Kingdom Matters
Filmmaker Focuses on Evolving Canadian Churches
By Karen Stiller

Joe Manafo is a man on a mission and lugging a camera across Canada. Based in Sarnia, Ont., Manafo is lead pastor of a church plant called The Story. His experience planting a church with a website that describes “life as a spiritual journey … a road trip of sorts” has led him on his own ongoing road trip, documenting what he views as new church forms evolving across Canada.
 
The end result, Manafo hopes, will be a unique documentary ready for release in the fall of 2008 called One Size Fits All? Exploring New and Evolving Forms of Church in Canada. The question mark in the title is intentional. “With these communities, it is contextual based on their neighbourhood, the leadership and the vision. There is this stream that connects these churches together, but it is a mom and pop shop, a one-off,” explains Manafo. The churches are all doing different things in unique ways that fit the needs and culture of their very distinct locales. 

The idea for the film began when Manafo “called some church planters across the country and realized that God is doing a lot of very cool things across Canada. We grabbed our camera and our gear and hopscotched across the country and gathered these stories on what God is doing.” Manafo describes the churches filmed so far in his independent production as “churches that are doing things, not necessarily in earth-shattering ways but grabbing from the best of Christian traditions and slamming it into the present, balancing this ancient stuff with modern. They are churches that are very very contextual.” Manafo and his team have 19 churches on tape so far, ranging from Salvation Army, Pentecostal, Anglican, Vineyard and everything in-between. “We’re trying to capture a broad range,” explains Manafo. “You couldn’t put these churches side by side and say they are the same. It’s not one size fits all.” (For information about Manafo’s film or how your church might fit in it, visit www.onesizefitsall.ca.)