The need to plant churches in North America has never been greater!

The following statistics confirm the need for more new churches in the USA and Canada. By igniting a church planting movement in North America, we can influence the world for Christ in the years to come.

• In America there are over 200 million people who do not have a personal relationship with Christ! Since only China and India have larger populations than this, the U.S. is the
  3rd largest mission field in the world!
• Nearly 74% of all Americans have no meaningful church relationship!
• One-half of all the churches in America did not add one new member through “conversion” growth during the last year.
• No county in America has a greater percentage of churched people today than a decade ago.
• Evangelical churches have failed to gain an additional 2% of the American population in the past 50 years. In other words, we are not even reaching our own children!
• North America is the ONLY continent where Christianity is not growing!
  

According to Barna Research, of the 350,000 churches in America:

• 80% have reached a plateau or are declining
• 15% are growing because of transfer growth
• 5% are growing because of conversion growth

Canada: A Sobering Reality Check

Approximately 85% of all Canadians have no meaningful church relationship! Churches are closing more rapidly in Canada than in any other country in the Western world! According to Outreach Canada demographic research, only 16% of Canadians attend church regularly. In urban centers like Toronto, only 5% of the population can be categorized as consistent church attenders!

Close to 250,000 new Canadians have immigrated annually during the last decade. The majority are Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist or Confucian. The United Nations called Toronto, “the most ethnically diverse city in the world.” The mission field is here!

It takes a movement ...

In 1984, E91 embraced a vision to plant twenty new churches in twenty years. With God’s help that seemingly enormous task was both accomplished and surpassed! By the end of 2004, thirty new churches had been started and many thousands of unchurched souls have been led to Christ!

As the new millennium approached, we recognized the potential for much greater kingdom impact through church multiplication. E91 adopted a new strategy to encourage a church planting movement. Each church-planting team is asked to recruit an appropriately-gifted staff member who will leave to plant the next church within three years, and every new church will be asked to commit to plant a daughter church at least every three years.

We believe that partnerships with other churches and evangelistic associations will be essential for effective church planting for the future. Synergistic partnerships provide great resources and wisdom for the task. We will especially seek partnerships with other large churches that we trust will continue to make a lasting contribution to the Kingdom through their own church planting efforts.

To facilitate church multiplication, we must also plant Regional Impact Churches. These churches will serve as strategic training and church planting centers. From the moment of birth, these Regional Impact Churches will have a staff member who will serve as a minister of church planting, helping each new church plant in that region to plant more churches.

Our vision is to ignite a church planting movement that will spread throughout these regions, our nation, and ultimately around the world. God has led us to dream and plan for 65 churches over the next ten years, and as those churches reproduce themselves, as many as twice that number could be planted by 2010! Impossible? Not for God; he “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20, NIV).