Anglican Diocese of Toronto Church Planting Canada

Church Planting

In terms of the Great Commission, we have a Christian duty to share Christ with the world. That duty involves the sacrament of baptism and the Christian process of discipleship within worshipping and gathered Christian communities. It is in this sense that we stand within a historical Church that has found its expression in locally gathered communities of faith who find their local vocation in mission and ministry.

Within the context of the Diocese of Toronto that Commission is presently expressed in a number of key ways that are directly related to the changing demographics of our Diocesan context.

• Firstly we find ourselves with mushrooming suburbs that have an increasing need for new worshipping communities and appropriate facilities to meet that need.
• Secondly, we are experiencing urban regeneration in a post-Christian context where there are large numbers of un-churched people who are seeking a connection with dynamic and welcoming faith communities that provide them with the space to explore their own spirituality in a contemporary form that is historically rooted.
• Thirdly, the shifting demographics of both our urban and rural contexts requires a re-envision of our existing worshipping communities in a way that builds new and sustainable churches that better suit the changing mission and ministry required in these contexts.

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Models of Church Planting

• Apostolic Model: A “cold start” with limited local preparation where a church planter is placed into a context to start a new church with few resources.
• Mother/Daughter Model: A “mother church” fulfilling its own sense of mission to plant a new church by sending out a minister with existing leadership to plant a new church.
• Diocesan Model: A Diocese (or deanery) supplies a church planting team and the resources to fulfill an existing vision and strategy.
• Cross-Cultural “Hosting” Model: An existing parish starts an ethnically distinct congregation using existing resources. This might develop into distinct church plant or an internal plant that brings renewal to an existing church within a changing demographic context.
• A Self-Start: A small group of existing Christians meet in a home or building for worship and grow a plant.
• A Satellite Launch: An existing church starts a series of satellite congregations which are defined as being very similar in character to the original congregation and relate directly to it. This existing church could serve as a destination or regional church with a number of related smaller worshipping communities.
• Ecumenical Model: Two or more congregations enter a partnership to start a new church that they will share. ECUSA
• Internal Church Plant: Church planting can be expressed in horticultural terms as runners, grafters, transplants, and seeds. An Internal Church Plant is an expression of a transplant where an internal church plant is used primarily to re-vitalize the mission and ministry of an existing congregation. Here a sustainable and growing church plants a mission-orientated congregation into an existing building by supplying ministry staff, leadership and a seeding congregation for renewed growth. The key to a healthy church plant is that a new congregation move as rapidly as possible to an equal partnership with its sponsoring church.