church building

Five years ago, when Westside Gathering, Montreal, pastor David Manafo invited local pastors to pray weekly about the results of a demographic study on West Island, “a vision of how we could work together started to form,” he says. Those prayers led to the formation of WIN, a group of churches that pray together twice a month for their neighbourhoods, promote each other’s outreach initiatives, and collaborate on community projects.

Members of Chilliwack’s Main Street Church know what it means to give. At press time, not only have they pledged or given $630,000 toward a million-dollar expansion to the church building in downtown Chilliwack, they also contributed “over the top” to provide playground equipment for two elementary schools in their neighbourhood.

A Vancouver church, started in a Kitsilano movie theatre in 2005, is excited to have a permanent home. Westside Church purchased the 1,800-seat Centre for the Performing Arts, a live theatre venue downtown near Vancouver’s library square. The first official service was slated to be held in The Centre Sept. 29, 2013. Westside pastor Norm Funk said when the opportunity to acquire the building arose, church leaders looked at their current and future rental costs and saw the advantage to ownership. The church was renting meeting space on Granville Island and office space on West Broadway.