Past considerations

When Wendy and I were in Calgary recently, we stayed at a hotel on the west side of the city. It sat just across the valley from the Olympic Ski Park and the ski jumps! We noted the location because of something that almost happened in 2005.

Then we headed to a restaurant and were intrigued further as we realized that we were somewhere we had been before, when it was not developed land. Let me get to the story behind all this.

We were at Glenmore Temple in 2005, and things were going well. We had good leaders, more than enough money, great music,c and new people arriving in our fellowship. The sun was shining on our ministry, and I was pretty happy, well, almost pretty happy. There were some organizational, denominational things happening that were causing me some unrest. After some wrestling with these matters I decided to begin exploring our options. I was aware of a former SA officer being in some leadership within the Free Methodist denomination. I made a couple of calls and discovered that the current Calgary congregation was in some crisis and was looking for new leadership.

Over the coming months, we filled in some documents, met with the personnel secretary for the Free Methodists and made arrangements with the bank for approval for a mortgage. We were looking for houses and had identified a few within our budget. In those days we could buy a lovely 1900 sq ft home near where we lived for $195K. It all seemed doable. We had negotiated a reasonable salary and we assumed that Wendy would be going out to find a job somewhere, in or out of ministry.

Wendy attended two services, and I went to one just to see what we were considering going to. The pastor had failed morally, and this congregation of 300 had been divided, and now about 120 were in attendance. It would be a challenge, but that had never been a fearful thing for me.

We had been notified by the FM denominations that three people were coming to Glenmore in two weeks to listen to me preach, then they would be making a decision. I heard that there were one or two other candidates.

And that was when I had a conversation with my Dad, who asked me one question, which made us reconsider and remain with TSA. That in itself is another blog post.

Fast forward… we are at a restaurant in Calgary, realizing that we were just around the corner from the church we had considered leading – so we just had to drive around the corner to see how things looked. The last time we were there a dated facility stood, almost alone on 10 or so acres of land. New houses, a whole new development, in fact, several developments were within sight. It was exciting to think then, about what could be as new houses would soon arrive the church and how we might grow with the neighbourhood. But now the old church was gone and development was everywhere. New roads, new houses, new businesses. In fact it was almost impossible to envision.

Today the Free Methodist Church is gone and in it’s place is a new building under a new name. You can see the current story at westsprings.church .

If you read their story (history) you’ll see that it was in 2005 they renamed the congregation to West Springs and in 2019 built the new building. My assumption is that the sale of the extra land paid for the new development. It was fascinating to see, and I could not help but think about what might have been.