Our New Realty

The current reality within the Fellowship is that the Quebec region is a mature region in the least-reached mission field in North America.

After six decades of ministry in Quebec, there are 88 French-speaking local churches and about 9000 believers. This is good news.

The stark reality is that there are another six million francophones living in Quebec, and one million living elsewhere in Canada, who are largely unreached with the Gospel. Only 0.8% of francophones identify as evangelical Christians. Missiologists indicate that until the number of evangelical Christians within a people group reaches the 2-3% threshold, a church-planting movement will struggle to maintain momentum and to accomplish the entire mission task on their own.

However, the region is mature in the sense that it is led by spiritually mature leaders. God has raised up some extraordinary and visionary leaders to advance the cause for Christ in Quebec. Since 1971, the AÉBÉQ region has been shepherding its growing ministry. It is time to give the region full responsibility for the planting of future churches. And so, after 56 years the French Mission drew to a close on December 31, 2014 after a five-year transition process and after ensuring that each of its missionaries had completed their individual transition plans.

Our New Funding Model

All future francophone ministry in the Fellowship will move from missionary support to strategic partnerships with new francophone church plants.

Fellowship churches and individual donors from across Canada are now encouraged to engage in collaborative relationships with francophone church plants through direct and strategic partnerships that could potentially involve the sharing of resources, work teams, and mutual prayer support.

These strategic partnerships will be brokered by Fellowship National and managed by the Church Planting Director in the region where the francophone church plant is located.

When the supporting Fellowship church and the francophone church plant are located in the same region, the financial support for the church plant will flow directly through the region. However, when the Fellowship church and the francophone church plant are not located in the same region, the financial support will flow through Fellowship National.

Our immediate objective is clear: to inspire and encourage our English-speaking churches and our faithful team of individual donors to continue to engage in partnering with and funding francophone church plants so that an even greater harvest of souls will be gathered in the years ahead! Our ultimate objective is to reach a point in Quebec, and the other French-speaking regions of Canada, where at least 2% of the population self-identify as evangelical, and the AÉBÉQ region “has sufficient strength to sustain and ensure the continuous multiplication of churches.”