Religion on the rock gets harder

Darryl Prosper
with Doug Koop

Citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador are a hardy people, well accustomed to surviving and even thriving in adversity. And it hasn’t been getting easier. Even as the province goes to great lengths to keep its young people close to home, religious groups are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing social and economic environment.

The 2001 census showed a 10 per cent decline in affiliation with most Christian denominations over a single decade. And one of the groups, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland and Labrador (PAON/L) is confronting a serious set of challenges with firm resolve.

The Pentecostal movement has only been around for about 100 years, a short season in the annals of Christendom. It established a solid foothold in Newfoundland in 1925 when the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland and Labrador (PAON/L) was formally incorporated.

And it prospered, rising to a peak of 146 churches in 1995 with a total membership of 30,682. That year also saw 424 people holding ministerial credentials with the denomination. But 10 years later those numbers have dropped significantly to 26,563 members, 124 churches and 419 credential holders; this in a population of just over 500,000.

While many reasons contribute to the decline, the greatest of these is demographic. Especially since the shutdown of the ground fishery in 1992, a constant flow of young families have been streaming from the province to find work elsewhere in Canada. The out-migration is hitting rural Newfoundland especially hard. And that’s exactly where most of the Pentecostal churches are situated.

Because fiscal responsibility also matters, leaders have had to make difficult decisions to either close down or amalgamate some smaller rural assemblies. Such moves, though necessary, are not always welcome or well understood.

Unfavourable demographics and declining income are more than enough to rock a small denomination with a big mandate for missions and evangelism to fulfill. But it gets worse. Even as the fish- eries were closing and the young people migrating away, the provincial govern- ment moved from a denominational to a public day school system.

In the process, Pentecostals lost the right to continue operating their own school board, an arm of the work long considered an integral part of the denomination’s mission to youth.

Education for ministry has also taken a hit, though for different reasons. Last year the PAON/L severed its longstanding relationship with Master’s College and Seminary of Toronto (formerly Eastern Pentecostal Bible College of Peterborough) as its official ministerial training facility.

Many in the constituency were convinced that the Ontario school was no longer providing relevant training for Pentecostal ministry within the Newfoundland context. The move was also prompted by a bevy of fiscal and governance concerns troubling Master’s.

These matters were on the minds of delegates who came to a special session on June 2, 2007. They discussed a report tendered by a committee set up last year for the purpose of finding a viable alternative for the training needs of the Assemblies.

The report recommended entering into a partnership arrangement with Tyndale University College (also in Toronto). This arrangement would see the inception of a Center for Pentecostal Studies at the undergraduate level and the development of a program of training that would address the stated needs of the Fellowship.

After appropriate discussion for an item of this importance, delegates decided to conduct a secret vote by mail-in ballot to give the churches more time to discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, the social and cultural context for ministry in Newfoundland and Labrador is still undergoing fast-paced changes and Pentecostals are striving diligently to adjust. According to PAON/L General Superintendent, Paul H. Foster, the existing strategic plan is being revisited this month in order to fine-tune it to help the Assemblies meet this rapidly changing ministry environment.

Can this historically conservative fellowship keep pace and prosper in the face of these 21st century challenges to Pentecostal effectiveness? Well, they are a hardy people.