Our Story
Zoe Toronto began as a group of friends whose lives were transformed by discovering Jesus together during our university years. God met us powerfully in our small, tight-knit communities centred on the love of Jesus and his good news for the world, and we couldn’t help but dream of a Jesus movement that births and nurtures many such small Jesus communities, filling an entire city.
We felt God leading us to pursue this dream in downtown Toronto, where we might be a part of a broad and beautiful diversity of Jesus-followers united in our shared faith, deeply committed to one another in love, and wholly devoted to pursuing his purposes together in the city.
Our Community
We believe that the Church must become a movement again and that every person has a crucial gift to offer and role to play if we are going to be all Jesus means for us to be. We have organized ourselves as a network of microchurches (a “church of churches”) because we deeply believe in the power of smallness for personal well-being and collective impact. We thrive when we live and serve within a tight community where we are individually understood and valued, entrusted with responsibility according to our gifts, and committed together to making our world more like heaven.
Zoe Toronto consists of two components: Microchurches and Mission Agency.
Our Microchurches
Microchurches function like spiritual nuclear families. Our microchurches generally consist of 5 - 30 members who are deeply committed to loving one another and united by a mission to love and serve some segment of our city in Jesus’ name. Our microchurches are where we share meals, stories, laughter, and tears as we work together in faith to bring about renewal in our communities. Our microchurches also serve as a spiritual extended family to one another, providing a broader network of like-minded people serving God in diverse contexts around the city.
Our Mission Agency
Some members of our community also serve within our Mission Agency, a service platform and Canadian charity with the sole mandate to strengthen and serve our microchurches as they fulfill their God-given callings in the city.
Our Mission
Together, our microchurches, with the help of our Mission Agency, seek to raise up passionate Jesus followers and equip them to serve and start microchurches that embody the love of Jesus together in every corner of Toronto and beyond.
Our Name
“In [Jesus] was life [zōḗ], and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” - John 1:4-5
Zoe (pronounced, “Zo, eh?”) is the Ancient Greek word Jesus’ earliest followers used to describe the fullness and perfection of life that he uniquely possessed. We believe that Jesus fills those who love & trust him with this life, even today. This life has power to overcome the darkness all around us. This is very good news.
Our Beliefs
As Christians, our first and foremost creedal statement is “Jesus is Lord.” We purpose to follow and to be like Jesus in all that we say, feel, think, and do. We also join with Jesus-followers throughout history in affirming the Apostles’ Creed, and throughout the world today in affirming the Lausanne Covenant.
Our Extended Family
Zoe Toronto is part of a global family of like-minded city-wide microchurch movements called The Underground Network.
Zoe Toronto is also part of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), a multiethnic movement of 875 congregations in Canada and the United States with ministries on five continents of the world. The ECC values the Bible as the word of God, the gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the call to extend God’s love to a hurting world, and the strength that comes from unity within diversity. Learn more at covchurch.ca.