Vancouver church goes where the people are
A B.C church gets a second chance in down-town Vancouver
VANCOUVER, BC—On Easter Sunday, Coastal Church—already one of Vancouver’s largest evangelical churches—formally launched its fourth campus just steps away from the always-busy Commercial-Broadway Skytrain Station.
“That’s what attracted us to that location in the first place,” says campus pastor Brad Bergman. “It’s right at the biggest public transit hub in Vancouver. Thousands of people pour through there on a daily basis.”
The building had been home to the Estonian United Baptist Church since its construction in 1956. At the time, Vancouver’s small Estonian community used to live in that area intersected by Commercial Drive and West Broadway alongside Italians and Portuguese.
Its founding members had fled their Baltic homeland near the end of the Second World War to escape Russian occupation. At its peak, about 110 people attended its Estonian-language services. But those numbers dwindled as their children rapidly integrated into Canadian society, and as the older generation began to pass away.
Last year, those few remaining decided to sell the building. “We were at the stage where we could afford to fix the church or pay a pastor,” says EUBC chair Peter Lepik. “We had been running a deficit for quite a while.”
Lepik says the congregation made the sale conditional on the purchaser agreeing to keep the building as a church, and that they be allowed to rent it back as their ongoing place of worship.
Coastal senior pastor David Koop says when they were first approached about buying the building, there was little enthusiasm for the idea.
“We had just started our third site, so it wasn’t really on the radar. But we prayed about it as a board,” he says. “They were an older congregation, couldn’t really afford anymore the upkeep and all the rest. So we said, ‘They’ve come to us for help, so let’s help them.’”
In the end, they were able to conclude what Koop calls “a fair deal” with the Estonian believers for the building. About 20 of them still worship there on Sunday afternoons.
A critical factor in going ahead with the purchase is the fact that Coastal’s main downtown campus is becoming maxed out with no room to expand. About 1,800 people on average attend one of its four weekend services. “So it became an overflow for us,” says Koop.
“We also have a lot of life groups in that area already,” Bergman says. “It’s not as if we’re new kids on the block.”
Then there’s the fact that this new campus is in sight of the lone station in the Skytrain network where the Expo and Millennium lines intersect. It’s also a terminus of Metro Vancouver’s busiest bus route. The result is a combined total of about 150,000 trips per day passing through the Commercial-Broadway transit hub.
With the area also poised for redevelopment, the campus’s prospects for growth look positive. And yet with 120 people or so already entering its small sanctuary on Sunday, multiple services may soon be their only option.
“With 100 people in there it feels comfortably full,” Bergman says. “We still have room for growth, but we would absolutely move in that direction.”
Meanwhile, all the proceeds from the sale have gone to support Baptist ministries in
Estonia. “I thought it was a great Kingdom-building way to do it,” says Koop.
Dear Readers:
ChristianWeek relies on your generous support. please take a minute and donate to help give voice to stories that inform, encourage and inspire.
Donations of $20 or more will receive a charitable receipt.Thank you, from Christianweek.
About the author