Outreach Canada monitors church growth

Richmond, B.C.

Outreach Canada, a church growth resource ministry for churches, has released the fourth of six reports examining church planting needs in Canada. The most recent one tracks the Prairies. The group's mandate is to encourage church growth towards the goal of having one evangelical church for every 2,000 people by the year 2001.

To give individual churches an idea of how much they need to reproduce in order to meet the ratio, the group matches Canada census data for a particular region with the number of evangelical churches currently in that area. It then calculates the current ratio of population to evangelical churches to determine the number of new churches needed to reach Outreach Canada's goal. It also projects population growth to the year 2001 using Statistics Canada figures, to project the number of churches needed by that time in order to meet the goal.

According to the report for the Prairies, for example, Alberta currently has 2,433 people for every one evangelical church. It needs an additional 253 churches to reach its goal. But with a projected population increase of 18%, the province will need 346 new churches by the year 2001.

Saskatchewan has a current ratio of 1,807 people per evangelical church. According to Outreach Canada's standards, the goal has been met. However, when broken down into census tracts, individual areas of the province show higher concentrations of churches; others fall well below the numeric standard.

Manitoba had a similar ratio to Saskatchewan, but individual communities, such as certain Winnipeg districts have ratios significantly lower than the average.

The B.C. report, released in 1995, reports 2,580 people per evangelical church. It currently needs 359 new churches, a projected 639 churches will be needed by 2001, 616 of those in greater Vancouver.

Outreach Canada provides maps of provinces and cities indicating evangelical churches per capita. It also provides population and church numbers for rural community with a population of over 2000.

Detailed reports are available from Outreach Canada at #16, 12240 Horseshoe Way, Richmond, B.C. V7A 4X9. Phone 604-272-0732.

Kevin Heinrichs, from Outreach Canada reports

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