Around Town: Menno Hall, TEDS at TWU, Coptic church post-arson . . .

Menno Hall is at the main intersection on the UBC campus.

Anyone who travels out to the UBC campus will have noticed the major development on the northeast corner of University Boulevard and Wesbrook Mall.

That project – Menno Hall – is now all but complete, hosting students and several initiatives.

There are three main elements to Menno Hall:

1. Haven: “Welcome to Haven apartments, a rental community where comfort, leisure and entertainment are designed with your lifestyle in mind. Move in fall 2026, with  studio, one-, two and three-bedroom apartments for rent on UBC campus.”
2. Pax House: “A vibrant student residence [for 106 students] grounded in hospitality, shared learning and community life.”
3. Peacebridge Institute: “The Peacebridge Institute hosts programs, research and events focused on peacebuilding, dialogue and global development.’

Pax House, Haven and Peacebridge Institute will share Menno Hall.

The project is a partnership between Pacific Centre for Discipleship Association, a non-profit Inter-Mennonite society which operated the Menno Simons Centre student residence in West Point Grey for over 30 years, and HyLand, which was founded 12 years ago when Henry and Mary Rempel decided to donate their extensive real estate portfolio to the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).

Kevin Hiebert, President of Pax House Society, notes that the project is nearing completion, but is still in flux:

On the Labour Day weekend, our first cohort of students moved into Pax House at Menno Hall. We got a staged occupancy permit from the UEL, while construction is still wrapping up on the dining hall, auditorium and offices.

I don’t have a grand opening event date to share yet, because we’re focused on getting the rest of the building completed first. . . .

 The Haven apartments on the other side of the building have opened, with (most of?) their rental apartment residents having moved in already as well.

Menno Hall, as seen from the Dal Schindell Gallery at Regent College.

Among the groups moving into Menno Hall are:

• Coastal Church: The church, which already operates seven campuses around Metro Vancouver (and others in Squamish and Tempe, Arizona) has announced that it will be “launching a new campus right in the heart of the UBC community,” at Menno Hall, where it will hold a ‘Launch Sunday’ November 1.
• Mennonite Church BC: Executive Minister Shelby Boese announced September 9 that their offices based at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford will be moved to Menno Hall by November 30. MCBC plans to retain its Fraser Valley presence in one of the Abbotsford-area church facilities.

Menno Hall stands right across the University Boulevard from Regent College, so that bodes well for the campus.

TEDS at TWU

David Pao is the Dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) as it begins a new chapter on the TWU campus. TWU photo

The decision of a leading evangelical seminary based in the American Midwest to allow itself to be taken over by Trinity Western University came as a shock to many observers when it was announced earlier this year.

A February 4 release from Trinity Western stated:

Trinity Western University has become the new home of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), welcoming one of North America’s most respected theological schools into its academic community to serve the church locally and globally through seminary education.”

A September 11 release stated that TEDS has begun its new life on the TWU campus and introduced Dean, David Pao:

Dr. Pao’s path into theological education began at Harvard, where he trained in Greco-Roman studies before devoting his life to the study and teaching of the New Testament in its historical context. He has now taught and mentored students at TEDS for nearly three decades. . . .

TWU’s location on the Pacific Rim, along with the diversity of its faculty and student body, positions TEDS to serve what he observes is “an increasingly interconnected global Church.”

An article in Christianity Today described TEDS’ rich history and broad influence:

Founded by Scandinavian immigrants, Trinity was born from a merger in the 1940s of the Chicago-based Swedish Bible Institute and the Minnesota-based Norwegian-Danish Bible Institute. Though affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church, a Minneapolis-based denomination with 1,600 churches, the school has long sought to influence the wider evangelical world.

Longtime former dean Kenneth Kantzer, who led the school from 1960 to 1978 and helped it grow to national prominence, called TEDS “the Free Church’s love gift to the worldwide church of Christ.”

Among the school’s alumni are historian Randall Balmer, Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, New Testament scholars Scot McKnight and Craig Blomberg, disgraced evangelist Ravi Zacharias, Christian television host John Ankerberg, and Collin Hansen, editor-in-chief of The Gospel Coalition.

Longtime professor Don Carson also was one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition, helping launch the so-called Young, Restless and Reformed movement that led to a Calvinist revival among evangelicals. Kantzer went on to be editor of Christianity Today magazine. 

A directory on the TEDS site shows 23 faculty members, some of whom previously taught at the Deerfield, Illinois campus while others have come from other institutions and some have been part of TWU-related schools.

Aaron Ross will be joining TEDS following several years as lead pastor at Richmond Pentecostal Church. TWU photo

One local addition is Aaron Ross, now program director of in-church formation and curriculum development at TEDS. He has been lead pastor at Richmond Pentecostal Church since 2020, and will step down from that role at the end of this month. 

An article on the TWU site notes:

Dr. Ross is a settler Canadian historian of Christianity, holding a PhD in Theology, Concentration in the History of Christianity, from the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto (Wycliffe College); an MDiv in Pastoral Ministry and Pentecostal Studies from Tyndale Seminary; and a BA in History and French from the University of Western Ontario. 

He is the author of the critically acclaimed monograph The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather: The Struggle for Indigenous Pentecostalism in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), a groundbreaking historical study contributing to vital conversations surrounding faith, culture, leadership development, theological education, missionary legacy and reconciliation.

Dr. Ross has taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in theological and social scientific disciplines at Master’s College and Seminary, Redeemer University, Summit Pacific College and ACTS Seminaries.

Go here for my earlier article on how TEDS came to be at TWU.

St. George builds again

St. George Coptic Orthodox Church has been able to carry on services, but without their own building, since their church was burned down five years ago.

The church was at 108th Avenue and 139th Street in the Surrey. The fire was found to have been set intentionally, though it was not deemed to be a hate crime. A woman was sentenced to nearly five years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of arson

St. George, which draws together a diverse congregation of Coptic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Iraqi and Lebanese Orthodox, has met in various churches since the fire.

An article by Malin Jordan in the Surrey NOW-Leader reported that the re-building process has begun:

Shovels hit the ground July 26 – five years and one week after an arsonist lit their church on fire in Whalley. The blaze burned the church to the ground and devastated the tight-knit community.

Steve Faltas, project manager for the construction of the new church, called the groundbreaking a milestone and the day “momentous” for both the congregation and the entire Coptic Church community.

“We are feeling overjoyed,” said Faltas, who is also a St. George parishioner. “The sadness that we felt when our home was taken away was a deep sadness – and that’s lasted for a long time – but we’ve had tremendous hope in God that this day would come, that we’d be able to start the final stage of our rebuilding and construction of our home. We are not looking back in sorrow, but forward in hope.”

Faltas told the Cloverdale Reporter the building won’t just be a church. It will be a centre-point.

“We want to build a hub for the community,” he explained. “We want to provide a place for not only our community to be served, but the wider community in Surrey to be served as well.”

Surrey mayor Brenda Locke was among the dignitaries present at the groundbreaking, which took place at a new site, 18555 – 88th Avenue, in the Port Kells neighbourhood of Surrey.

The project is expected to cost about $25 million; money will be generated by selling the old church property, insurance, grants and donations. Go here for the GoFundMe page.

Events are listed below, but there is also an Events page and a Jobs page on the Church for Vancouver site.