canadianchristianity.com email interview with David Harris, editor, The Presbyterian Record.

1. What are the main challenges and issues the Canadian church is facing? How are we doing at dealing with those challenges and issues?

I think the biggest problem mainline churches are facing is coping with closing small, unsustainable churches in rural areas and urban communities with vastly changed demographics i.e. from predominantly Christian to predominantly non-Christian and building new churches / creating new ministries in the country's major urban areas. Until this is done, mainline churches will not have adequate resources to support ministries to spread Good News.

As far as I can tell, this change is taking place far too slowly.

2. What are the bright spots, encouraging trends, new movements in Canadian Christianity? How will the Canadian church and Canadian society change in the future? What future trends and issues will we have to deal with?

I think there is a growing recognition that building community is key to encouraging people to enter into a faith journey. This requires a considerable shift in focus from older pastoral models based on one minister per congregation to more flexible kinds of ministry and larger pastoral staff working in a team.

3. What is the character of the Canadian church? What distinguishing characteristics does it have? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Is this changing?

A strength and weakness of mainline churches is their well-established polities: this can provide for stable employment and ministry strength but it can also be used to stifle innovation. Visionary leadership is key and largely lacking.

4. How is the church doing qualitatively? How committed are church members? Are churches generally optimistic, pessimistic, fearful, expectant, discouraged, energized, complacent, disinterested, etc.?

I think too many are weary and discouraged from trying to sustain unsustainable forms of ministry and getting bogged down in debates that reflect fast-changing social mores.

5. What is the state of the church in Canada numerically, both in terms of the number of church members and the number of Christians? What branches of the church-such as, Catholic, mainline, charismatic, postmodern, evangelical -- are growing and shrinking? In what parts of the country-provinces, urban areas, rural areas -- is the church growing or shrinking? Among what demographics is the church growing or shrinking?

In general, mainline churches are slowly declining, although their numbers arestrong where leadership and vision are strong, particularly in favourable demographic areas generall high Anglo-Saxon percentages in the urban areas. Canadians continue to come off the land and many rural congregations are or will soon be unsustainable.

Roman Catholic numbers are holding, largely due to strong immigration numbers. As the number of Christian immigrants decline, so too will Catholic numbers as the second and third generations become more affluent thus making weekend excursions possible and their confidence grows as citizens outside their ethnic community.

6. What is the attitude of the larger Canadian society to Christianity? Is this changing? In what ways? What impact is secularism having? What is the character of Canadian society generally, how is it changing, and what impact is that having on the church?

I think there is still a significant skepticism verging towards bias against organized religion in general among the ruling liberal intelligentsia. However, I think Canadians are still very interested in spiritual matters. The wrongs committed in the name of organized religion, such as their involvement in residential schools, continues to taint organized Christianity.

7. What is the ethnic makeup of the church in Canada and what impact is immigration having on Canada? What percentage ofimmigrants are already Christian? Are we converting immigrants to Christ? Are other religions gaining adherents? Are we winning our children or losing them? How multicultural is the church, how representative of the Canadian population?

Most churches in demographically mixed areas seem to modestly reflect that demographic and all mainline churches certainly have significant congregations centred on ethnicity Chinese, Korean, Caribbean, etc. Islam is certainly growing as Muslim immigrants continue to make Canada their home. Building bridges with other faith groups is important but often difficult as they tend to have less structure than Christianity or Judaism, which are well established.

8. What are the most important moral issues that the church will be wrestling with in the next few years? Are we still wrestling with issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, or are those battles over? What can and should the church be doing in these areas?

I think poverty and inequality are the biggest moral issues facing Canadian Christians. Domestically, many people still fall through the cracks in society, particularly those with mental health problems. Internationally, Third World countries still face enormous economic hardships that we in the developed world are reluctant to address because it might pinch us.

As the Roman Catholic bishops recently intimated, support for single mothers is more important than a dogmatic anti-abortion stance. Canadian society has no interest in hard-line positions on either abortion or same-sex marriage. Churches that focus on that will remain relatively small numerically or their teachings ignored as in the case of much current Roman Catholic doctrine.