government, business and the church -- continues to be very high," says Murray Moerman, director of national church planting strategy for Outreach Canada.

Yet to the unchurched student, he adds, most of these churches will seem no different than a Christian club. "If you pop your head into one room or the other, it still looks like 30 people sitting haphazardly on furniture, involved in Bible study groups, worship, discipleship."

But these changes are not occurring entirely without controversy, especially when it comes to how best to reach Canada's growing immigrant population.

"Most church planters have been taught the homogeneous principle, that people want to worship God with their own people, and the best way to plant churches is on ethnic grounds," says Sam Owusu, who pastors the Calvary Worship Centre in New Westminster. "It's wrong, it's not biblical."

Owusu believes that scripture mandates all of God's people to worship together. So in his church, while different groups meet separately in their native languages, English is the sole language of worship.

"If we see a language group that is quite big, we translate the sermons into that language," he says.

Owusu concedes that for many people, multicultural worship does not come naturally -- himself included. "But God does not call us to do what comes naturally, but what comes supernaturally. Christ is calling us to break the barriers."

Yet it would be wrong to assume, says Gibbs, that the church which many Canadians have been familiar with for decades has outlived its usefulness.

"Amongst our aging population are many people who experienced as much change as they can emotionally handle," he points out. "So I do believe we need a safety net.

Nor is there any suggestion that God has abandoned more traditional church plants. On the contrary, he is doing some amazing things through them as well.

One example is a new church started last year near Summerside, Prince Edward Island, by Louisianan Craig Nelms. Eleven generations earlier, his French forebears were forcibly evicted by the British from Nova Scotia -- then called Acadia -- and resettled in Louisiana, where they became known as Cajuns.

Nelms believes God intends that his church become a mission base to reach their Acadian neighbours.

"When you tell the Acadians that you are a Cajun from Louisiana, and your ancestors were among those deported, they just get a tear in their eye," he says. "It is such an opportunity for the witness of Christ."

"God's doing something. There are stirrings, and that's very exciting," says Roxburgh.

"I think the culture is ready and poised for some new things."

But Tan worries that most denominations are not yet willing to release church planters to follow the Lord's leading. "They call it accountability. I call it control. The sad fact is that some local churches and denominations do not know what to do with them, because they're so busy in maintaining or keeping the flock together."

Ray Bakke, executive director of International Urban Associates, echoes that sentiment. "I thought the barriers to mission were the big, bad cities," he writes. "But 90 percent of the barriers to reaching cities are not in the city at all; they are inside our churches, things like, 'Our bishop would never let us get away with that,' or, 'They'll call us liberal if we do that' or 'We can't do that, the seminary didn't prepare me for that.' The barriers are inside our structures."

For Glenn Gibson, Outreach Canada's director of church revitalization ministries in Kitchener, Ontario, the issue is ultimately not what the church of tomorrow will look like. The much more crucial issue is that change -- indeed, radical change -- must occur.

"We're in a time when there is a whole new type of church that needs to emerge," he says. "To use Jesus' metaphor of the wine and wineskins, people still have a taste for the wine. But we have problems with our containers."