“Christians and even Jewish and Muslim groups were offering space to hold our Christmas service.”

Craig Macartney
Spur Ottawa Writer

Living Waters Christian Assembly is determined to carry on the ministry after a devastating fire destroyed their facility only days before Christmas.

“According to the fire marshal [the cause of the fire] is undetermined,” says Senior Pastor Syd Curry. “We had temporary heat going into the building. We were under construction. The National Capital Commission (NCC) was in the process of installing new heat registers for a new heating system that was recently installed.”

After the fire, Curry was amazed at the response.

“There has been a really strong response from the faith community. Christians and even Jewish and Muslim groups were reaching out offering space to hold our Christmas service.”

Living Waters celebrates Christmas Eve at the Woodvale Pentecostal Church facility. Photo courtesy of Living Waters Christian Assembly.

The congregation celebrated Christmas and their New Year’s service at Woodvale Pentecostal Church. However, with the holidays over and programs starting up again, Curry says they have been looking for an interim place to stay while they put together more long-term plans.

“People arrange their Sunday schedule around going to church. When the service suddenly moves to an afternoon service, especially when it is at a new location, it disrupts people’s routine. The NCC has been really supportive. They’ve been great landlords. Right away they reached out and were really concerned for us. They are helping us look for alternate space at their other properties right now.”

It’s still too early for the NCC to begin planning any sort of rebuilding projects at the Slack Road property. Sadly, Curry says the building, itself, is only the surface of what the fire took from the congregation. Although they had fire insurance, it will only cover a fraction of what they lost.

“You never expect this kind of thing to happen. We’re not a big church and we just couldn’t carry the premiums [for a larger insurance plan]. We figure we lost about half a million dollars in the fire.

“When we do find a new place, we will probably be walking into an empty space. We’ll need to think about seating and everything. We lost all our sound equipment, our instruments, our lighting, our food bank, all our archives. Everything from our nursery is gone and there were so many memories attached to those things.”

“We can’t even think long term right now.”

For 25 years the congregation put on an Easter passion play. The fire destroyed about 200 professional costumes from the play, purchased from the National Art Centre, that Curry says “were essentially priceless.”

One of the congregation’s biggest concerns is finding a way to continue the outreach work they have been doing in the community, especially Revolution 457—their skateboard ministry to local youth.

“Every Friday we would turn the whole place in a skatepark. Some weeks when we had events we would have up to 150 kids there. All our ramps are gone. We had a really nice halfpipe. That’s gone. I know when we can rebuild that we will have support from the business community, but we can’t even think long term right now. We are just looking for interim measures.”

Curry says the love and encouragement that has been pouring in from the Christian community has been a huge support to the congregation. Some of his neighbours even donated some kids’ toys toward a new nursery for when they find a new facility.

For now, though, the congregation is focused on finding an interim location and furnishing it with seating, lighting, and a working sound system. Anyone who wants to donate toward those needs can give through a Canada Helps page set up for Living Waters or by mailing cheques that will be forwarded on through their old address: 105 Slack Rd., Ottawa, ON, K2G 0B7.