When Westside Church was planted, almost twenty years ago, the name was taken from the neighborhood it was located in, the Westside of Vancouver. But in 2013 the Lord miraculously opened a door for us to move out of the Westside and permanently into the centre of downtown Vancouver! Changing the name reflects our desire to wholeheartedly embrace what the Lord has done. Our building is a well known venue in the city known as ‘The Centre for Performing Arts,’ or ‘The Centre’ for short but that’s not the reason we chose the name, ‘Centre Church.’
Jesus is the centre. First and foremost we chose the name because we want to keep saying what we’ve been saying since our inception, ‘Jesus is the centre!’ Jesus is the fulcrum of our lives and of His Church too. Our mission is to ‘Know Jesus and make Jesus known’. He is the one we seek and the one we worship. Our desire is to be devoted to Him and formed in His image, individually and together. We are Centre Church because Jesus is the centre.
Word and Spirit. It’s also our desire to be centred between word and Spirit. We are entirely devoted to the written word of God, the Bible. We come under it as authoritative and strive to let it shape us instead of trying to shape it, even when that’s unpopular. We also want to stay in step with the Holy Spirit. We love His gifts, His voice, His conviction, His encouragement, His manifest presence among us, and we want more of Him! We recognize the tendency to emphasize either word or Spirit, elevating one at the expense of the other. We are Centre Church because it’s our desire to reject that impulse by honoring the written word of God as our authority while abiding in the Holy Spirit as our life.
A centre for the Church. We love Vancouver and we love the churches in our city! We believe we’ve been placed when and where we are, not for the sake of a church but the church. We see our space as a family home big enough to host the larger family of Jesus on special occasions. We want to be a centre for the Church in Vancouver as the Spirit is working to build us up together. We are Centre Church because it’s our desire to be a place where those from other local churches experience the beautiful and healing dynamic of Jesus’ larger family.
