Kingdom Covenant Centre prepares to build
MISSISSAUGA, ON—Kingdom Covenant Centre (KCC), the booming congregation founded just 13 years ago by Jamaican-born "Pastor Pat" Francis, is preparing to break ground on a new $35-million building project.
The facility, which will be located on 20 acres of land at Eglinton Avenue East and Rakley Court in Mississauga, Ontario, will house a 3,000-seat worship centre and theatre, a school and a children's day-care centre and youth facilities, including a gym.
"We have started to prepare the ground. There are fences up preparing for the excavation," says Francis. "We're hoping to break ground by the end of October, then we'll continue [to build] as the weather allows."
According to KCC's website, the new facility will be "a centre for: high worship, intercession, revelation, prophetic declaration, family activities and recreation."
The property, which the congregation purchased in 1997 for $4.5 million, was paid off within a year. Construction of the new facility is expected to take "at least 18 months," says Francis. She says the congregation hopes to be debt-free by the time the building is complete.
KCC is one of this country's largest charismatic churches. Formerly known as Deeper Life Christian Ministries, the church began in 1989 as a Friday-night Bible study for 10 in the basement of Francis' home. At the time, Francis was working as a full-time medical technician in the radiography department of a Mississauga hospital.
Within a year, attendance at the study numbered 70. By 1993, 700 gathered weekly in an abandoned warehouse and clamoured for Sunday worship services. They held their first in June 1993.
Today, KCC's weekly attendance—divided over four weekend services at their present location in a strip mall in east Mississauga—averages 3,000.
Francis says she credits God and her congregation's focus on "rescuing young people that might be at risk" with their rapid growth.
"God has blessed the work of our hands," she says. "We have helped hundreds of young people fulfil their destiny and shift their focus from poverty to prosperity and from hopelessness to a new, hope-filled future."
KCC's programs include music and sports programs, court intervention for at-risk youth, mentoring programs, financial counselling, weekly tutoring and homework help.
Francis says most of the original 120 young people who made up KCC's first youth group "are now college graduates, newly married and becoming the first to pass on generational blessings rather than the generational curse."
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