The financials presented here are provided to offer a true and fair view of the financial activities of the whole organization and have been categorized and presented in a manner that we feel will be most helpful and appropriate for our partners and stakeholders.
All these figures are from the 2021-2022 financial year and are backed up by the supplied financial statements.
2021 was an awkward year in the natural, but a glorious year in the Spirit! Lockdown was on and off again in terms of our public meetings. The rules for churches continued to change, and we had to adapt frequently. You may remember that once we were allowed back into our building, we had to register people, which we did outside. We had special rules for entering the building, not socializing inside, then exiting all from the same door. We did what we did to keep you safe and to meet the various government requirements.
Despite lockdown complications, we had favour as a church with both the city of Toronto and the province of Ontario. Knowing our desire to care for the north Etobicoke community (also called North Kipling and Rexdale), we were asked to serve coffee and water at the vaccination clinics. We did this not as a political statement about vaccinations, but instead to respond to a request to help. Because of our connections with Ontario, I had the privilege of consulting with the Minister of Labour about vaccination passports. I successfully argued against any place of faith having to show proof of vaccination to enter their church, synagogue, temple, etc. God used our church to bless our city and province.
With reduced capacity for public meetings, our online presence continued to impact a far larger community than just our attendees. Our Sunday meetings – sometimes limited to 10 people in the building – focused on connecting our church family to the presence of God. Our staff was excellent at capturing "church" with a small team. We had a "Get Prayer Now" initiative at the end of each meeting where you and others could have a person minister to you live online through Zoom. Our prophetic team was booked solid for months, encouraging people to listen to the Lord and do what He said. Our connect group leaders continued to host their groups via Zoom and seek to foster fellowship as they encouraged people to trust God. Our men's and women's online communities grew as new people were added to our church family despite seasons when we could not meet. Despite the challenges we faced, we saw God move in your lives and hearts. Even from a distance, it was clear that God was moving!
Thank you for continuing to be a very generous church family! Your tithes and offerings sustained us to keep our staff employed and functioning to serve you. Also in this report is our year-end financial summary. You will see that we spent slightly more than we came in. A quick overview is that we had no rental income during the lockdown, and our School Of Ministry drastically reduced the number of students. We would have had another year of surplus if either of these were functioning fully. We are a blessed church family as we have no debt and can bless others!
Our nation battled the spirits of anarchy and rebellion in the spirit realm. Trust for our government leader was challenged, and opinions divided people, leading to neighbours not trusting each other. Fear of Covid-19 and lockdown rules was hard to escape. As a leadership team, we sought to focus on our God and His kingdom principles. It would have been easy to veer off course, be political, and give more social commentary. But we felt the Lord reminding us to help each other Encounter God's Transforming Presence! As we pushed into God, He revealed himself to us repeatedly.
Early in 2021, Jonathan and Alice Clarke (our Worship Pastors) let us know that after ten years in Canada, the Holy Spirit asked them to return to England, where they are both from. In December, we had a tearful goodbye for them as we wished them well and blessed them on their new journey as a family. In the summer, while Ben and Sarah Jackson (our Executive Director and Prophetic Pastor) were on vacation, Sandra and I both heard the Lord saying they would return to the UK after 17 years of serving on our team. Transitions are always complex, but we are blessed that Dallas and Hope Wigston stepped up to become our new Worship Pastors, and we are going from glory to glory!
2021 was also the year that Sandra and I announced that we would be transitioning in our roles. We’ve always felt from the Lord that we should step aside from being the Senior Pastors when I hit 65. As we prayed about who our successors should be, the Lord gave me the names of Murray and Ash Smith in a dream. They said yes to moving from Raleigh, North Carolina, and are now living in Toronto as they serve our church as the Associate Senior Pastors. We haven't set a date for this transition, but the plan is at some point in January 2023. Sandra and I are not retiring! We will still be at Catch the Fire and assisting Ash and Murray in whatever capacity they would like. We will be doing more travelling in 2022 and 2023 as we also have an international role as coaches for our European churches that belong to Catch the Fire World. We love this church and plan to be here until the Lord takes us home!
Father God has been good to us and promises to always be with us! We are a blessed church family and look forward to many more years of favour and blessings!
Steve and Sandra Long
Catch The Fire World is a growing network of churches with a passion for the world to encounter God’s transforming presence. This network was created to establish healthy churches that encounter and live in God’s presence, manifest His love and joy, and transform cities. Our church in Toronto continues to be an influential and important part of this global family.
As a church, we believe in the Biblical principle of tithing based on Malachi 3:10. We gladly tithe 10% of our unrestricted tithes and offerings to Catch The Fire World. In 2021, we gave over $260,000 to provide the necessary cash flow to support the global ministry. Our impact is truly worldwide.
