Centre Street Church is an

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

megachurch A megachurch is a church with an unusually large membership that also offers a variety of educational and social activities, usually Protestant or Evangelical. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant C ...

located in Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada, affiliated with the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada (EMCC). Founded in 1958, it has an average weekly attendance of 7,739 and is considered the largest megachurch in Canada. In addition to its Central Campus, it has four satellite locations in the

Calgary Metropolitan Region The Calgary Metropolitan Region (CMR), also commonly referred to as the Calgary Region, is a conglomeration of municipalities centred on Calgary, the largest city in Alberta. With the Government of Alberta's establishment of the Calgary Metropo ...

. Its senior pastor is Dr. Henry Schorr.

History

Centre Street Church was founded in 1958 by 62 members of ''Salem Evangelical Church'', a German-speaking church in the Calgary inner city neighbourhood of Bridgeland. These members founded a new English-speaking church in north Calgary; amongst the founding members was the senior pastor of Salem, Rev. F.W. Snyder. After temporarily meeting in the Highland Park Community Hall, the congregation built its first building at the corner of Centre Street and 41 Avenue NE. Its attendance plateaued at around 250. In 1980, Henry Schorr was hired as a Youth Pastor and was later made senior pastor in 1986. Coupled with an increased focus on prayer by the church's congregants and increased growth of the city of Calgary, attendance went from 430 in the late 1980s to 4,000 congregants in 2002. After undergoing two separate building programs to construct additions on its original location, the decision was made to construct a new facility two blocks away at the site of an old drive-in movie theatre, which opened in 2004. In the 2010s, Centre Street Church satellite locations (referred to as campuses) opened in Airdrie, Bridgeland (the original site of Salem Evangelical Church), Northwest Calgary, and South Calgary. Future plans are to build its Northwest Campus in Bearspaw,

Rocky View County Rocky View County is a municipal district in southern Alberta, Canada that is named for its views of the nearby Rocky Mountains to the west. It surrounds most of Calgary, forming the city's northern boundary and most of the city's western and e ...

, located just outside Calgary city limits.

References

External links

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YouTube channel
{{Coord, 51, 05, 17, N, 114, 03, 21, W, display=title Churches in Calgary Evangelical megachurches in Canada Organizations based in Calgary