There is a question that I suspect many denominational leaders and pastors are asking these days: Do we really need to plant new churches when so many of the churches we already have are struggling?

It is a reasonable question. Across Canada, congregations are declining, some church buildings are being sold, and denominations are having increasingly difficult conversations about which churches can continue and which ones may need to close. At the same time, many denominations are finding it difficult to recruit enough pastors to serve the churches they already have. We are asking people to consider planting new churches at precisely the time when some of our existing churches cannot find a pastor.

So why would we add more churches to the mix?

I have spent much of my 30+ years of ministry engaged in church planting and church revitalization, and I have become increasingly convinced that this is the wrong way to frame the question. The choice is not between revitalizing existing churches and planting new ones. We need both. The more important question is whether we are willing to recognize that the mission field has changed and that some of the ways we have traditionally organized the church may no longer be adequate for that mission.

The Canadian religious landscape has changed considerably. According to the 2021 Canadian Census, 53.3% of Canadians identified as Christian, compared with 77.1% in 2001. During that same period, the percentage of Canadians reporting no religious affiliation increased to 34.6%. Statistics Canada has also reported that regular participation in religious activities is considerably lower than Christian identification alone might suggest.

These numbers matter because they remind us that we are not simply dealing with churches that have lost some members over the past few decades. We are living in a very different mission context. There are large numbers of Canadians who have little or no meaningful connection with a local church, and many younger Canadians have grown up without the assumption that church is simply something everyone does.

That should change the way we think about church.

What about the churches we already have?

I am a strong advocate for church revitalization. There are congregations across Canada that still have life in them, even though the congregation may not always see it. Sometimes what appears to be decline is actually an invitation to rediscover the church’s mission, reconsider its priorities and begin engaging its community in a different way.

I have also seen churches discover new life when they stop asking how they can preserve what they have and begin asking what God might be calling them to become. That kind of revitalization is worth pursuing, and we should not be too quick to write off congregations simply because they are smaller than they once were.

But we also need to acknowledge that revitalization is not always possible. Some congregations have reached a point where there are simply too few people, too few leaders and too few resources to sustain the ministry. In other situations, the community around the church has changed so dramatically that the congregation’s existing approach no longer connects with the people who now live there.

That does not necessarily mean the church failed. Sometimes it means the mission context changed.

A church that was planted in a growing community sixty or seventy years ago may now find itself surrounded by an entirely different population. The neighbourhood may have changed ethnically, economically and generationally. The people who live there may have different assumptions about faith, family, community and institutions than the people the church was originally designed to reach.

In those circumstances, the answer cannot always be to work harder at getting people to come back to the church we already have.

Sometimes we need to consider what a new expression of the church might look like.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question

One of the questions I think we need to ask more often is this: Do we have enough churches?

At first, that sounds like the obvious question. If there are churches closing, surely we don’t need more churches.

But there is another question that may be more helpful: Do we have enough churches reaching the people who are not being reached?

Those are very different questions.

A community can have several churches and still need another church. That is not necessarily because the existing churches are doing a poor job. It may simply be that they are not reaching everyone in the community, and perhaps never will.

A congregation may be particularly effective at reaching older adults, while another church may be connecting with young families. One church may have a strong ministry among newcomers, while another has developed deep relationships with people experiencing poverty. A traditional congregation may be faithfully serving its members while a new church develops relationships with people who would never think of attending that congregation.

The question is not whether one is better than the other. The question is whether we have enough different kinds of Christian communities to engage the people who are actually living in our communities.

That is where church planting still has an important role.

The pastoral shortage is real

Of course, there is another problem that we cannot simply ignore. If many churches are already struggling to find pastors, how can we possibly justify starting more churches?

The pastoral shortage is real. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has identified concerns about the number of pastors approaching retirement and the challenges of developing the next generation of pastoral leaders. Gordon T. Smith has described this as a leadership “pipeline crisis.”

That should make us rethink church planting, but it should not necessarily make us abandon it.

Perhaps the problem is that we have assumed that every new church has to begin with a pastor standing at the front of a room every Sunday.

That model worked in a different context. It is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

What if church planting began with a team rather than an individual? What if a bivocational pastor worked alongside several emerging leaders? What if an established congregation became the sending church for a new community? What if denominations invested more deliberately in developing lay leaders who could eventually become pastors? What if some churches began in homes, community spaces or other places where people already gather rather than immediately taking on the expense of a building?

None of these approaches eliminates the need for pastoral leadership. They simply recognize that leadership can be developed differently.

In fact, one of the great opportunities in church planting is that new communities can become places where leaders are discovered and developed. Rather than asking only, “Who will pastor this church?” we can also ask, “Who are the leaders God is raising up among these people?”

That is a much more hopeful question.

We need to rethink what we mean by church planting

Perhaps the biggest problem is that we have sometimes defined church planting too narrowly.

If church planting means finding a pastor, renting a facility, creating a worship service, advertising a launch and hoping enough people show up to make the budget work, then I understand why people are questioning whether we should continue planting churches.

