Three Homes in Six Years: A Jamaican Church in Calgary Worships in a Seniors’ Centre and Dreams of a 1,000-Seat Building

• Southeast Hope Assembly, a mainly Jamaican congregation, meets in the hall of Ogden House Seniors in Calgary
• It has moved from Lake Bonaventure to Parkland to Ogden House in six years
• Its long-term goal is its own space for 500 to 1,000 people
• The church has built houses for needy families in Treadlight, Clarendon

For most of the week the hall at Ogden House Seniors, on 69 Avenue in Calgary Southeast, belongs to older residents playing table tennis and doing exercise classes. On Sunday mornings it becomes the home of Southeast Hope Assembly, a church whose members are about 90 per cent Jamaican, the Jamaica Observer reported.

The church was founded six years earlier by Pastor Aaron Russell, 55, a Clarendon native who migrated to Canada in 1980, ran a welding business and was once one of Alberta’s best-known dancehall promoters and sound system operators. He said a vision led him to the church’s first home in Lake Bonaventure, where “they (landlord) gave me the okay to start the church”. After three years it moved to Parkland, and in 2014 it moved to Ogden House. Membership has grown from six, mostly family, to just over 50.

Russell is not paid. “I work for myself and do ministry,” he said. “This church is not about offerings and money, it is about the word of God, the uncompromised teachings of God.” Members described a small, family-style congregation that reminded them of worship in Jamaica.

The church’s plans involve property at both ends. In Calgary, the long-term goal is to acquire its own space to hold 500 to 1,000 people. In Jamaica, it has built houses for needy families in Treadlight, Clarendon, and helped improve facilities at the area’s basic and primary schools.

Southeast Hope’s story is typical of diaspora churches: they start in rented rooms, move as leases change, and dream of owning their own building. Renting keeps costs down but gives little security, which is why many congregations eventually want their own property. The church has also put money into homes and school buildings in Clarendon. For Jamaicans abroad, a home congregation can channel money into housing back home, and the same care about leases, titles and costs applies in Calgary and Clarendon alike.

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