A pair of Airdrie churches showed their Stampede spirit and love for the communities, each serving a free pancake breakfast yesterday (July 9).

King's Court Church on Kingsway Blvd. and the Daybreak Community Church located on Yankee Valley Boulevard celebrated by inviting the community around them to come out for the free breakfasts.

Biyi is the Senior Pastor of King's Court. Originally from Nigeria he said most of Airdrie is made up of immigrants like him. "Immigrants from Saskatchewan and other places."

He said their church really enjoys doing things with the community in mind.

"We do lots of community events for families, for kids, for the community in general."

Around 130 members call the church home, but hundreds turned out for breakfast yesterday.  Biyi said the reason they hold it is to show people the love of Jesus Christ.  

"One key thing about the message of Jesus Christ is love. Love means embracing the people in the community and bringing everyone out to live together in peace in God's will. That's the message we're trying to portray and share with everyone."

Ben Terlesky is the Council Chairman of the Daybreak Church.  He said they call off church on this Sunday so they can reach the community.  

"We just choose to make this a special event for our community. Cancel the service and just connect with the folks here in Airdrie."

Terlesky said the majority of people who come to the breakfast are from the community.

"If I had to guesstimate, it's probably around 70 - 80 per cent is community folks. Folks that were maybe connected in some way to Daybreak Community Church or maybe were just driving by and said, 'hey, there's a pancake breakfast in our neighbourhood, let's go get some pancakes'."

Daybreak makes a point of welcoming their community and using the church as a facility to meet in.  

"If you came here during the week, you'd see that displayed. We'll have things like Zumba, we have Good Food boxes. We connect in so many different ways. Lots of community folks say 'hey, we need a place to meet and have an event.' They'll come and check us out and they'll say, 'hey, that's terrific, we can rent a space here during the week'."