how it started

2005 “THE SPARK”

2007 - 2009 “Planting phase”

2010 - 2012 “Stabilizing phase”

2012 -2015 “Sustaining phase”

2015 - NOW “Autonomous phase”

In the spring of 2005, Chad Johnson was called to Evangel Church as the student ministries director with a hands on role to develop a young adult ministry. At the same time, the local college was transitioning from a community college into an accredited university. Chad was stirred to reach out to the growing university with a fresh expression of Christian community. The leadership at Evangel stepped out in faith to begin The House in the Fall of 2008. Since that time our story has unfolded in four significant phases.

During our first few years we were a small community of approximately 35 people. We placed a heavy emphasis on hosting special event bookings in an effort to gain exposure and outreach into our community. We kept busy holding weekly concerts and other events. Our vision was to be a people and place of spiritual life, operated by our church community, a people of spiritual life.

In the beginning of 2009 we made a conscious shift towards discipling and caring for those who were part of our growing Christian community. After a few years we were averaging 175 people a week in our Sunday night service and with this came an increase in counselling, discipleship, and general pastoral care. We shifted our focus away from hosting events and instead put more resources into strengthening and caring for our Christian community.

In the summer of 2012 we re-evaluated our ministry as we faced a five year lease renewal on our venue. We determined we’d exceeded our original vision and there was a strong desire to continue forward in ministry. We also acknowledged a community made up of mostly university students was not sustainable in the long run. In response to this we launched a Sunday morning service with a focus on being a more stable, multigenerational community.

Over time, the scope and scale of ministry at The House continued to grow and we realized the time had come to take responsibility for our own leadership. We began the process of becoming our own autonomous church with the blessing of Evangel in the summer of 2015. Since that time we've become an autonomous church affiliated church with the PAOC and began the steps towards being a self-governing and self-supporting church community. During 2016 we became a registered society in BC and a registered charity with Revenue Canada and are now functioning as our own church entity. We’re thankful to the wonderful support show to us by Evangel over the years and believe God’s hand is on our community. We look forward to the story continuing to be written into the next phase.