Focus on the Family Canada unveils new headquarters
LANGLEY, BC – For the first time since opening its first Canadian office more than 27 years ago, Focus on the Family Canada is no longer required to pay rent.
The ministry began in 1983 with a couple of people working out of a small office in downtown Vancouver. Today, its 65 local employees - five more are based in other parts of the country - work out of a new, wholly-owned building in Langley.
An official ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for June 17.
Focus Canada president Terence Rolston sees the 24,000 square-foot facility as not just a testimony to God's faithfulness to the ministry over those years, but more importantly as a new foundation for future growth in order to better serve Canada's families and the many challenges they face.
"We really felt we needed to have a true visible presence, a visual representation in some sense, of our permanent commitment to the family in Canada," he says. "We are here and we're committed to being here for families."
One immediate benefit to being in their own building is that Focus Canada can now spend on ministry the approximately $400,000 it used to pay annually to lease its former location, where it had been since relocating from Vancouver to Langley in 2000.
"We've got the space to literally grow into, so we don't have to keep moving," says Rolston. "We can expand here and in some respects deepen our roots here. We've got more stability and capacity, and more ability to focus on ministry."
Focus Canada bought the land for $1.4 million in 2005. Construction began in January 2010 at a cost in excess of $8 million. Rolston calls it a "miraculous thing" that they were able to complete the project debt-free - despite conducting most of their fundraising appeal during a global recession.
"To do it in those circumstances was a real affirmation for us," he says. "Not only obviously are we thankful to have a building, but it really sort of filled our tanks in terms of inspiration and encouragement for the road ahead. We really feel the conviction to go forward with courage."
Focus Canada also provides direction to Kerith Creek, a retreat centre for married couples and people in ministry in the Alberta foothills west of Calgary. And it oversees the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an Ottawa-based public policy research group.
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