EMQ » April–June 2019 » Volume 55 Issue 2
By Narry F. Santos
The global phenomenon of diaspora[1]—the movements of people or their dispersion from their homeland—has triggered both diaspora mission and reverse mission in unprecedented ways. This article seeks to share three diaspora dynamics for doing reverse mission, in light of the diverse and changing context of multicultural Canada.
My Reverse Mission Story
Before discussing these diaspora dynamics, allow me to share with you my own story on reverse mission (i.e., the kind of mission involving missionaries and pastors from former mission fields who are now ministering in Europe and North America). I originally came from Manila, Philippines. My home church, Greenhills Christian Fellowship (GCF), was started by an American Baptist missionary forty years ago. After growing the church to more than a thousand in fifteen years, this missionary passed the baton to a Filipino pastor, who previously served for fifteen years in the United States and Canada as church planter, pastor, and Bible college professor.
This Filipino pastor’s philosophy of mission focused on intentional church planting. In 1997, he asked me to start the first GCF satellite (our term for a church plant) south of Manila. After serving for eighteen years, he left a legacy of twenty-three GCF satellites in the Philippines. Twelve years ago, GCF sent my family and me to do church planting in Canada.
From this journey of reverse mission and of seeking to fulfill our church-planting mandate, I present my reflections on what I consider as key dynamics on diaspora mission. First, we need to discover the value of diaspora mission. Second, we need to discern diaspora mission engagement through collaborative partnership. Third, we need to determine more sustainable diaspora multiplication and mission engagement for the next generation through further collaboration.
Discovering the Value of Diaspora Mission
As a mission field, the Philippines has been a recipient of global mission for several centuries. Specifically, GCF benefitted from the missionary and pastoral work of a North American mission agency. It’s now time for us to pay that blessing forward through reverse mission—for us to help others after being helped by them. One of the best ways I have discovered to do reverse mission in North America—particularly in Canada—is to engage in diaspora mission.
The Lausanne Diasporas Leadership Team of the Lausanne Movement adopted a practical diaspora mission framework, which was presented at the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa, as a booklet entitled Scattered to Gather: Embracing the Global Trend of Diaspora. This diaspora mission framework is composed of three segments; namely: (1) mission to the diaspora (i.e., mission by the host churches to reach the diaspora); (2) mission through the diaspora (i.e., mission by the diaspora to reach their own diaspora group); and (3) mission beyond the diaspora (i.e., mission by the diaspora cross-culturally and inter-culturally, to reach the host country and other ethnic groups in their context).
To engage in diaspora mission, I needed to understand the diaspora landscape in Canada. According to the 2016 Census of Population from Statistics Canada,[2] there are 35,151,728 people reported living in Canada. From 2011 to 2016, the population increased by 1.7 million (or by 5%). Two-thirds of the growth was the result of migratory increase.
Three population projections for Canada from 2011 to 2036:
- In 2036, between 55.7% and 57.9% of Canada’s immigrant population could have been born in Asia.
- In 2036, nearly one in five people could be of second generation (i.e., non-immigrants with at least one parent born abroad).
- Together, in 2036 immigrants and second-generation people could represent nearly one person in two (between 44.2% and 49.7%).
Mission is now at our doorstep through diaspora mission.
In addition, there are three figures in the 2016 Census of Population from Statistics Canada that are worth noting:
- The visible minority population was 22.3%.
- Out of that visible minority population, 48% were from Asia.
- The country with the biggest immigrant addition by 2016 was the Philippines (188,805). According to the 2011 National Household Survey,[3] there were 662,600 people of Filipino descent living in Canada. The total number of Filipinos in Canada (as of 2016) was 851,405.
In other words, in 2016 the Filipinos formed the third largest Asian group in the country (next to Indian and Chinese Canadian communities). Filipinos also formed the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group in Canada. Why do I say this? Again, to highlight the point that mission is now at our doorstep through the diaspora.
For a first-generation Filipino church to significantly engage the diaspora in Canada, I realized this valuable lesson: we cannot plant churches in Canada according to the way we planted churches in the Philippines. I learned this lesson the hard way. Right after a friend picked up my family and me at the Toronto airport in April 2007, he told me directly, “You cannot plant a Filipino church in Toronto.” I asked why. He told me that it does not make sense to plant a Filipino church in one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Because of this realization, our church plant leaders went through a discernment process, asking God and ourselves this question: “What kind of church must we be in Toronto?”
This discernment process led us to our 3M church ethos: (1) learning how to be missional (i.e., adding value to our community through meaningful relationships and welcoming hospitality); (2) learning how to be multicultural (i.e., reaching beyond the Filipinos and seeking to engage the other groups that God brings in our community); and (3) learning how to be metropolitan (i.e., going where the diasporas were flocking—gateway cities and urban centers). Such a discovery steered us to the second dynamic in diaspora mission: discerning diaspora mission engagement through collaboration and partnership.
Discerning Diaspora Mission Engagement through Collaborative Partnership
After ascertaining our church-planting ethos, we learned another hard lesson: we cannot do God’s mission mandate by ourselves. We needed others to come alongside GCF to fulfill God’s bigger kingdom mandate. So we had to learn how to seek the help of like-minded groups in Canada.
God guided us in this new and uncharted journey. He created in us a desire to be part of a bigger family of churches, so we joined the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec (CBOQ) in the east, and the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada in the west. To help us to become missional and multicultural, we connected with the Tyndale Intercultural Ministries (TIM) Centre, which provided us with training and coaching. In fact, CBOQ provided three years of financial support for twenty-five GCF leaders to go through the TIM Centre certificate/diploma program on Missional and Multicultural Ministry and Church Leadership.
