Bible-based Christian church in Sapporo★ Biblical Christ Church

THE CHURCH WHICH DOES NOT OWN ITS BUILDING

The essence of church which we happened to find
In 2022, we do not own our church building. We gather together, renting a public facility such as a community center.

This is how it happened; the tenant building owner of which we rented a space for church had a bankrupcy. After that, we needed to find another place. Then we started to rent the community center as a temporary place. However, while we used that place, we realized that it was a suitable place in order to build up and maintain the essence of church.

Church (Ekklesia in Greek) does not mean a building but a gathering of people. Therefore, the place where people gather becomes a church. Running a church without depending on a building helps us to have that awareness. There are advantages and disadvantages in everything. So not everything is good. But we realized that there are advantages in this style.

The style with many advantages
First of all, as mentioned above, it is easy for the members to have awareness that church is not a building but gathering of people.

Also, it is easier for people to visit church for the first time since it is a public place. There is no need of snow plow in winter. So the burdens for members are minimum.

In addition, the work to maintain a building and financial load is minimum, which brings surplus to the church finance. So we can invest on where there is need. This financial advantage is really huge, though you may not be able to understnad until you experience it first hand.

The future outlook
This styel gathering may not be unusual for a small church. But it may be unusual for a church with more members. For us, we do not deny the possibility of owning a building. Now that we are not a small gathering, the estimate budget for finding a building for our church may be expensive. Therefore, we are not actively searching for a building at this moment.

Disadvantages
Almost every Sunday, we rent a space of 1st room of Toyohira Kumin Center. One of the greatest disadvantages is that we may not be able to secure the same place every time.
At the end of the year and new year, we cannot rent a space. Still we consider there are more advantages than disadvantages, considering freedom we have.

The fact that the place of gathering is not fixed helps us to be flexible.