How York Region Churches Are Building a Shared Mission
Today’s post is written by Brian Kannel, pastor at York Alliance Church.
We've been blessed to see strong connections develop in the eight C&MA churches in the York Region over the past five years. It mostly started with pastors meeting for monthly lunches, praying for one another, and supporting one another with specific needs.
However, these connections have grown dramatically stronger over the past two years, initially through a Regional Prayer Gathering in 2023 that drew key leaders from across our churches. Then months later, an "Essentials One Day" training generated excitement around being intentional in the area of transformation.
After that Saturday training, there was consensus across six of our churches to commit to a year-long design lab that would lead us towards evaluating the effectiveness of our churches in the area of spiritual formation and developing intentional strategies to see people become more like Jesus.
A 12-Month Journey
What followed was an intensive 12-month cohort that included two overnight retreats and eight monthly evening work sessions. During these times, we grew together both through connecting within our leadership teams, as well as starting to develop a common language around discipleship and formation within our region. As we told stories, shared frustrations, and developed strategies, our connection grew deeper, and we found ourselves moving forward in very similar directions.
“The mandate to make a disciple was clear to me, but how to achieve that was not,” explains Jim Herbert, pastor at Glenview Alliance Church. “That was a personal struggle; adding the challenge of leading an entire congregation through the same process made it even more complex! This design lab has helped answer these questions.”
With David Dixon and I as facilitators, we progressed through four stages so that each church would have a clear, customized plan for making disciples by the end of the lab.
We essentially walked through these four questions:
What does a mature disciple look like, and how do we define it?
How do people genuinely change and grow spiritually?
What specific pathways can help people become disciples?
How can we shift our entire church culture towards disciple-making?
By June 2025, when each church presented a strategy for moving forward in formation, we were able to pray over one another in new and powerful ways. At this point, we didn't just know one another as pastors; we truly knew one another's churches.
“It made me personally realize that I am not an island alone, and some of the other pastors in the region are dealing with the same thing,” reflects Lee Manuel, pastor of Cassels Community Church. “I am convinced that the energy and time spent working together is well worth the reward.”
Moving Forward
The design lab had officially ended, but everyone recognized we were just getting started in terms of our relationship and partnership between our churches.
The upcoming Stewartstown Alliance Church plant, launching in September, exemplifies this shift—while officially part of the York Alliance Family of Churches, it's being supported by the entire region as a shared mission in a very real way. Today our conversations now center on new ways to pray together, partner together, support one another, and expand the Kingdom of Jesus in the York Region.
Our churches moved from a sense of community between Alliance workers to a shared sense of mission between churches. The C&MA in York feels less like a loosely related group of church leaders united by shared denominational ties and far more like a regional movement of partner churches seeking to impact our region for Jesus!