As it is distinctly possible that this blog could see search engine results for people googling terms like “Church Planting”, “Church Plant”, “Canada” and even “Western Canada”, I thought I would put up a link to my finished graduating essay, where I explore issues related to church planting and growth in resort communities, as a distinct class of church planting setting/culture.
Being in close proximity to Whistler, and hearing that in that village of 8000 permanent residents there were only 3 struggling churches (and one of them was a weird hybrid of Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans in the ame building), I wanted to study why that was. What made resort communities so resistant to church planting and growth?
The abstract for the paper is this:
Church planting in the resort communities of Western Canada, with particular respect to the village of Whistler British Columbia and Canmore, Alberta face peculiar challenges. These communities share many characteristics of both typical urban and typical rural communities in their regions, but also share certain characteristics which are common between them. These create a unique planting context that is shared with other communities founded or experiencing growth through the expansion of the local tourism industry. Viewing the reported challenges and successes of local pastors provides some insight into what prospective church planters must prepare to face if they choose to pursue their vocation in such communities.
You can read the whole paper on my other blog, Confessions of a Shiftless Mind. I found the process of writing it to be really useful to my development as a one-day church planter, teaching me much about the realities of church planting, and giving me an opportunity to read a lot of books on church planting.
The paper ran about 40 pages, including title pages, contents, bibliography. I switched the footnotes to endnotes for ease of use online.
Tags: Canmore, church planting, grad essay, research paper, Resort Communities, whistler
