WHAT does a congregation do with its almost-century-old church building when it moves to a new site?

Sluggett Memorial Baptist Church in Brentwood Bay became Centennial Park Fellowship Baptist Church a year ago, located in Central Saanich.

Sluggett needed larger facilities with room for growth. The congregation of 60 purchased  property, and paid it off. A sod-turning ceremony took place November 18, and construction commenced on a multi-purpose building which would seat close to 200.

Their former church building, standing almost as a sentry on West Saanich Road, at the top of the hill into picturesque Brentwood Bay, had a lot of links to the community and one of its founding families.

Vic Nordstrom, chair of the Centennial Park building committee, continues the story.

“There are, in fact, over 300 members of the Sluggett family in the greater Victoria area – all descendants, directly or indirectly, of John Sluggett, who put down roots in Brentwood Bay in the 1870s. One of them is Sandy Engel: she is, in fact, clerk of the church board at Centennial Park.”

There were certain limitations on what the church could do with the old building and its half-acre site.

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Given that ‘Memorial’ was in its name, leading members of the Sluggett family hoped that the memory of their patriarch could be preserved.

Church and family began negotiations. “The family committed to raising $300,000 to restore and preserve the building, and the church deeded the property over,” Nordstrom noted. He added that the arrangement was conditional on finding a community group which could propose a suitable project, incorporating the old siding-clad simplified colonial-style church.

Enter Beacon Community Services, a non-profit organization based across the Saanich Peninsula in Sidney. BCS has several community-based centres and housing projects.  The organization already had a stake in Brentwood Bay, having developed a 14-unit seniors residential project called Brentwood House.

Now Sluggett House will serve a similar purpose and the old church building will be the dining and living room area for the residents. The Beacon plan is to have a similar number of living units at Sluggett House as it does at Brentwood House.

The Centennial Park congregation is looking forward to occupying their new building later this year. Pastor Jared White, who has been leading the church for less than two years, recently moved his study from the Sluggett site to the new property, in a temporary office structure.                 – Lloyd Mackey

March 2008