In 2021, our church leadership really felt an emphasis on praying into and defining not only our vision, but who we are as a church, and what our purpose here on earth in Toronto is. In the months leading up to 2021, our staff and leadership spent countless hours in prayer and discussion as they expanded on and defined our vision for our local church family and movement in Toronto. Coming out of a global crisis, it became clear that not only did we need a clear visual image, but also a spiritual one for our staff, volunteers and church family. As our leadership team met over and over again to pray and discuss a long-term vision for our church, the key questions they wanted to solve were: “Who are we?”, “What sets us apart?” “What is our purpose?” and “how do we express our overarching vision statement practically?” In response to those questions, “Church is” was adopted as the phrase and lens through which we wanted to explore our identity and purpose as a church family in the coming year of 2021.
It's our joy to share our Vision with you and partake in following God's plan for us as a Church family, together! We hope you will take heart as we continue to unpack our vision, and start to see yourself in it! We can't wait to see God's incredible plans and favour unfold in your life as we faithfully step forward together into what He has for us.
If you’d like more information on our Vision, and to read our expanded vision statements, you can do so using the link below!
“Church is” has become one of our most impactful and creatively expressed yearly themes on record! Not only was the unpacking of our vision important in and of itself, but it also became the theme for our year as we came together each Sunday to explore a new piece of it. The creative expression of our vision impacted the way we communicated with you visually, and digitally, and how we decided what to do next at each junction through the year. “Church is” gave us reason and expression for so many special moments we shared with you – from baptisms to outreaches, ministries and sermon topics, our special God-inspired vision led us through it all and helped us decide what was important to focus on and do all year long.
Out of the work our team was doing on our church vision came a series of videos, where our pastors and leaders sit down together and walk you through each of our vision statements, their impacts and meanings, how we currently express them and how we hope to improve! Through the journey of “Church is” that God led us on this year, we discovered so much more about where God is calling us, and how we can represent Him better through our local church staff, volunteers, and church family! This was truly a year of discovery, confirmation, and foundation building. We can’t wait to see what comes next!
If you’d like to watch our Vision Series, or the spin-off series “Walking in Your Calling”, make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube and sign up for Catch The Fire TV. Our free Catch The Fire TV subscription service is available both online and as an app for iPhone, Android, Roku, and more! Use the link below to start watching.
This year we were so blessed to see growth as we started to leave a season of restriction and loss. Although we weren’t open in-person for so many months of 2021, we still saw God move powerfully! We were able to welcome many new families to our church, see so many salvations, baptisms and baby dedications, and watch how God changed lives through our schools and ministries!
Salvations
If you’d like to join a group or sign up for a baptism or baby dedication this year, make sure to sign up for our weekly
e-newsletter to get the most up-to-date announcements and access to events!
This year, we experienced loads of change and transition. We were so blessed to gain essential members to our pastoral team as opportunities arose or others moved on, and we are thrilled to be working with the incredible team we have on board this year!
Murray & Ash Smith
Associate Senior Pastors
Dallas & Hope Wigston
Worship Pastors
Kaydence & Daniel Jegathiswaran
Youth Pastors
See our team as a whole and learn more about our leadership structure at the link below.
In the spring of 2021, the City of Toronto announced that vaccination centres would give away vaccinations on a first come basis. We were asked by Michael Ford, the city councillor for north Etobicoke if we could be involved in giving away water, coffee, etc. We said yes. With one day’s notice, we purchased skids of water from Costco and had our coffee shop make lots of coffee. 2500 people passed by our station that Wednesday. We were back on Thursday and Saturday and settled into a routine of Thursdays and Saturdays.
When the summer months came, we were asked to focus on the Albion Arena clinic (Albion and Kipling) where up to 2500 people each Saturday stood in line. The best connections we had were not with the community in the queue, but rather with the city health officials, the 100 doctors and nurses giving away the shots, and the 30+ local volunteers who served weekly. We had excellent God conversations, found followers of Jesus, invited people to church, and prayed for people!
It turned out that the head doctor for the clinic is a follower of Jesus and he gave us incredible favour to have full access to the clinic staff. We served up to 130 people a hot Popeyes chicken sandwich each Saturday for 40 weeks. That was just shy of 5000 meals given away by members of our Outreach Team.
Thanks to the team who served, many of them faithfully every week in some sweltering weather conditions! We did this outreach, not as a political statement about vaccines, but rather because our city officials asked us to help and because people were there!
You can read more and watch a video featuring testimonies from our time at the vaccine clinic with the link below!
Each year, we look forward to hosting summer camps for our Kids & Youth! In anticipation of that, we host Camp Day in the spring, to help raise funds for our kids to go to camp and lower the prices for everyone. Our staff and ministry teams volunteer their time at these camps each year to create a safe and fun environment for our kids to enjoy countless games and activities, time away from the city with their friends, and have life-changing encounters with Jesus. In 2021, our Camp Day was a huge success, and we not only reached our goal of $30,000 but surpassed it, reaching a total of $37,800 to help our kids go to camp! Our combined total of campers across both Kids Camp and Camp Freshwind (youth camp) was 149! That is not only the lives of 149 kids that were touched but also their families, friends and schools who they went home to afterwards, sharing what they received from God and leaders during their time at our camps.