Through this new form of mission engagement, we saw the value of intentional collaborative partnership of the 3As: Assembly (local church); Agency (denomination); Academy (seminary). What an encouraging sample of mission collaboration.
As we went through the training, I sensed that this missional and multicultural journey would be both hard and long. What encouraged us to continue was the consistent coaching that our church leadership received along the way. What was even more encouraging is that more than four hundred students from different ethnic backgrounds in Canada have taken these courses since we started this leadership program ten years ago.
We have seen that the first dynamic for doing reverse mission in Canada is discovering the valuable contribution of diaspora mission. The second is discerning diaspora mission engagement through collaboration and partnership. Let us now go to the third dynamic: determining how to sustain diaspora multiplication and mission engagement for the next generation through more collaboration.
Determining Sustainable Multiplication and Mission Engagement for the Next Generation
For sustainability in our church-planting mandate, we challenged our church leaders to use the Acts 1:8 principle in planting churches in our Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. For example, GCF Toronto (which is the “Jerusalem” church) is to give birth to GCF Peel (its “Judea and Samaria” church), and GCF Vancouver (its “ends of the earth” church). Then GCF Peel (its own “Jerusalem” church) is to give birth to GCF York (its own “Judea and Samaria” church) and GCF Winnipeg (its own “ends of the earth” church). In the first four years after my family and I arrived in Canada, we saw God raise six new GCF satellites (GCF Toronto; GCF Peel; GCF Vancouver; GCF Calgary; GCF York; and GCF Winnipeg).
Our desire is to be a multiplying church, which refers to churches that reproduce in deep (i.e., producing at least three generations of churches), wide (i.e., starting from our own “Jerusalem” to our “Judea and Samaria” and “ends of the earth churches), and long ways (i.e., producing at least three generations of successive leaders). This heritage of church reproduction started from GCF Philippines, which now has twenty-three churches. So far, there are a total of thirty GCF churches in the Philippines and Canada.
After seven years of reverse mission in Canada, in 2014 my wife and I sensed God’s call for us to return to the Philippines to do church planting with Saddleback Church, south of Manila. We returned to our homeland, planting and pastoring the church for three years then sensed from God that our role to lay the Saddleback church-plant foundation had been completed. It was time to explore what God had in store for us next.
Upon visiting Toronto in October 2016, the GCF Canada leaders informed me of their Vision 2024: Trusting God for them to plant seven new churches in Canada for the next seven years. I was encouraged to hear of their passion to do more church planting.
But what blessed my heart even more was their desire to have a millennial summit in 2018, in order to discern how the Moses generation could pass the baton to their Joshua generation (of one-point-five and second-generation leaders). The intent of this summit, along with the succeeding ones, was to discern how the now and next generation leaders could work together in planting the next seven satellites in new and fresh ways. Those two visionary moves (i.e., the new vision of planting new churches and the value of preparing the next-generation leaders) sealed the deal for us to return to Toronto in 2017 and to help toward the fulfillment of this new God-sized vision.
God guided us again in this new and uncharted journey. We hoped to minister to the millennial leaders from the six satellites (plus the two new satellites in their infancy stage), along with the current church leaders through their leadership summit. God reconnected me with CBOQ and enabled us to avail of their research, resources, and insights of their Next Generation Ministries at the millennial summit. I was also able to renew my partnership with the TIM Centre and was introduced by the TIM Centre to the tribe of Issachar (a group of English Congregation Pastors of Chinese Churches in Toronto), who are also wrestling with second-generation ministry issues. This group of one-point-five-generation Chinese pastors shared with us the lessons that they have learned, and made their retreat venue available for us to use for free. These tribe of Issachar pastors facilitated the workshops and the director of the CBOQ Next Generation Ministries gave the plenary talks. How encouraging it was to see another round of collaboration with CBOQ and the TIM Centre, along with a new like-minded partner in effective intergenerational faith transmission.
We held the GCF Canada Millennial and Leadership Summit in Ontario on September 14–15, 2018 with forty people attending. We also had the opportunity to take this summit to Vancouver on October 26–27 for the leaders and millennials of GCF Vancouver who were not able to make it to the national summit the previous month.
Conclusion
These are the key lessons that we have learned regarding the diaspora mission dynamics for doing reverse mission in Canada. We know that we have a lot more lessons to learn, especially in navigating the tensions and transitions of first-generation and second-generation immigrant church-planting leadership, and of engaging the upcoming and unchartered reverse mission realities. May we discover how we can intentionally collaborate better as partners in this diaspora mission journey in Canada.
Narry F. Santos is Assistant Professor of Christian Ministry and Intercultural Leadership at Tyndale Seminary, Vice President of the Evangelical Missiological Society Canada, part-time Senior Pastor at Greenhills Christian Fellowship (GCF) Peel and GCF York, and Church Planting Catalyst with the Canadian Baptist National Convention. Santos holds doctorates in New Testament and Philippine Studies, has written and co-edited several books, and contributed in academic journals.
[1] The term diaspora is originally used for the Jewish dispersion (i.e., the scattering of Jews outside Palestine). It is now applied to the scattering of people from their homeland.
[2] “2016 Census of Population,” Statistics Canada, last updated May 30, 2018, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm.
[3] “NHS Profile, 2011,” Statistics Canada, last updated May 24, 2108, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm
