This is one of three larger congregations in the city and is in walking distance of the Wires' apartment.  Most Sundays the couple attend the 9 am service.  There are three other services on a weekend, serving about 2500 worshippers.

 
 

   By bicyle, pedicab, and bus, but mostly by walking, members crowd into the church four times on a weekend.  There are other meetings for women, Bible Study, and for young people during the week.
 
 

The congregation lost its worship space about ten years ago when street it was on was widened and office buildings and banks were built along it. For the next several years they worshipped at the YMCA building about a mile away..  Anne Wire remembers visiting their worship in the 90s and finding them packed into rooms and sitting up and down the stairs.  The church received a small parcel of land on astreet near its former location where its new building is dwarfed by the skyscrapers around it.
 
 
 

Going to worship for most means climbing stairs.   The small parcel of land the church is on and the size of the congregation meant putting worshippers on five levels, a basement and four floors.

Church leaders designed the outside to make the building look distinctively church-like.  Architects from the provincial offices planned how its numbers could fit inside.  The sanctuary on the first floor rises the full height of the building, making that space actually taller than deep.

A balcony at the rear of the sanctuary  covers the vestibule, where the church has its little shop for selling bibles and other Christian literature. The balcony seats almost as many as the sanctuary, but most must watch the service on closed circuit TV.
 
 
 

The wall above the balcony slopes toward the front of the sanctuary, leaving space for two more floors of seating.  An overflow from these rooms gather in the basement.   Though most worship in front of a TV screen, singing and praying is usually strong and fervent.
 
 
 
 
 

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