Our team leader Robert.

A few weeks ago, Canvas was privileged enough to receive the use of a facility worth nearly £1 million - and it suits our needs perfectly. The story of how it all came to be is a great one, one worth telling. We honestly believe that it has been a modern-day miracle of sorts.

Our team leader Robert has written a great account of how the buildings of Tiverton Christian Fellowship (TCF) became the Canvas House. Read the story below.

In the last 2 weeks, we can truly say we’ve seen God work in ways that are unimaginable.

On Sunday, a church right next to the University, Tiverton Christian Fellowship, held a service to dedicate their building to Canvas. This church moved out of their building, gave us use of their fantastic building, and gave us their blessing on the way out.

Let me explain (and keep in mind this happened less than 2 weeks ago).

On Thursday, Sept. 11th, I met with Richard Barnes, an elder from Tiverton Christian Fellowship about possibly coexisting in their building. (Tiverton Christian Fellowship is an old church located in the heart of the student population at University of Birmingham. They have been struggling for some years now and their congregation has dwindled down to about 10-15 people). In this meeting I told Richard all about us - who we are, what we do, what our goals are. I asked about the possibility of Canvas using the building during the week when the church isn’t using it. Richard was pretty overwhelmed by the entire situation. (He came into the meeting thinking I wanted to rent one room out once a week.) At the end of the meeting, I asked him if he understood. He slowly said, “I think so. Can you put it down on paper.”

So we wrote Tiverton Christian Fellowship a proposal to use their building. They had an elders meeting that Saturday at 8am so they wanted it by then. We finished up the 14 page proposal at 3am on Friday night. The elders looked over it that morning and asked us to meet with them on Sunday (the next day). They wanted to talk about the practicals of the situation and get to know us.

We’re not sure where this is going, but it’s already gone farther than we imagined.

Here’s where all this gets crazy. Our boss, Naomi, is in “coincidentally” in town from the States for one of her 2 annual trips. She comes with us to the Elders meeting on Sunday Night.

Keep in mind, Sunday is day 4 of this thing. We go meet with the elders we start talking about what should happen. We talked for over 3 and a half hours. For the last hour or two, the Elders of their church talk about how Tiverton has a heart to reach students, but they just need to get out of the way and let Canvas be the way to outreach to the students. They mentioned 3 possibilities - coexisting with us, relocating the church and letting us use their current buildings, and closing the church and letting us have it.

We left the meeting fully convinced that they were going to help us in some way. They wanted us to come to their trustees meeting on Wednesday.

Couple things - we are 4 days into this meeting. Naomi is in town to be a part of these discussions, and the trustees meeting, which is held every couple months, is 3 days away.

Day 7 is Wednesday - the meeting with the trustees. We met with them and talked about how we could work together and hopefully coexist in the facilities. The meeting wasn’t all that long. We showed them a video of interviews with some of our students and the Spain Globalscope video to give them a picture of what we’re discussing. They ask questions about us, our ministry model, our goals. The meeting goes pretty well. However, we didn’t walk away with as much clarity as we did on Sunday.

Two hours later at 11:30pm, Richard Barnes calls me and says they unanimously agreed to a memo of understanding that we presented them to use their building. We were excited, but we didn’t know exactly what everything meant. We did know that they were going to let us use the building to some degree.

Thursday (day 8), the Trustees of Tiverton tell us that the church is moving out of that building and they want Canvas to use it!!!!! Unbelievable.

Sunday, they had a dedication service to us and handed us the keys to the building. Paul, the chairman of the Trustees of the church, said to everyone, “God has prepared you (Canvas) and the church for this moment. God has brought us to this point.” He carried on talking about how this entire situation was “God ordained.”

We moved in and started painting just like that. It was amazing to see God work like that.

Oh, and remember 513 — the house we were supposed to get? After we found out about getting the building, we called the letting agent and asked if we could get out of the contract. He said we could because the house renovations which were supposed to be done the 1st of September weren’t done yet. He said it was good you got out of the contract because the house wouldn’t have been ready until November. He voided our original contract and refunded our deposit. God had his hand in that as well. An incredible 2 weeks. There is no way all of this could have been orchestrated except for God.

Canvas has recently been featured in CMF’s occasional newsletter as a group that cares about the community and does something to show that care. Take a look for yourself. Click here to take a look online.

Our “Taking the Smelly Out of Selly” efforts have since gotten the attention of the Birmingham City Council and the Student Guild at the University. Cleaning up Selly Oak will remain on our agenda. We want to be the type of people who put action behind our environmental and stewardship convictions. Thanks for the shout-out, CMF.