Step inside Sheridan Park Family Church and you will discover that while this is a vibrant, contemporary church nurturing people of all ages, it has deep roots here. The congregation traces its beginnings back to the time before Mississauga had yet been named a city, or even a town.
It was in 1967—Canada’s centennial year—when a group of area Christians came together to worship God in a local elementary school for the first time. Canadians from coast-to-coast were celebrating this country’s past and looking ahead to the future.
The new church sought to establish a congregation that would serve those in their midst, and reach out to offer practical care and spiritual support to others.
The congregation formally organized in 1973 with 27 members. As a part of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA—an international, evangelical denomination that opened its first church in Canada in 1887), the little congregation grew rapidly, purchasing the land on which the church still sits that same year. The sod was turned in 1978, and the building was dedicated to God one year later.
In 2017 as the congregation prepared to mark its 50th anniversary, the church’s leadership completed an intense period of evaluation and prayer, which led to a bold new mission statement, a new name, revitalization of the building’s interior (on-going) and the recruitment and hiring of several new staff positions. A lot is new, but our beliefs and affiliation (to the C&MA) remain the same.
As organizations made up of imperfect human beings, all churches experience highs and lows, challenges and celebrations, and Sheridan Park Family Church has known its share of all of those things.
But throughout the half century that we’ve been established here, we have known that God loves us—and all those around us—deeply and richly. And in thanksgiving for this truth, we have sought to follow Jesus’ commands to love God, to love others, and to share the good news of what God is doing in our midst.