That model requires a tremendous amount of money, leadership and institutional support.

But church planting does not have to begin that way.

At its heart, church planting is about forming a Christian community among people who are not currently part of one. It is about making disciples, building relationships, proclaiming the gospel and helping people discover what it means to follow Jesus together.

That can take many different forms.

A new church might begin around a dinner table. It might grow out of a small group. It might emerge from an established congregation. It might begin among university students, newcomers to Canada, young families or people who have become disconnected from traditional churches. It might meet in a rented facility for years before ever considering a building of its own.

The form matters, but the mission matters more.

The church planting paradox

There is an interesting paradox here.

The very things that make church planting more difficult may also make it more necessary.

We have fewer people attending church. We have fewer pastors available. We have fewer financial resources. Many denominations are carrying buildings and congregations that are increasingly difficult to sustain.

Those realities should cause us to rethink how we plant churches.

They should not necessarily cause us to stop planting them.

In fact, a pastoral shortage might be one of the reasons we need to develop different models of church. A financial shortage might force us to develop churches that are less dependent upon buildings. Declining attendance might cause us to stop measuring success primarily by how many people gather on Sunday morning and start asking how effectively we are making disciples throughout the week.

Sometimes limitations can force us to rediscover what matters most.

Perhaps the real problem is how we measure success

I wonder if part of our difficulty with church planting is that we have inherited a very particular picture of what a successful church looks like.

We tend to think about attendance, budgets, buildings, programs and staff. Those things matter, but they can also become the measures by which we decide whether a church is successful.

What if a church plant begins with twenty people and spends its first three years learning how to love its neighbourhood? What if it reaches people who would never have walked into an established congregation? What if those twenty people develop relationships with fifty people who are far from God? What if several new leaders emerge from that community and eventually help start another church?

That may not look impressive on a denominational spreadsheet.

It might, however, look very much like the mission Jesus gave his followers.

Perhaps we need to ask different questions. How many people are becoming disciples? How many people are being equipped to serve? How many leaders are being developed? How many people who had no connection with a church are now part of a Christian community? How many churches are becoming sending churches rather than simply receiving churches?

Those measurements might tell us something more important than attendance alone.

Church planting is not the answer to everything

I do not want to suggest that planting a new church is always the right answer. It isn’t.

There are congregations that need to be revitalized. There are congregations that need to change. There are congregations that need to merge with another church. There are times when a church needs to close, and there are times when the most faithful thing a congregation can do is release its resources for the sake of something new.

The challenge is developing the wisdom to know which situation we are actually facing.

We should not plant a new church simply because planting churches sounds exciting. Nor should we preserve an existing congregation simply because closing it feels like failure.

Both decisions need to be made in the context of mission.

The question should always be: What will most effectively help us participate in God’s mission in this particular place?

Sometimes the answer will be revitalization.

Sometimes it will be a new church.

Sometimes it will be something we have not yet imagined.

So, is church planting still viable?

I believe it is.

But I think church planting in Canada in 2026 has to look different from church planting in previous generations. We cannot simply reproduce the institutional model that has served the church in the past and expect it to work in a dramatically different cultural context.

We need church plants that are more missionary, more contextual and more willing to experiment. We need churches that are not built entirely around the availability of one pastor. We need denominations that are willing to release resources for new initiatives rather than using every available resource to keep existing structures going. We need established churches that see themselves not only as congregations to be maintained but as communities capable of sending people into new places.

Most of all, we need to remember why we plant churches in the first place.

We do not plant churches because Canada needs more church buildings. We do not plant churches because denominations need to increase their numbers. We do not plant churches because every community needs another Sunday morning worship service.

We plant churches because there are still people who need to hear and experience the good news of Jesus Christ.

That has not changed.

The culture has changed. Our communities have changed. The way people think about institutions has changed. The way people engage with the church has changed. Even our understanding of leadership and ministry has to change.

But the mission has not changed.

Jesus still calls us to make disciples.

And if there are people who are not being reached by the churches we already have, then we need to be willing to ask whether a new church might be one of the ways God intends to reach them.

The future of the Canadian church will not be secured simply by keeping every existing congregation open. Neither will it be secured by planting a new church in every community.

It will require something more difficult than either of those approaches.

It will require us to discern where God is at work, to be honest about what is no longer working, to have the courage to let some things go, to have the patience to revitalize what can still be renewed, and to have the imagination to plant something new when the mission requires it.

Church revitalization and church planting are not competing strategies. They are two expressions of the same missionary calling.

The question is not whether we can afford to plant churches.

The better question is whether we can afford not to.

Sources

• Statistics Canada. “The Daily — Religion in Canada: 2021 Census of Population.” October 26, 2022. Statistics Canada
• Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. “Pastoral Shortages: Calling and Training for Ministry.” 2025. Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
• Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists in Canada. “Fellowship Church Planting in Canada from 2010 to 2025.” 2026. Fellowship
• Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists in Canada. “Church Attendance in Canada in the FEBCC.” Fellowship