Community centre gateway to church
MISSISSAUGA, ON—It's not your typical church. At the Gateway Christian Life Centre—a congregation of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Canada—visitors won't find mid-week children's programs, youth programs, or men's or women's groups.
What they will find is a four-year-old, rapidly-growing, culturally diverse, multi-site congregation that's pouring most of its resources into just one thing; The Gateway Centre for New Canadians.
The Gateway Centre for New Canadians is a new, not-for-profit corporation and 28,000 square-foot community centre located in the heart of Mississauga, Canada's sixth largest and fastest growing city. It is a place where newcomers to the city can find support. And there are plenty of newcomers; according to the 2001 Census, nearly half of the city's population is made up of immigrants.
Specifically, the centre offers support to members of the community in six areas; language and skills training, settlement, family, business and health and recreation services.
"I wanted to develop a congregation that isn't program driven," says Julius Tiangson, founding pastor of the Gateway Christian Life Centre and executive director of The Gateway Centre for New Canadians. "For many years I had been thinking about cell-based churches, and reading and talking to some practitioners about it."
Tiangson says his research helped him realize having a church of cell groups wasn't enough. There needed to be something more.
"There needs to be a collective expression of good works by all of our cells," he explains, "so that there is a transforming influence of the network of cells in the lives of the people, not only who belong to the cells but also to the community at large."
The community centre may have been Tiangson's personal vision, but his leadership team and congregation were quick to come alongside.
"A lot of the congregation is immigrant-based, so they had a natural inclination towards it," says board chair John Brooker.
It was at the request of the denomination that Tiangson uprooted his family from Saskatoon (where he had pastored a Filipino church for 13 years) and moved to Mississauga just over four years ago.
Within months of moving to the city and "planning and praying and knocking on doors," he began a cell-based church of about 30 people who met for mid-week small group studies, then gathered for weekly services in the gymnasium of a local school. Those 30 quickly grew into a network of cell groups that launched a 50-person satellite congregation in the nearby city of Brampton.
In November 2003—with the help of a $1.5 million loan from a private investor—the church purchased the former fitness facility that would become their community centre for a total cost of $1.8 million. Renovations began and will be on-going as finances permit.
The Gateway Centre for New Canadians held its grand opening September 12. In October, they began offering community partnerships (memberships sold to individuals or groups for modest fees). Tiangson hopes that a year from now, the centre will be self-supporting, thus enabling church offerings to be directed primarily to finance cell group development for church planting and missions.
Open to all
Now, rather than running programs by and for church members, the church members run programs in a large community centre for anyone who wants to come. At present, some 300-700 visitors come each week.
They've also managed to attract multi-faith community volunteers to run many of the programs. Of the more than 100 volunteers currently helping to staff the centre, more than 30 per cent come from other religious backgrounds.
Brooker says that before they were even fully operational, the centre had attracted volunteers from many different religions.
"We have a Hindu lady that is so intrigued by…the love and the acceptance of the staff and the other volunteers," says Brooker. "Because the first thing we train [the volunteers] in is, that when people come here you welcome them. And you treat them as friends. Because that's just the way it is.
"So as a result—she's gone to her own Hindu centre, and doesn't find the acceptance she finds here. That's simply Christ operating. What we're seeing at the centre is people that have no idea who God is; they're meeting His children, who are like Him," he adds. "And that's what it's all about."
Monday to Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., the centre opens its doors for everything from drop-in basketball games and line dancing, to driver training and nutrition counselling. On Sundays, the centre becomes the venue for worship for the Gateway Christian Life Centre. Current attendance averages 160-180 at the Mississauga site alone.
Tiangson says there was a need for a cohesive, systematic way of reaching immigrants, so that they would not only sense the touch of people who are followers of Christ but, would also sense "a different spirit that would touch the inner core of their hearts and hopefully would begin to influence their thinking about Christianity."
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