By Bobbi-Sue Menard

WILLOW PARK Church in Kelowna is pursuing a multi-site model for ministry and growth – creating a church family of locations which share the spiritual ‘DNA’ of the mother church.  

Willow Park now has four locations in the Kelowna area: their Rutland campus on Highway 33; a Kelowna South campus; a campus in Lake Country; and the Metro campus in downtown Kelowna.  

Each campus has its own on-site pastor, while sharing the same teaching weekly through video and ‘live’ presentations.

A member of the Mennonite Brethren Conference, Willow Park was founded in Kelowna 60 years ago, in what is now downtown Kelowna, Willow Park has moved twice, each time to the outskirts of the growing town.  

In 1998 Willow Park was established on Highway 33 at its present site.  Willow Park was in the midst of steady growth when senior pastor Mark Burch joined the church in 1997.

Burch joined Willow Park after an expansion to two Sunday morning services, a step which can be problematic for some congregations. After adding one Saturday night service, and then another, hard choices were presented to the church.

“At the time, we made a decision not do a major building expansion,” explains Burch. “The building was in excellent shape; but we were and are limited by parking, and a single access point to Highway 33.  We have a 400-seat auditorium –  and the question was, how can we accommodate more people?”

Willow Park Church went through a research and decision phase of identifying where church members resided in Kelowna and where there were few or no proximate evangelical churches.  

“Essentially, we wanted seats made available in prime time, Sunday morning,” explains Burch. Of the 300 members and regular attendees Willow Park identified and asked if they would be willing to move to the South Kelowna location, 130 said ‘yes.’

Almost immediately, the core of the church saw a rise in attendance of about 70 people, a mix of the formerly churched, the ‘un-churched,’ and from other congregations.  

The process took place four years ago – and today Willow Park’s south campus at Bellevue Creek Elementary School has regular attendance of about 500.

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“Success changed our strategy. Maybe that is how God wants us to grow;  maybe we don’t need another grand auditorium,” says Burch.

Easter 2007 saw Willow Park open two new campuses, in Lake Country and in downtown Kelowna.  Lake Country Campus holds services on Sunday morning in the Creekside Community Theatre, and has a decidedly laid back feel to its services.

The downtown Kelowna location is called the Metro Campus and attracts a combination of traditional church goers as well as a regular group of disadvantaged citizens. The Sunday service includes breakfast; and establishing and running the campus has posed unique challenges.

“The question is, how do you build congregation? We have got two small groups operating. But we are asking, how do we really get into the community?”

Challenges for the Metro campus range from placing an offering box at the back of the church, to finding a place for individual fellowship and meeting outside church hours.

 It is simple to go to a coffee shop when you are dressed appropriately, but when you have invited the person who sat next to you at church for coffee and all they own are the clothes on their back, finding a comfortable coffee shop can be problematic.  

“It is our dream that Metro could become a 24/7 type of church. Perhaps in mid-week it could offer life skills classes and support,” says Burch.

Willow Park is in the planning stages for another satellite church in the North Glenmore area of Kelowna, hopefully to open in 2008. It would follow the same model.

Currently, Willow Park has eight services spread between all of its campuses each weekend.  Burch handles the bulk of the speaking duties, and at the Saturday night service at the Rutland Highway 33 campus, the message is videotaped, and then distributed to the other campuses for Sunday morning.  

The speaking pastor chooses a different campus each week, to speak at ‘live.’  

Each campus maintains a full-time pastor, responsible for shepherding, care-giving and vision-casting for the campus.  Each campus raises up its own worship team, has a full children’s program, and feels very similar to the main campus in culture.  

“We will always be one church with many locations. We have one board, one budget, one church. We are distinct in location but always linked,” says Burch.  

January 2008