CNBC.ca - Canadian National Baptist Convention

New church-starting team heads to Winnipeg

By Frank Stirk

COCHRANE, AB—By 2010, Winnipeg could begin to see a resurgence of Canadian Southern Baptist churches thanks to a new joint church-planting initiative between the CNBC and the North American Mission Board.

“We believe we’re going to start several new seed groups within Winnipeg in the next two years that will be future congregations,” said Gary Smith, who was recently appointed by NAMB as a national missionary assigned to Canada.

Smith and his wife, Sue, plan to move to Winnipeg by the end of the year from Montreal, where he had been serving as the Start Team coordinator for Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Joining them will be church-starting advocates Roger and Lisa Harrison from Louisville, Kentucky. “They’re just an incredible gift to us,” said Smith. “They’ve got a huge passion for Winnipeg.”

“Our desire,” he added, “is not to transplant, but to work through the indigenous church-starting leaders the Lord will give us. It’s really to work with and train folks right there.”

“I think Gary will make a major impact in Winnipeg,” said National Ministry Leader Gerry Taillon. “Already we’re hearing about projects and partnerships and possibilities to plant churches and to encourage churches in the Winnipeg area.”

Twenty years ago, Winnipeg had six Canadian Southern Baptist churches. Now it only has two—Garden Park Church and New Life Sanctuary. Finding some way to reverse that decline “has been a significant prayer request of ours for the last couple of years,” said Start Team leader Dwight Huffman.

The breakthrough came when NAMB agreed to pay Smith’s salary, which until a few months ago had been paid by the CNBC. “He is now in their payroll system,” said Huffman, “and yet they are allowing him to stay here and be a part of our national team.”

In fact, Smith’s assignment is largely unchanged. It still includes facilitating new church starts from northern Ontario to Newfoundland in partnership with team members Jeff Christopherson in Toronto—also newly appointed as a NAMB national missionary for Canada—and Jacques Avakian in Montreal.

And with the resources freed up by Smith’s arrangement with NAMB, Huffman has been able to bring onboard former International Mission Board missionary Maurice Tenkink, who now lives in Prince Albert, as the coordinator for Saskatchewan and the rest of Manitoba outside Winnipeg.

“Maurice’s job is rural church-planting and developing a strategy to see self-sustaining rural churches planted all over the Prairie provinces,” said Taillon.

These additions mean that for the first time, the Start Team will have representation in every region of the country. “That’s a significant development in the last six months,” said Huffman. “It’s really preparing us to do what we need to do in 2009 and 2010.”

“In the midst of a crisis with the American dollar and our own Canadian financial crisis,” Taillon noted, “God has found a way to multiply our church-starting team by funding them in other ways.”

Garden Park pastor Sean Major is, in his words, “thrilled times two” by this new initiative.

“With only two small CNBC churches in all of Manitoba, to hear that there is someone coming here with a focus on starting more churches—and even the companionship of having more people on the team near you—that is such a blessing,” he said. “I am so thankful that God has put Winnipeg on Gary’s heart.”

As a first step, the team plans to conduct what is known as a North American Mission Board People Search. “It will help us know by the end of next year how to strategically go about planting churches and the types of church planters we’re going to need,” said Smith. “As far as I know, it’s never been done in Canada.”

“There is so much sowing and harvesting and fruit to be had in this place,” said Major. “There’s a ton of single moms around here. We have a challenge with gangs, youth looking for something, looking to belong, and a huge immigration presence.”

Smith is also hopeful that a breakthrough might even be imminent in the vast region between Winnipeg and Ottawa, where there is currently not a single Canadian Southern Baptist witness.

“I have a church-starting advocate for northern Ontario and we’re already seeing things begin to happen,” he said. “That whole region, maybe in the next two years, will totally change, and we won’t have that huge land mass without any CNBC churches anymore.”

At the same time, Taillon stressed that the national leadership remains very mindful of the fact that the Atlantic provinces in particular still face “major challenges” in getting new churches started. “We want to continue to do more and more for eastern Canada and to expand our church-starting team there,” he said.