Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – A Canadian Case Study in Diaspora Missiology

By Charlene de Haan
April 2009

(Editor’s note: In our March 2009 issue of Lausanne World Pulse, we discussed Migration, Diaspora, and Displaced People. This is a continuation of what is going in on this field of study.)

Throughout human history people have been on the move, but recent significant increase in scale and scope of global dispersion suggests the Church should take notice. Enoch Wan¹ reports that about three percent of the world’s population lives in countries in which they were not born. Seven of the world’s wealthiest countries host about thirty-three percent of the earth’s migrant population. Living in a new culture, the new diaspora are more open to the gospel than at any other time.

Wan reflects theologically on patterns of diaspora throughout the Bible: “There is the fathering of the chosen people in the OT (Exodus 19:4-6, Isaiah 49:5-33) and the scattering of Christians in the NT (Acts 8, 1 Peter 1:1-2).”

With escalating Canadian diversity, the Church comes face-to-face with the challenge of “missions on our doorstep.”

Diaspora movement is a global phenomenon; yet, diaspora missiology needs to begin at the local level. With escalating Canadian diversity, the Church comes face-to-face with the challenge of “missions on our doorstep.” The following case study in Canada is a superb example of grassroots diaspora missiology. It illustrates the distinctive challenge of a diaspora missiological approach to outreach, evangelism, and church planting in contrast to traditional missiology.

Canada’s Large New Immigrant Neighbourhoods
Statistics in Canada predict that visible minorities, mainly South Asian and Chinese, will be majority populations in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal by 2017. This is already true in one community² in a little-known neighbourhood where thirty-five apartment buildings house thirty thousand people—ninety percent of them Asian. A small group of Christians intentionally moved into the neighbourhood in order to share the love of Christ with this strategic diaspora community.

According to the 2006 census, more than half the population settling within these few blocks arrived in Canada in the past five years. Eighty percent are visible minorities, many from countries where it is illegal to convert to another faith. South Asians, many of whom speak Urdu, Dari, Punjabi, and Pashto, make up sixty-six percent of the population. While this high diaspora concentration is impressive, the community is mainly famous for its public school where almost two thousand students (kindergarten to grade five) represent forty-seven countries of origin, and ninety-three percent do not claim English as their first language.