Where We Are Now.
Before talking about where we are now, I’d like to touch a bit upon where we’ve come from by going back to 2004. That was the year I launched the The London Freedom Church. A large part of my planning was reading Canadian census data, local census data, reading reports and studies by Canadian sociologists and relevant research by the Angus Reid Institute.
Back then, Canada still felt like a nation shaped by Christianity. According to the 2001 census data, about 77% of Canadians identified as Christian. Faith—even if held loosely—was still the backdrop of our culture. Sunday mornings carried a rhythm: the streets were quieter, families dressed up, and many still went to church. It felt like the air we breathed.
But when I retired in 2021, the story had changed. The Christian culture shape shifted. The 2021 census data showed that for the first time in Canadian history, fewer than half identified as Christian (just 53%). Nearly one in three Canadians now claimed “no religion.” Those weren’t just numbers to me. They were faces—neighbours, coworkers, friends, even family members. They were people I had invested my life into, shared meals with, and longed to see encounter God.
The shift has been dramatic. Now Sundays no longer carry a sacred weight in our culture. Church attendance is an option, not an expectation. The public square no longer assumes a shared Christian worldview. We are living in what many now call post-Christian Canada. Christianity hasn’t disappeared—but it no longer sits at the cultural centre.
The Saturday Experiment.
From the very beginning, The London Freedom Church was a kind of experiment, a Christian community for Millennials with little to no church culture experience. I was intentional about not shuffling the deck by attracting people from other church communities. We didn’t gather on Sunday mornings like everyone else. Instead, we met on Saturday evenings—a deliberate alternative. It was our way of saying, we’re not trying to recreate what people already expect.
Those gatherings had their own flavour. Sometimes messy, sometimes beautiful, but always real. Even our community service events—whether helping out in neighbourhood projects or serving meals—were scheduled on Saturdays, usually evenings. It wasn’t about convenience. It was about signalling that faith could breathe outside the old structures.
Looking back now, I realize those choices were more than scheduling quirks. They were small acts of swimming against a cultural current that was already shifting away from Sunday Christianity.
Two Kinds Of People Stepping Away.
Over time, I noticed two kinds of people moving beyond traditional church life.
The dechurched: people who once belonged but left—sometimes burned, sometimes just quietly drifting away.
The unchurched: people with little or no church background who saw no reason to start.
Both groups often told me the same thing in different words: “I’m open to understanding and experiencing God better, but I’m not sure church as I’ve known it, is where I’ll find Him.”
As a pastor, that reality hit hard because, I understood them. Spiritual seekers asking questions but not from traditional church communities. Instead, “create-your-own” from a variety of spiritual selections, a personalized philosophy.
Why The Institution Struggles.
The institutional church has deep roots. That’s both its strength and its struggle. Those roots keep it steady, but they can also make it slow to adapt. I watched as many leaders felt caught between two worlds: the familiar structures they knew how to navigate, and the uncharted terrain of a culture where those structures didn’t fit anymore.
And so the gap widened. Not because leaders didn’t care, but for many, because stepping into something untested felt too risky.
Some churches will continue faithfully within their walls. I thank God for that, their doors will remain open to others. In fact there’s been a quiet renewal in the UK where young adults are making their way into conventional churches, some Catholic and some Pentecostal church communities. No they aren’t walking through the doors straightaway. Their journeys begin in digital spaces in mostly local grassroot places.
If we want to engage the spiritual hunger rising outside those walls, it will take fresh imagination and a willingness to walk paths we’ve never walked before.
Hope On The Margins.
And here’s the part that keeps me from being all doom and gloom: I see slivers of hope breaking through. Quietly, sometimes unnoticed, people are experimenting with new ways of being the people of God. Small, intentional gatherings. Spaces less defined by programs and more by presence.
In many ways, I feel like I’m picking up a thread I had to put down when The London Freedom Church ended. I admit the weight of hindsight, the lessons of failure, and the sobering clarity of our cultural moment have shaped me differently.
Since retiring as Larry the Minister Guy and Larry the Custodian Guy, I’ve been watching the Canadian cultural scene. I’m a bit surprised by how many maintain the illusion of Christian cultural power where I see a dramatically diminishing cultural influence. That’s not a bad thing. Maybe this is the gift of being on the margins. We no longer have the illusion of cultural power. But what we do have is the chance to rediscover what it means to be God’s people in the rough—bearing witness not through attraction or polish, but through authenticity, presence, and love.
Honestly, that feels closer to what Jesus had in mind all along.