Sunday worshippers at Okotoks Alliance Church have a lot to be thankful for this year.
The church opened the doors of its new sanctuary last month beginning with its first Sunday service on Sept. 29, followed by a week of nightly worship with different pastors and members of other churches in the area.
“It was quite a diverse gathering from our own church family and then other church families within the community,” said Okotoks Alliance pastor Terry Lee. “It’s been a great expression of our mutual interest and concern and love for one another as churches in the town.”
The sanctuary expansion has been an ongoing project for the better part of a decade, he said, as services became tighter with just 164 seats to accommodate a congregation of 250 to 300 people. Although there were two services offered, Lee said it still affected the community.
Now with 360 seats in the sanctuary, he expects to see a change in attendance.
“It felt very crowded and definitely you would see it dwindle back to lesser attendance,” said Lee. “We’re hoping this helps us serve the community. People go into Calgary to go to church and things like this because they perceive there wasn’t necessarily space in our community for us.”
Okotoks Alliance is hoping the new space will also better serve the wider community of Okotoks and area, he said. The church has always offered its campus to compatibly-minded groups free of charge, he said.
He believes the renovations will be appreciated by those groups as well, with the old sanctuary now converted to a large lobby space, and the addition of a kitchen and service area.
Dan Gaynor is a member of the Okotoks Alliance Church. His six-year term as the chairman of the board of elders ended two weeks ago, and he said the renovation and expansion was the predominant focus of his term.
He’s pleased with the results of the congregation’s hard work in planning and fundraising for the work.
“I think it turned out remarkably well,” said Gaynor. “We really tried to approach the expansion with what was needed and no excess, and I think it looks fantastic. It blends in with the old building, so it looks like it’s always been that way.”
Although the final total has not been determined, he expects the final cost of construction to be about $3.8 million, largely contributed by congregation members.
The initial expansion project actually came in under the $3.8 million budget, so the church was able to add in a few elements that would have been on the back burner to begin with, like washrooms in the children’s area.
“It was really nice to be able to complete that, and we were able to get a few extra chairs for the new larger sanctuary,” said Gaynor. “With this expansion of the scope it will still be right on budget.”
He said he wasn’t sure what to expect when he attended his first service in the new building.
“I was unsure how it would feel just because it’s a bigger sanctuary and you get used to a small, more intimate sanctuary,” said Gaynor. “The nicest surprise for me was it’s larger but it didn’t lose any of that intimacy. It still has the same feel as the smaller one did, just on a bigger scale.”
“Everybody’s thrilled with it. We’re very thankful.”
As for Lee, he said leading his first worship services in the new sanctuary felt fantastic.
His favourite part of the opening week was watching people enter the space for the first time, he said. There were many comments around how it feels fresh, open and classy, he said.
“Pastor William Loewen from Trinity Mennonite at DeWinton, he was with us [Oct. 2] for our night of worship, he said, ‘I feel like I’ve come home,’ which was quite a lovely statement,” said Lee. “It feels like my living room, feels like home.
“It’s a place you want to come back to worship again.”
