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Category: Leadership

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The Synergy of Faith Transmission: Connecting Home and Parish

Drawing on recent Canadian research, this blog explores the vital synergy of religious transmission between parents and congregations. By shifting from rigid instruction to a model of “gracious choice” and active participation, churches can provide the necessary scaffolding for the next generation to “believe, behave, and belong.”
Concerns of American annexation are not new to the Can-Am dynamic. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick seemed fated to become the 14th colony in the early days of the Revolutionary War (1776-1783). After Britain defeated France in the mid-1700s, the Acadian (French) inhabitants of those lands were deemed too French to occupy such valuable real estate. After the expulsion of the Acadians, the Crown invited interested colonists from the south to populate these regions with more loyal subjects.1 This was the birth of the Nova Scotia New Englanders—a group of people named for their new colonial location and their place of origin. When, just twenty years later, the members of the 13 colonies declared their independence from the British Crown, it seemed a natural fit for these former New Englanders to join the cause.

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Before the 51st State, there was the 14th Colony

Canada and America appear to be in a deteriorating relationship. When Donald Trump expressed an interest in making Canada America’s “51st State” near the end of 2024, an overwhelming amount of Canadians brought their “elbows up” in protest. The hockey term—meaning a player is on the ice to defend and bring physical violence to members of the opposing team—communicated a rejection of such a possibility in a very Canadian way.

Concerns of American annexation are not new to the Can-Am dynamic. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick seemed fated to become the 14th colony in the early days of the Revolutionary War (1776-1783). After Britain defeated France in the mid-1700s, the Acadian (French) inhabitants of those lands were deemed too French to occupy such valuable real estate. After the expulsion of the Acadians, the Crown invited interested colonists from the south to populate these regions with more loyal subjects.1 This was the birth of the Nova Scotia New Englanders—a group of people named for their new colonial location and their place of origin. When, just twenty years later, the members of the 13 colonies declared their independence from the British Crown, it seemed a natural fit for these former New Englanders to join the cause.

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Collect Their Stories: What Women in PAOC Leadership Are Teaching Us

This research examines the lived experiences of credentialed women leaders in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, revealing a persistent gap between the denomination’s egalitarian theology and its leadership realities. Through interviews with 24 women, three key social processes—affirmation, making space, and mentoring—emerged as critical factors shaping women’s ministry journeys. The study proposes the Lived Experience Cycle, a framework that shows how women navigate institutional challenges while sustaining their calling and resilience in ministry.

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The Varied Landscape of Women’s Church Experiences

This is a recording from the fourth of four webinars in our Flourishing Forward webinar series. This webinar contains information about Lindsay Callaway’s recently released study, Women in the Canadian Evangelical Church. Drawing on findings from Women in the Canadian Evangelical Church, this presentation explores how women understand and participate in local church life. The findings reveal complex, generational, cultural, and theological dynamics, offering a nuanced picture of women’s church experiences as multifaceted, dynamic, and in flux.

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What Helps Canadian Catholics Grow Spiritually in the Parish: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study used an online survey from the Flourishing Congregations Institute to investigate how Canadian Catholics grow spiritually within their parishes. Using an exploratory factor analysis, we explored the interrelationships among a set of spiritual growth variables. A three-component solution resulted in the Environmental Context of the Community Scale, the Pathway for Spiritual Growth Scale, and the Connecting in Community Scale. Next, we performed a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient to assess the relationship between the items in each scale for spiritual growth. The findings indicated strong, positive correlations for both the Environmental Context of the Community and Pathway for Spiritual Growth Scales, while the Connecting in Community Scale showed moderate correlations. Cluster analysis helped to categorize participants into three groups: Flourishing, Maturing, and Developing Spiritual Growth Catholics. The analysis also identified unique characteristics for each group, based on variables such as age, gender, marital status, income, parish tenure, and Mass attendance.

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Engaged Laity: A Case Study of a Certificate in Catholic Leadership

Are you a leader who is Catholic or a Catholic leader? This is one of the fundamental questions for participants in the Certificate in Catholic Leadership program at St. Jerome’s University. This non-credit program runs on an employer sponsorship model; organizations such as school boards, parishes, and non-profits send a range of participants for the year long experiential program that includes lectures and other foundational teachings, a local or international service learning experience, a cohort retreat, and a capstone project that brings something back to their home organization. Participants are supported both by liaisons at their organization and assigned mentors. The program was designed to meet the needs articulated by church and school leadership who identified a need to help form leaders and engaged laity. In particular, a gap was identified for people who need more than a workshop or in-service training but want something less than a Masters degree– either because they are in the season of family life that might make a traditional program too much of a commitment or because they are already (multiply) credentialed and simply want something more focused.

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Sharing spaces, sharing visions: The ethics and politics of making Quebec’s churches public

Across Canada, historic churches are closing their doors. In Quebec, the pace is accelerating as local dioceses struggle to reallocate funds for repair and maintenance amid the province’s aggressive funding cuts to religious heritage preservation. Once-sacred spaces are becoming luxury condos, gyms, and even nightclubs. These privatized, for-profit transformations often spark public grief over the loss of a collective inheritance built through generations of tithing and volunteerism.

This church property crisis crystallizes broader political tensions around secularization into concrete decisions about authority, access, and responsibility: Who should profit from the sale of church buildings: religious institutions, private developers, or local communities? Should church properties keep historic tax privileges? Can these buildings ever truly become inclusive spaces if they remain privately-owned religious properties?

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Why Egalitarian Isn’t Good Enough: Rethinking Church Staff Culture

Policy shifts from complementarian to egalitarian theology have opened the door for women to serve as pastors, yet many still struggle to fully flourish within church staff cultures. This article draws on research with female leaders in Western Canada who serve in egalitarian churches, revealing that structural permission alone is insufficient for cultivating healthy, equitable ministry environments. Women often encounter “locker room” cultures, gender stereotyping, double standards, and exclusion from informal male networks that perpetuate barriers to influence and belonging. Many respond by downplaying their gender, leaning into narrowly defined feminine traits, or paying personal costs that ultimately affect the congregations they serve.
Three key requirements emerged from this study: churches must stop practices that restrict women’s access to mentorship, opportunity, and respect ; they must start intentionally supporting women through equitable policies, visible career pathways, and leadership advocacy; and they must acknowledge outliers, women who succeed despite unhealthy environments, rather than assuming their success signals systemic health.
Ultimately, flourishing for women in pastoral leadership requires more than egalitarian policy. It demands environments are built on mutual respect, collaborative leadership, and a deep commitment to equity in voice, value, and opportunity. In these spaces, leadership is shaped not by charisma or hierarchy, but by humility, team building, and the shared pursuit of God’s mission. When women and men lead together with trust and authenticity, the whole church flourishes.

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Defending White Jesus

Explore the relationship between Christianity and culture in this thought-provoking video with James Tyler Robertson, Associate Professor of Christian History at Tyndale University. In “Defending White Jesus,” Robertson unpacks the historical, cultural, and theological implications of portraying Jesus as white—a depiction that has shaped Western Christianity for centuries.

Whether you’re a theology student, a curious observer, or someone wrestling with the intersection of culture and Christianity, this video offers a nuanced look at how images of the divine reflect—and often reinforce—human narratives, sometimes in divisive and problematic ways.
Whether you’re a theology student, a curious observer, or someone wrestling with the intersection of culture and Christianity, this video offers a nuanced look at how images of the divine reflect—and often reinforce—human narratives.

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