Campbell River congregation takes step toward permanent home

Discovery Community Church in Campbell River, a small city on Vancouver Island’s east coast, is taking its first joyful steps toward a permanent home. The experience of being led to “the promised land,” however, is just part of a larger process of congregational renewal and recovery.

In a few short years, Discovery Community Church has grown from the remnants of a broken church with 34 people meeting in a utility room, to a happy family of over 180 threatening to fill the entire gym of the Sportsplex, the sports-oriented facility where they meet.

Youngsters from Discovery Community Church look over land purchased for a new church home.

The youth program is growing, Sunday school numbers are increasing, and there are new faces in the congregation nearly every Sunday. It’s all thanks to God’s intervention, say church members who have watched the church’s miraculous recovery.

“It took a couple of years to straighten out some of the problems left over from previous years, but recently God began to quickly grow new disciples in the body,” said Melody Lang, long-time member and part of the church’s efforts to find a permanent home.

The floundering church, broken by schisms, members leaving and its pastor departing, needed a new captain. Under the guidance of Kelly Cochrane, who came as pastor in 2001, Discovery Community Church put the past behind them and started rebuilding. With the help of books such as Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life and Jim Cymbala’s Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, pastor Cochrane helped his church grow from a room full of hurting people into confident Christians passionate about helping others and being part of God’s plan for Campbell River.

Disaster becomes blessing

But the church’s revival looked like it was about to hit the rocks in early 2004 when Cochrane was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a disease that can be contracted through exposure to infected blood, typically through using intravenous drugs.

Cochrane decided to be open with his church family, telling them about his past and how he used intravenous drugs as a young man. Expecting to be asked to resign, he was surprised when his church family embraced him, praying for his recovery in a 24-hour prayer vigil organized by congregation members, easing his workload, and supporting the Cochrane family any way they could.

What could have been a disaster for the newly-revived church turned out to be a blessing, bringing the church family even closer together and inspiring them to reach out to their community in new ways. Their pastor’s story in the local paper also inspired seekers to come see what God’s power and love was all about.

This spring, the congregation had good reasons to celebrate. The drug treatment their pastor had been taking to eradicate the Hepatitis C virus from his body proved successful. The church also ordained Cochrane as a minister.

Now, through prayer, discussion and God’s guidance, and a search of nearly a year, the church has found a site for its permanent home. Thanks to the generosity of a church member (who sold it for what he paid for it), a piece of property has been purchased on Jacqueline Road, located on the outskirts of town but in an area promising to grow over the next few years. The property is actually the first one the land search committee had looked at. “We, like the Israelites, had to travel 11 months to arrive back at the beginning where we started,” said Lang.

The church is now involved in raising funds for the land, exploring innovative ways, including church members travelling to the Lower Mainland this summer to share their story with other Mennonite Brethren.

—Grant Warkentin