A new 22,000 square foot Retreat and Training Centre has opened at Southland Church in Steinbach.

Lead Pastor Ray Duerksen says this is the fourth phase at their campus, built to facilitate growth at Southland.

Prior to last fall, Southland had been running only Sunday services. But church attendance was continuing to grow and in fact, Southland has experienced 22 consecutive years of growth. That prompted Southland to start running two services on Saturdays again. However, Duerksen says this created a bit of a problem. With Southland also running retreats, seminars, and workshops on Saturdays, they suddenly needed more space, especially for hosting retreats.

Further to that, Southland hosts Church Renewal weekends three times each year; January, May, and October. This is a chance for pastors, church leaders and denominational leaders from across the world to spend a weekend at Southland. This has been happening for four years and has attracted delegates from 22 countries. Church Renewal runs from Friday night until Monday noon and Duerksen says they were left with a decision to make.

"We were faced with a problem, are we going to shut all that kind of ministry down where we are helping other churches," says Duerksen. "Or are we going to bite the bullet and invest in other churches and pastors and that kind of thing and we chose the latter."

The decision was made to construct a Retreat and Training Centre. Duerksen says the size is comparable to their previous auditorium used prior to 2012. It seats between 760 and 780, with moveable walls to allow for overflow seating. Duerksen says this latest construction project exceeds his expectations.

"Built in such a way that we can use it in many different ways," explains Duerksen. "Multi-purpose has always been a high value for us here."

Saturday services at Southland have considerably smaller crowds. Duerksen says when the Retreat and Training Centre first opened, they decided to use that space to host their Saturday services. But that lasted only two weeks, as they quickly outgrew the new space and moved those Saturday services back to the main auditorium.

The Retreat and Training Centre wasn't the only addition at Southland in the last twelve months. Duerksen says for the last few years they had been leasing space at the former Lund Boats location for use as a Distribution Centre. This grew out of the Church's Thanksgiving Food and Clothing Drive which started back in 2009. Duerksen says the need for food, clothing, and furniture doesn't just happen at Thanksgiving, it is a year long challenge. And the Distribution Centre was designed as a place where people could pick up these supplies year round in event of an emergency. But Duerksen says they knew one day they would like to move the Distribution Centre to the Southland property and decided to build it at the same time as the Retreat and Training Centre.

This being the fourth phase at Southland, one might ask whether the cost of construction just adds to existing debt from previous phases. Duerksen says that is not the case. He notes right now phase four is the only phase where there is still money owing. Duerksen notes they have already paid off a considerable amount of phase four and hope to pay the rest in the next two years.