As your pastor, I have known for a long time that our church family is blessed by so many amazing folks; our Transition Team is just a sampling of the talent our church possesses. When our team (Curtis and Laina McAusland, Debbie Shelton, and myself) began meeting in November, our very first assignment was to decide on a location for Tapestry as we make our move to Cochrane on Easter Sunday 2017. We began by creating a list of potential spots: public schools, community centres, retail/commercial leases, current church buildings, and anything else we could imagine. After creating our list, we set out to gather information, pray, discuss, and then gather more information.

Schools, Businesses, and Community Spaces

It was not long into the process when we learned the public school board (Rocky View School Division) and the catholic school board (Calgary Catholic School District) would not be able to facilitate a church meeting in any of their spaces throughout Cochrane (~10 schools combined throughout Cochrane). Additionally, we learned that the Cochrane Movie House, which seemed to have some potential as a space (in terms of location and space), was not interested in exploring a rental agreement with our church.

Full-Time Retail Lease

Throughout the entire process, I personally held out hope that we would be able to find a permanent, retail lease location in the “heart” of Cochrane. Our team began to speak to realtor and commercial lease companies to gather information about the commercial sector in Cochrane. We explored the different zoning requirements. In the end, we had the opportunity to go and visit one location on 5th Ave. The location was most recently the Sears Canada Outlet and is located in the complex along with McDonalds, ScotiaBank, and No Frills. While there were a great number of reasons this space would have been a great fit for our church, the financial resources needed to renovate and monthly lease payments put this option out of our reach (for now).

Other Churches

Another area of possibility was to rent space from another church. While we were not yet settled on the practicality of moving to an afternoon service, we desired to explore all opportunities. After many meetings and phone calls, only one church emerged as a possibility, All Saints Anglican Church. At roughly the same time that All Saints Anglican became an option, we necessarily expanded our search to include the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary. A meeting with the Seminary personnel over building rentals resulted in a heavily discounted price along with all the space we would need (including some storage) for our worship gathering and kid’s ministry.

Final Two

As we began to evaluate the Anglican Church and the Seminary – our only two feasible options – we realized it ultimately came down to one question: do we want to gather for worship in the morning or the afternoon? While the decision included far more than one question; ultimately, the answer to the gathering time question was a large determining factor.

In following our vote in November to relocate Tapestry Church to Cochrane, our Transition Team reached the consensus that the best place for us to plant ourselves in the hope of transforming lives and being a blessing to Cochrane was at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary.

Keep following the discussion about our Transition here.