A Culture of Faith ~ Dr. Michael Wilkenson & Sam Reimer

Book Preview: 
"A Culture of Faith": Evangelical Congregations in Canada

In his just-released book (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), Dr. Michael Wilkenson (Trinity Western University Professor) and Sam Reimer, discuss observed trends of various traditional Non-Evangelical denominations in Canada versus the trends within 5 main Evangelical churches:

Recently, "The Canadian Evangelical Churches Study" (CECS) interviewed more than 500 lead pastor's from across Canada, along with roughly 100 youth/children's pastors from 5 denominations, which include:

Christian & Missionary Alliance,
Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada,
Christian Reformed Church,
Convention Baptists and
Mennonite Brethren.

• This study spawned this new book, "A Culture of Faith: Evangelical Congregations in Canada".  Dr. Michael Wilkinson, is a Trinity Western University Professor.

• The study looked at Canada's 30,000 church congregations where we see increased "religious diversity", and also that one third (33%) of this 30,000 Canada-wide group now are fully Evangelical Protestant. 

•  Within Canadian church culture, Wilkensen says "...we see increased "religious decline" as we witness the decline of the non-evangelical Protestant churches like Lutherans, Anglicans and United Church of Canada.  "...at one time it used to be that millions of Canadians filled the Sunday morning pews at a United, Lutheran or Anglican church.  But...not any more; Since the 1960's these churches have significantly been in decline. Now for example, the Sunday AM worship attendance is about the same between the United and PAOC churches.  Some reasons attributed to their decline are basically that their congregations are aging. Their church population is beyond the child-bearing ages as this group is not having children at the same rate as the Evangelicals are having children.  Originally, many people who populated Lutheran, Anglican and United churches came from Germany. Scandinavia and Britain.  People simply are no-longer immigrating to Canada from these European countries."
• At the same time we see Evangelical Protestants continue their growth and are no longer a minority; the advances of the evangelical congregations have now caught up, although since 1990's their growth has slowed down.  In the 1990's growth was primarily through new-immigrants. New-immigrant growth still comes from evangelicals coming to Canada from countries like Brazil, Korea and Nigeria, all places with high-content evangelical populations.  
• Since 2000, Evangelical growth has been about 8% to 10%.  The two streams driving this are continued "New-Immigrant Growth" and also from Existing Evangelical or "Missional Churches".
• Because of all the significant changes in Canadian church culture, Wilkensen and Reimer say as Evangelicals we now need to "rethink our Mission and Vision statements to ensure our relevancy", as Canada is sadly now considered to be a "post-Christian" society.  Many congregations are dying; Many are closing their doors; More Canadians are saying they have "no-religion".