The Sunnyside Wesleyan church in Old Ottawa South will open a new downtown location on the University of Ottawa campus to meet a growing need for more space.
The new church, located in the Alumni Auditorium, will open its doors on Easter Sunday.
“Easter Sunday is an appropriate day to launch,” says Pastor Darren Dicks.
“It’s traditionally a time when people make an effort to go to church.”
Dicks, a member of the congregation since 1993 and pastor since 2004, brought the idea for a satellite location to the church board in late 2007, in response to a growing trend.
“We thought that the idea of a multi-site church was unique,” says Dicks. “But it’s actually been popularized in the last 15 years in North America.”
The original site, located on Grosvenor Avenue, has between 350 and 400 members,
The new site will seat roughly the same.
“On Sunday mornings we worship in separate locations, but at the end of the day we still see ourselves as one church.”
The concept of being able to worship through one church, but in different locations, is not a traditional approach, but one that makes good sense, according to some members of the congregation.
“We’ve reached capacity,” says Margaret Sambol, a congregant at the Grosvenor location. “And you can’t operate at full capacity; people like their elbow space.”
Sambol was a member of the team that researched multi-site churches and came up with the proposal of opening a downtown location.
She also says that since there is one board for two locations, and they have the “people resources” to share between both sites, it actually makes more sense to have two churches.
“What a multi-site church does, is allow for an opportunity to reach more people without doubling resources,” says Sambol.
One member of the new congregation is University of Ottawa student Brie McFarlane, who says she is excited about the new site.
“Since I’ve been at school I haven’t attended church like I used to,” says the second-year theatre major.
“But now with one right on our front lawn, it’s really welcoming to a whole new community of worshippers.”
While the new church will not be targeting a specific demographic, says Sambol, the downtown location will ultimately allow for more space; which the congregation needs greatly, she says.
“We’re not interested in taking people from an existing congregation,” she says.
“We just want to serve the un-served population.”
Congregants of the Grosvenor location are also excited for the new site, Sambol says, as 85 per cent of the congregation voted in favour of the new location.
Sambol and Dicks both say that their main goal is to replicate the atmosphere of the Grosvenor location at the downtown site.
“What the Sunnyside location has to give, I’d love to be able to offer to other people,” says Sambol.