We couldn’t do what we do without you – our donors and volunteers! Thanks to you, we saw so many little lives changed and transformed by the Holy Spirit at our camps this year. Watch your giving in action with some of our previous recap videos of camps below!
Every year since 2019, we have run an in-house campaign we call “The Giving Tree”, where we support those in our church family who need some help through the holidays with thoughtful gifts for their families to help them feel supported and cared for during the Christmas season. Each year we look forward to hearing the stories from parents and individuals who were in need and felt so much love from their church family as they were supported through a season that can be very difficult for those who are less fortunate or just need a bit of support with their families.
In 2021, we also partnered with Prison Fellowship Canada for their Angel Tree campaign, which connects church communities and individuals with the families of prisoners through the delivery of a Christmas gift on behalf of the incarcerated parent. Through this program, children not only receive a gift under the tree at Christmas but maintain connections and bonds with their incarcerated parent(s). In 2021, we raised $6,827 to support Prison Fellowship Canada's Angel Tree Christmas. That's enough to supply nearly 200 gifts to children of incarcerated individuals across Canada.
Thanks to you, we were able to bring Christmas cheer to so many families and children who were really in need during the Christmas season! To hear some testimonies from past campaigns, you can watch our thank-you video for donors with the link below!
Now that you’ve seen some of our outreach and ministry highlights from the past year, you may be wondering how you can get involved in the future! Make sure to follow us on all our social media platforms and sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t already to get the most up-to-date information on how you can be part of giving back to our church family and community.
If you’d like to volunteer to be part of future gatherings and initiatives in the future, you can sign up with one of our communities or ministry teams! There are so many ways for you to give back to our church family and community that will also help you feel fulfilled as you use your gifts and passions. If you’d like to join a team or group, you can find more information at the link below.
Even if you can’t be actively involved in our Outreach or Ministry Teams, you can still be part of all these special moments where people meet Jesus, and are transformed by His loving-kindness! Through your tithes and offerings, you help us to build our teams, plan outreaches, fund missions, and give gifts and experiences to those who wouldn’t be able to otherwise afford them. You can sign up to be a regular donor, or for planned giving by contacting our team, or tapping the button below to sign up and plan your donations!
This year our teams worked hard to create so much incredible content with the intention of seeing lives changed by the power of God. We were so pleased to have worked together to build a new subscription-based platform and create content to share from not only Toronto but also our other churches all over the world! Catch The Fire TV is our gift to you and is our best way of sharing what God is doing through our movement. Watch, listen, and learn with no distractions and engage with Catch The Fire Churches worldwide!
You can enjoy our regular content like Sunday Meetings, or special content only available on Catch The Fire TV, like conferences, worship videos, devotionals, testimonies, and more! Subscribe for free today to start enjoying this labour of passion that we have been so excited to share with you.
In 2021, our local worship team wrote and recorded songs for the album All I Can Say. During a time when the world was at a standstill, and we couldn’t meet in church to have the larger live productions we were used to, our worship leaders and bands came together to create a body of work that’s sole purpose was to worship God. Every word, note and chord were written as a humble offering to the Lord at a time when our devotion was all we could give.
We were so blessed to have the opportunity to record these songs in September 2021, and create such special moments together as our teams worked tirelessly on this project. From the writing and recording to setting up the live studio space and audio/video equipment in Toronto, to the audio production, the mixing and mastering, and the creative video and graphics production of this album, we can say we feel so blessed to have this incredible team!
We have been live-streaming our meetings on YouTube for years, and this year we reached over 90,000 subscribers! Before the pandemic, we had 60,000 subscribers. During that time of isolation, we saw people looking for God and their purpose, which led to a huge increase in our viewership and subscriber base. We feel so blessed and excited to have been part of reaching people online when they needed to encounter God the most!
With Catch The Fire TV, we are now able to offer more unique content, with higher quality and no ads! It also allows us to connect you with our other churches globally who are producing special content like devotionals, conferences, worship videos, and more! Since the launch of Catch The Fire TV, we have already seen thousands of subscribers, and have been able to launch live conferences like Freshwind Youth Conference from Toronto and Overflow Conference from Raleigh. We’ve seen new levels of creativity and excellence from our creative communications and production teams than we could have imagined a year ago!
Watch some of our highest viewed videos on YouTube this year!
Total Expenses: $3,580,129
Total Revenue: $3,489,114
Our ministry is led by an incredible Board of Directors, a passionate team of pastors and directors, and a hard-working staff that are guided by the Holy Spirit to steward the generous gifts to our ministry with integrity and excellence.
Steve Long, President
John Arnott, Vice-President
Heidi Amponsem
Robert Livingston
Anthony Mascia
Garth Jestley
Nadine Torgerson
Robert Livingston
Heidi Amponsem
Garth Jestley
Michael Manford
272 Attwell Drive
Toronto, ON M9W 6M3
ctftoronto.com
+1 416 674 8463
Charitable Registration Number: 132975129 RR0001
