The reasons why Canada is an “increasingly secular” country are highlighted in this article. Instead of being a church led by the word of God, it is a church led by humanist marketing ideologies, and secular pop culture.
In increasingly secular Canada, how do you bring people to God? “Through parking and bathrooms,” says Scott Weatherford, lead pastor of Calgary’s First Alliance Church.
He’s only half joking. On Sundays, the evangelical church’s 1,350-spot parking lot is overflowing. The $25.7-million, six-year-old campus feels more like a convention centre than a cathedral. Weekend services are high-tech, multimedia spectacles. The church provides free fair-trade coffee, with cup holders in every one of the 1,704 seats in the sanctuary. Whether it’s the caffeine, the big-screen monitors or the rock band, no one appeared to be drifting off when Mr. Weatherford, equipped with a wireless microphone and an iPad, took the stage at a recent weekend service.
Deliberately dressed down in jeans and a sports jacket, the former college athlete delivered one of his trademark kick-in-the-pants sermons. One of his favourite phrases is “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me” – a get-it-done message that strikes the right note in entrepreneurial Calgary.
“It’s the church everyone looks to for leadership,” said Franklin Pyles, the Toronto-based president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, part of a global evangelical movement founded in 1887 by a Canadian iconoclast named Albert Simpson. (Today, the Alliance has attracted more than 4.5 million members in 81 countries, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.)
This suburban megachurch is experiencing a 75-per-cent increase in weekend attendance at a time when membership in mainstream Canadian religious denominations is in a steady decline. It’s also the wealthiest Alliance church in Canada, drawing $4.7-million from its members in the last fiscal year.
“The financial resources of this church are vast and we have not tapped them all,” Mr. Weatherford said. “The good we could do if we compile and work together is staggering.”
“Doing the good that needs doing,” is another of First Alliance’s most appealing credos. Volunteers enable the church to offer a wide array of life-building programs, from addiction treatment and free oil changes in the church parking lot to the Discoveryland child-care complex that hosts 550 children on the weekends. It’s all about ensuring that no souls are left behind, but reaching out in the most practical way possible.
Mr. Weatherford came to Calgary to lead First Alliance in 2009, after being recruited from Texas with the tricky task of making sure the church continues its phenomenal growth while making sure it stays true to its core beliefs. He’s succeeded so well that he’s now overseeing a $7-million expansion to the campus, which will include more child-care spaces and additional parking.
“God causes a place to boom economically to do the good in the world that needs doing,” the 53-year-old said. “Most booms are accompanied by great selfishness. Calgary seems to lean into homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, poverty and immigration with a greater openness and generosity than I’ve experienced in other places.”
Technology, he said, is one way to ensure the church continues its forward momentum. Last month, First Alliance launched an Internet campus for people who don’t want to do church the traditional way. As a sign that this is not a break with tradition but rather a natural, ongoing evolution, faconlinetv.org is being led by 29-year-old pastor Brad Young, whose grandfather and father were both lead pastors at First Alliance.
The church’s bold vision for 2012 doesn’t end there, and it parallels evangelical trends across the country. Over First Alliance’s 73-year history, it has become less focused on global missions and more involved in ministering to families at home, although it continues to be the largest funder of the Canadian Alliance’s work abroad.
“The buzz word right now, especially in the States, is missional,” said Mr. Young, stressing that the church realizes it has to meet the practical, as well as spiritual needs of an increasingly diverse community. . . . . .
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