“This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men…” I Timothy 2:4,5
The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada was for most of its life part of the US Alliance. We met as a subgroup of the whole and in 1977 decided to double the number of congregations in Canada by 1987 – a crazy kind of goal! Autonomous discussions were also underway and in 1981 we became independent of the US Alliance with Rev. Mel Sylvester elected as our first president. At that time we had 251 churches across the country.
Wendell Grout was pastor of First Alliance in Calgary and he said: “Nice, comfortable congregations that go nowhere are not the Alliance tradition.” And so we set out to fulfill this Great Commission goal. In 1971 there were 15,772 people in Canadian Alliance churches and by 1984 there were 41,791. New churches were added – the Midwest district added 22 to total 56 and the Alberta district went from 56 churches to 89. New districts were added – our BC district in 1979 and the Quebec district in 1983.
In the days before we ever thought about multiple services, many large seat sanctuaries were built, including our own Chilliwack Alliance which was built to seat 1000 when the Chilliwack population was 41,000 – one seat for every 40 people! In 1982 an economic downturn put our denomination to the wall to pay for all of these buildings. Our own church was in jeopardy, and my father Harald Throness led us successfully through that time. I pastored through that time – part of it at our Surrey church, which was in a crushing debt time – in the end I helped pay for that debt by my meagre salary! Leadership challenges – oh yes, lots of growing pains but by God’s grace and our determination we achieved that audacious goal by 1987.
As the world came to our door, we started Chinese churches in the early 60’s which have grown all across Canada, as well as so many Vietnamese churches after 1975. In Canada we now have 440 churches with about 87,000 people attending on a Sunday out of a total number of members and adherents of 160,000. Globally the Alliance is at 6.3 million in 25,000 churches in 88 countries speaking 180 languages.
At our last General Assembly our denomination voted again to double our reach by 2035 – certainly a noble goal but is it doable? Canadian demographics are very different than in the 80’s with fewer children being born, Christianity being officially sidelined – even frowned upon, and influx of other religions including ‘no religion.’ Our Alliance school has badly dropped the ball in providing pastoral leadership. My own son Chris has recently been joined to the National Office to lead the charge for 3000 pastoral leaders by 2035 (in part to address the retiring Baby Boomer leaders).
Can it be done? Only if each Alliance member personalizes the verses at the header of this piece and if they take Wendell Grout’s quote to heart (if I may): “Nice comfortable Christians that go nowhere are not the Alliance tradition.”
Pastor Leon Throness
Don’t forget our info evening on September 21 at 7pm at the church as I have us think about the trip to Turkey and Greece next May to walk the steps of Paul and see the seven churches of the Revelation. This is an opportunity – will you take that opportunity?
