Last summer the Record’s intern Helen Pye, from England, did some interviews for her feature article in this issue on the challenges facing the urban church. Full transcripts of the interviews can be found online, and the one with Rev. Dr. Rick Fee is included in these pages.
Read together, the interviews are a dynamic dialogue on the future of the church. We present a few excerpts here to get you thinking about what church can be in the city and beyond in the coming years.
We’ve gone beyond the day where we build a building and people will come. Church buildings don’t necessarily attract and increasingly I find congregations are saying it’s when we go out of the building that we are church. You only have to go to a patio for lunch in Toronto to recognize there’s a whole new world out there in an urban setting in Canada. Go to a sports arena on Sunday morning at 11 o’clock, that’s where people are.
—Rev. Dr. Rick Fee, general secretary, Life and Mission Agency
I think there is another way of doing ministry that some congregations could take on. It requires a certain kind of leadership that has a vision for urban communities and for Christian work that does not repeat the mistakes of the church in the past. The church has been involved in mission in very negative ways and at this moment it’s going through its post-aboriginal mission experiences and apologies. When I say the church I’m first talking about structures: the presbyteries, the General Assemblies, then I’m talking about church as the congregations.
—Rev. Paulette Brown, executive director, Flemingdon Gateway Mission, Toronto
Members of the congregation have become very isolated from the community around the church because they don’t live here anymore. They probably drive past many churches to get here. So, while the church is still a reflection of what they found valuable and meaningful 40 or 50 years ago, the neighbourhood doesn’t look the same. It isn’t like them; it isn’t interested in what they’re doing; it doesn’t come to their events and doesn’t have any idea of what goes on inside these walls. So the community has this benign neglect of whatever goes on behind the walls of that building on the corner and the congregation has a suspicious, vaguely hostile reaction to the community.
—Rev. Douglas duCharme, minister, Hope United, Toronto
The main scripture used to be Matthew 28; go make disciples of all nations, that was our evangelism verse. Now Luke 10 has become the new text for the missional church; go out as lambs among wolves, go out without money. Luke 10 has us being sent out to places where we find people receptive to the Word and then we plant there and set up places for them to worship. Another passage is Jeremiah 29, where the exiles are living in Babylon and the advice to them is to build homes, etc., and basically pray for the flourishing of the city where you are and establish a community there.
—Rev. Glen Soderholm, minister, Two Rivers Church, Guelph, Ont.
If you’d come to St. Andrew’s King Street yesterday morning, we had a community breakfast for about 140. We have a group of volunteers from the congregation and outside who come at about six a.m. and make breakfast. It’s a very different crowd who come to Bible study on Wednesday. They come for a whole variety of reasons and represent a different part of the community that lives in the downtown core. The best case scenario is that people see the church or the congregation as a community based on love and inclusion and acceptance and would feel welcome to join and would want to be a part of that community. A lot of volunteers find this their way of being a compassionate person.
—Rev. Dr. Bob Faris, associate minister, St. Andrew’s King Street, Toronto
