Our Vision
Our vision is that within 20 years The Connection will consist of at least 10 churches, scattered throughout Metro Vancouver, each with 200-400 people that serve their local community, love each other, and worship Jesus. The influence and impact of these churches will help transform the entire city. Although working in their individual areas, these churches will not be totally independent. They’ll share leadership teams, pray together, and worship together using high speed communication. They’ll actually be able to see each other worship. Hence these many smaller churches will function as one big church. We’ll be small and big at the same time.

The Challenge
However, the experience of church planters of all denominations is that starting new churches in Vancouver is very hard and takes a long time – often far longer than in other “world cities”. Denominational groups like NAMB that have tried to work here have become discouraged and quickly retreated.¹ Vancouver has been called a “church planter’s graveyard” for good reason. Most church planters just don’t make it. Very few churches survive. If we follow this pattern it would take incredibly long to plant those 10 churches. Maybe God has also allowed us to go through some very hard times. We have been forced to look for easier and more effective ways to do it in the future.

While it may take us some time to build our first church, we have developed a strategic plan that will allow us to start a new church and built it to 100+ in less than a year. (Click here for a few points on the plan.)

This plan will require a lot of money. We'll be completely honest. Each of these church plants will require a financial investment of at least $100,000 per year for several years until the church is healthy enough to support itself (3-5 years if all goes well). The cost is high but the benefits will be huge for the Kingdom of God .

If God has blessed you, your church or your foundation with considerable finances and you want to talk about sponsoring one of these new church starts, please contact us. We would be happy to spend time with you and show you around. We ask though that only those who are serious about this venture and have the available resources ask about this. We will not begin a second church plant until the resources are committed.

1 - We're speaking of an effort by the largest denomination in the world, the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2006, the North American Mission Board (an arm of the SBC) decided to make Vancouver a Focus City. This was to be the first Canadian city to receive this honor. When NAMB carried out this program in US cities, the results had been very strong.

Working together with some other SBC churches in Metro Vancouver, NAMB spent years creating and implementing a plan. We were also asked for our input, but our suggestions were dramatically different from that held by the majority. We suggested that we needed to pursue a unique course of action for Vancouver. We predicted that the many small churches that would be started would not be self sustaining quickly enough. However, the leadership decided to go in a traditional direction. In an effort to win many to Christ and plant many new churches in a short time, NAMB poured in massive amounts of money and energy and brought all their expertise.

However, NAMB became discouraged with the results. For all their efforts, very little happened. The “baptisms” didn't add up. The new churches did not grow. And NAMB pulled out as soon as the year was over and put their funds on other places where they felt there would be more fruit. We were saddened because this was an opportunity lost due to a misunderstanding of the uniqueness of this great city.

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