our story
The Nest was founded by church leaders and pastors who saw important realities and trends which were at work in the churches of British Columbia:
Reality Three: For-profit developers are seeing an opportunity. Given the prime location of many church sites, for profit developers are eager to seek some type of deal - from outright land purchases, to some type of partnership scheme. But what is the true cost of these deals?
Reality Four: People need homes. Every day we are reading about peoples real need to find affordable housing and many churches desire to help, but they don’t know where to begin.
Reality One: Many churches are struggling to make ends meet. Rising operational costs and the prospect of costly building upgrades or replacements stretches bottom lines and makes mission and outreach harder to achieve.
Reality Two: Churches have land. Lot’s of it. Some of this land is well used, but in many cases, as the cities around them have changed, there exists the opportunity for a re-evaluation. Could the land be put to even better use?
And it was in the confluence of these realities that the Nest founders saw an opportunity to help:
+ What if churches, struggling to make ends meet didn’t have to sell their land?
+ What if under-utilized land could be reimagined and re-purposed to help churches serve their communities?
+ What if there was a values based non-profit developer, someone churches could trust?
+ What if there was a way a church could retain its land, build affordable housing for the good of its community, and gain a return for its mission?
The Nest was started in 2017 to help provide churches with answers to these questions. It’s at the heart of our vision & mission.
“Land is our most important physical asset; a gift from God. Stewarding it well for the blessing of all people and the use of future generations is a mandate of churches and denominations. ”