A wandering Winnipeg Church finds a permanent home

A Winnipeg church will be using their new space throughout the week, rather than just Sunday mornings once it's up and running.

Joy Fountain Church is in the midst of renovating an old warehouse for their new home, a permanent space, which is something they've never had.

After nine months of waiting on permits, renovations started three days ago for the new home of this church and Pastor Andaza Hezekiah hopes to have it functional by Christmas this year. 

"We've found a property that we're going to be using. It's not a very large space, but the concept is to have a space that seats about 140-150 people and then have multiple services throughout the week," says the founding lead pastor. 

This unique approach to church, having more than one service a week, comes from a Bible passage.

"We're taking this from Acts 2 where it says the first church in Jerusalem after Pentecost, they met every day. One of the things that I desire is to have a space that, on a regular basis, through the week there are things happening in the building. So that you're not just sitting down during Sunday meetings alone."

Hezekiah says that this space will be used for Christian meetings as well as other events that are happening in the community. 

For the past eight years, the group of people that make up Joy Fountain have hosted their church in various locations. 

"We started from our living room, then we moved into a church that held 80-90 people. Then we moved into a school with a theatre so we didn't have to set up the chairs. It's been two schools, a church, and two schools."

There is a lot of work involved to set up and tear down each Sunday with this method, according to Hezekiah.

Since the start of the pandemic, Joy Fountain has been run fully online, as spaces are closed to any extracurricular activities. However, Hezekiah says that without him knowing, God was preparing them for such a time.

"I would say I saw God move before COVID and during. One day before COVID I got this thought, 'purchase equipment'. I ended up ordering equipment that came and sat in my basement for over a year. The one year mark is just about when COVID happened. We didn't need to order anything to actually go online as we had everything ready."

While the transition has been quite smooth to virtual church, Hezekiah and the congregation are looking forward to having a place to call home. 

"As God would have it, prior to that time, most of our giving had changed to online. We didn't lose a dime throughout the process and God has been faithful in that regard." 

$172,000 has already been raised for this project, with a total goal of $300,000.