WHY PLANT IN BURLINGTON?

Burlington has a population of over 200,000 and is part of the geographical “Greater Toronto Area” – a vast metropolis with a diverse, multicultural population of approximately six million people.

 Burlington is close to major transportation, to the cities of Hamilton and Toronto, and to the U.S. border. In 2016, over one in four (26%) of Burlington residents were born outside of Canada of non-European descent. Burlington is a largely unchurched city and there are no other Independent Christian Churches established there. 

 Our approach in Burlington is to utilize a bi-vocational and co-vocational model for staffing the church. In this way our leadership is deeply embedded in the local community, utilizing their vocational context for relational discipleship.

The New Church Plant:  Emmaus Church *

Vision:  Emmaus exists to help people become passionate followers of Jesus, one step at a time.

 Core Values Include:

· Disciple-making: Emmaus believes that it is called to catalyze a disciple-making movement through intentional evangelism and by modelling Jesus’ way of relational discipleship. Our goal is to impact the entire Burlington region with the good news of Jesus Christ.

 · Local Expressions and Spaces:  While Emmaus will meet centrally on Sundays for corporate worship and communion, we believe that we are most able to reach a post-modern, post-Christian population through networks of empowered local home churches, micro-churches, dinner churches, and workplace/vocational churches.

 · Clarity:  We believe that the church must present the gospel with simplicity and clarity, making disciples who will also share the gospel with those whom they are in relationship with.

 · Relationship: We believe that the church is much more than a worship service or a “weekend experience.”  The church is people living together in Jesus-transformed spiritual community.

 ·  We believe that people far from God matter to Him and that the church must prioritize reaching out to them. We want to create a disciple-making culture (and movement) by establishing environments where new disciples of Christ can invite their unchurched family, friends and co-workers to a transformational encounter with Jesus Christ.

 * Emmaus Church is a “re-start” project. The church was originally planted in 2014 but then plateaued. Jim Tune began filling the pulpit in 2019, and was called in 2020 to re-launch the church as Lead Pastor.