A church plant committed to planting churches.

If you have been around The Compass Church for anytime at all, you will know that we are a church planting church. As a whole, The Compass Church exists to point people to Jesus by making disciples who Know the Gospel, Live the Gospel and Advance the Gospel. Through the making of disciples, local churches are established. We believe that the establishing of new churches is a natural outflow of committed and commanded disciple making.


How did The Compass Church begin?

The Compass Church began in the summer of 2008 in the living room of the Allen's home. With a heart to see the Gospel go out and disciples made, a group of like-minded people began studying, growing and doing life together. By God's grace, this group grew as disciples making disciples, and we eventually launched The Compass Church publicly in September 2010. That same passion to see disciples made and churches planted continue to make up the DNA of The Compass Church.

As the church grew, our second congregation launched in North Regina in March 2015 led by Pastor Luke and his wife Bailey Etelamaki. Since then we worked to plant a third location in South Regina that has since merged with the North to create what we called the West location of The Compass Church. 


What’s Next? 

At The Compass Church, we want to see people have forward progress of the Gospel in their lives and encourage people to take next steps in their own lives. We also believe the church has next steps to take, and as we've looked back over the many years of The Compass Church, we have seen God do incredible things when we have taken steps of faith.

Throughout the last few years, as Elders, we have sensed that God is calling us to move toward making our current church plant—and future church plants—move toward becoming fully autonomous churches of their own.

Up to this point, each of our locations (also referred to as “campuses”) report back to our central location (which has been The Compass East). The Compass East is where our Elders are located, as well as where all of the finance and creative departments (e.g. video, graphics, web) are located. Up until this point, The Compass East leadership has given oversight to our locations. On paper, we were one organization in many locations. 

Moving forward, our locations (current and future) will become their own entity and organization with Elder Boards from their congregation, as well as taking over responsibility for all finance and creative elements. They will become totally autonomous churches, allowing the local leaders to discern the appropriate vision and direction God is taking that local church.

  • Ever since The Compass Church began in 2008, we have always tried to listen to God and do what He says. The same is true today, and this is what led us to this decision.

    Through much prayer and discernment from both our Pastors and our Elders, we feel this is the best direction. We believe this will ultimately allow more people to be reached, as well as give locations (now and in the future) the freedom to make decisions based off what is best for their local congregations.

  • Our West location (now called “Anchor Church”) has been moving towards autonomy for the last number of months and each new church plant situation will have a slightly different timeline depending on how ready they are to become autonomous.

    Our future church plants will begin with a long-term plan towards autonomy from the beginning to make that movement smoother when the time comes and when the new plant is ready and equipped for that independence.  

  • We do not believe that planting as “one church in many locations” was a mistake, and we have seen incredible fruit from this model. But we also believe there can be different seasons in a church—and this is just a new season.

    No matter what location you attend, we want you to know there are three things that have always been true and will continue to be true:

    1. We have a heart to reach people.

    2. We have a heart to help others in ministry.

    3. We have a heart to reach Regina and beyond with the Good News of salvation through Jesus alone. 

 


Every autonomous location now and into the future will remain committed to sending people to share the Gospel and planting more churches. This new model, however, will allow us to plant many more churches, and it’s the difference between addition and multiplication.

There is a big difference between “one church in many locations” church planting more churches vs. “each independent autonomous” church planting more churches. Allowing each location to multiply themselves (instead of doing it all together) will allow us to reach many more people.

So yes, we still want to plant more churches, however, it will probably look a little different. Instead of starting a “location” and then develop that staff along the way, we want to develop a pastor and then send him on to plant a church of their own: walking with them, equipping them, and moving them towards autonomy from its inception. We feel this is better on many fronts from leadership development, to local church discipleship, to local church responsibility, and overall a more biblical way of planting churches.