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Megachurches in Canada Chapter 12 Megachurches in Canada Michael Wilkinson and Peter Schuurman 1 Introduction In the Canadian Prairies, a large gathering of approximately 1,500 evangelicals gather for worship on a cold Sunday morning. This is the second of three week- end services which includes Saturday and Sunday evening worship gatherings. A full slate of programmes is in operation throughout the week aimed at the suburban and middle class families who make Prairie Alliance Church home.1 The range of programmes is quite impressive with age related activities from childbirth through to youth, young adults, parents and seniors. The Church also operates the Alpha programme, a basic introduction to the Christian faith popularised through Holy Trinity Brompton Church in England. Volunteers are coordinated to work with staff offering activities that welcome new immi- grants to Canada. Home groups allow members to meet in smaller groups for prayer, support and Bible study. Support groups focus on issues of addiction and recovery for people looking for assistance. Sermons are all available online in video and podcast form for those who want to revisit previous teachings or catch up on something they missed when absent for vacation or work (see Reimer and Wilkinson 2015). Prairie Alliance Church has a staff of 15 pastors of which only 4 are women. Only one staff person is non-white. The white male dominated staff is not rep- resentative of the city they live in but is typical of many suburban conservative evangelical congregations. An Elder Board is responsible for the direction and operation of the church with its annual $2.2 million budget.2 The congregation is highly organised and focused on incorporating newcomers into the life of the church with small gifts in a welcome bag and coffee when they first attend through to a brief welcome class and later a four-week introduction to the church course. The church continues to add to its large facility with more space for family ministries and a general room for a range of activities that can seat about 400 people. Renovations and building projects cost nearly $10 million and will be financed by traditional banking sources and congregational giving. 1 The name of the congregation is changed for confidentiality and anonymity. 2 2016–2017 Annual Congregation Report. © Michael Wilkinson and Peter Schuurman, 2020 | doi 10.1163/9789004412927_014 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CCMichael BY-NC Wilkinson 4.0 license. and Peter Schuurman - 9789004412927 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:50:43AM via free access <UN> 270 Wilkinson and Schuurman The material resources of the congregation are all supported by an evangelical culture that focuses on loving God and loving others as expressed through reg- ular worship activities, benevolent outreach ministries in the city and support of missionaries elsewhere in the world. Prairie Alliance Church represents one example of the number of congrega- tions in Canada that are considered large churches or megachurches. Further- more, the small number of large churches in Canada are almost exclusively Protestant and evangelical. There are about 30,000 congregations in Canada with one third of them being evangelical (Reimer and Wilkinson 2015). Of those 11,000 evangelical congregations, there are about 150 Protestant churches with attendances of over 1,000. While the number of large churches is rela- tively small, the number of large congregations is growing and attracting grow- ing numbers of participants. The megachurch phenomenon is especially of interest to scholars as religion in Canada continues to transform with ongoing immigration, growing numbers of people who say they have ‘no religion’ and the massive decline among the historic mainline Protestant churches. This chapter is fashioned around four threads that hold it together including an overview of religion in Canada with attention to evangelical congregations and the growth of megachurches, a summary of the Canadian Large Churches Study, a case study of a Canadian megachurch, and some theoretical reflec- tions on megachurches in a changing Canadian society. 2 Religion in Canada and the Vitality of Evangelicalism Religion in Canada has undergone substantial changes since the 1960s. The main story line roughly follows the following themes. First, Christianity has experienced a substantial decline on a number of measures including identifi- cation and attendance. The decline is not consistent among all branches equally. For example, the Roman Catholics have maintained relative stability for the overall number of Canadians who identify as Roman Catholic, around 12 million people or about 40 percent of the population in 2011 (National Household Survey). Attendance figures, however, vary across the country with low levels of participation especially in Quebec which has a long history of Roman Catholic presence in the Province. In the 1950s about 90 percent of Ro- man Catholics attended Church in Quebec dropping to 14 percent in 2005 (Bibby and Reid 2016; Bibby 2017). Protestants have experienced the most dramatic decline especially among the historical mainline churches, namely, the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada (Bowen 2004; Clarke and Macdonald 2017). Michael Wilkinson and Peter Schuurman - 9789004412927 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:50:43AM via free access <UN> Megachurches in Canada 271 Overall, Protestants represent about 25 percent of the population with 15 per- cent identifying with the historic churches and 10 percent with evangelical Protestant churches in 2011 (National Household Survey). The highest levels of participation, however, are among the evangelicals with some denominations like the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada serving slightly higher numbers of United Church of Canada people on a weekly basis (about 175,000 weekly at- tenders for the United Church and 200,000 for the paoc). Weekly attendance for evangelicals was reported to be at 53 percent in 2005 and 12 percent for the historic churches. Evangelicals value organised religion and congregational participation (Re- imer and Wilkinson 2015). Not only do they attend weekly at rates higher than other Protestants, they also have many congregations and larger ones. There are about 30,000 congregations in Canada and 11,000 of them belong to evan- gelicals. The evangelical subculture and its congregational form is institution- ally centred on a range of activities that support the vitality or resiliency of evangelicalism in a context of social change and decline in traditional Christi- anity. Evangelical congregations focus on clear views of who they are and the larger culture which is often in tension. Participants are highly involved and committed to the institutional goals and in turn are supported with a culture that is symbolically and ritually infused with worship, music, drama, dance, and activities which embody an evangelical ethos. Evangelical congregations are also replete with programmes that focus on families especially children and youth that are central for the socialisation of participants. Programmes for children and youth also serve to retain them as active participants in the church. Other organisational factors that account for evangelical vitality in- clude ongoing leadership development and claims of high levels of pastoral well-being. Evangelical congregations are also well-financed which contrib- utes to the ongoing support of programmes (Reimer and Wilkinson 2015). The second theme revolves around immigration which has a number of im- plications for religion in Canada (Beaman and Beyer 2008; Beyer and Ramji 2013; Bramadat and Seljak 2005). Not only does it contribute to religious diver- sity, immigration also accounts for the stability of Roman Catholic numbers and the vitality of evangelicalism (Reimer and Wilkinson 2015: 85–89). In Vancouver, British Columbia, for example, there are a number of Korean large churches including one with over 2,000 weekly participants. One major im- plication of the migration of Christians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America is the growing de-Europeanisation of Christianity in Canada (Guenther 2008; Wilkinson 2006). New congregations are appearing in the major cities of Van- couver, Toronto, and Montreal, key gateway cities of new immigrants. And much of the growth among evangelicals is due to immigration ( Wilkinson 2006). Michael Wilkinson and Peter Schuurman - 9789004412927 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:50:43AM via free access <UN> 272 Wilkinson and Schuurman But immigrants also identify as Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh, which contributes to the overall population of 10 percent of Canadians who are non-Christian in 2011 (National Household Survey). The third theme is the growing number of Canadians who say they have no religion which is about 25 percent of the population in 2011 (National House- hold Survey). The ‘no religion’ category is diverse and includes new immi- grants, those who have disaffiliated from Christianity, as well as a growing segment who have never affiliated (Bibby 2017; Thiessen 2015; Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme 2017). What is important for understanding megachurches, especially those who are evangelical, is that all these larger themes in Canadi- an culture represent not only a tension with the evangelical subculture, but for congregations that value activism, evangelism, and outreach, new immigrants and people with no religion are considered possible sources of growth for megachurches (Bibby
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