Rev. Rafael Vallejo is minister at Queen Street East. He talks with Rev. Dr. Bob Faris, associate minister at St. Andrew’s King Street, Toronto.
Vallejo: There’s a contrast between my church and yours, so I started by bringing Helen to the community centre. I introduced her to Wanda, the person we’re working with on the Good Food Market. She talks about food in the city and what’s it like living in a low income neighbourhood, where even if you have the money there’s no place to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. And then she talked about health in a comprehensive sense; it’s not just about health but how safe are your streets? Can you get access to food when you need it? Do you have access to education? All that is part of what South Riverdale means when it uses the word health. Then we went downstairs and she met Raffi; he is a drug user who runs a drug program for users. They have an official needle exchange. Sex workers can come on a Wednesday morning to chat and get their supplies. Those are the main projects in this community and the church is mainly involved in the food market.
Is it different at your church?
Faris: Our churches are very different in the demographics and the locations. But if you’d come to St. Andrew’s yesterday morning, we had a community breakfast and we had a record number of people, about 140. We have a group of volunteers from the congregation and outside who come about 6 a.m. and make breakfast. It’s a very different crowd that comes 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 breakfast goes all year on Tuesdays.
Then we have the Out of the Cold dinner, which started about 25 years ago because of increasing homelessness. A number of the downtown churches offer a meal in the winter time and many offered a place to sleep in the beginning; some still do. St. Andrew’s did at first but that was always more difficult because of the logistics and the potential for violence. The good news was that the city created more shelters so the need for overnight accommodation decreased.
From November until April, we have a meal on Tuesday nights. Stevie Cameron was the person who started it. She’s a well-known journalist and author; she’s an elder at St. Andrew’s. They decided to offer a meal you would offer to friends and family coming to your home. We have a great cook who prepares fabulous meals. The preparation goes on Sunday afternoon. Everything is made from scratch.
There’s a group of women who come in on Monday morning, mostly older women and not members of St. Andrew’s, who have been doing this for years and years. They make sandwiches that we hand out as people are leaving so they have something to eat the next morning. In the afternoon, more people help with the preparation. And, in the evening, more helpers come, a lot of younger people, many who work downtown and they come after work.
Many aren’t members at St. Andrew’s but they find this a way to express their concern and compassion for the people of the city. The largest number of people we served this year was about 350. We can only serve about 110 people at a time, so people do have to line up outside, which we don’t like but we can’t get around that. It’s a great meal and a chance to get out of the cold. People come for the food and because it’s a safe place and a place where they find respect and dignity and a bit of community. It’s not perfect but it’s a good space. The volunteers have been coming for long enough that they get to know people. We have a boutique with second hand items and clothing; it’s all free and we have a numbering system so people get a number at random when they come in and we’ll call out a number at random so they can choose an item. It’s well-supported by the congregation and we got quite a bit of funding from corporations downtown, especially ones that have people from that corporation volunteering. Many have programs that support organizations where their employees are volunteering. The latest coup is that the local Starbucks has agreed to provide coffee and leftover baked goods for the program.
It’s the ongoing discussion about the difference between charity and justice and the need to respond to people’s immediate needs, which are food, shelter and a place of dignity, safety and security. It’s an ongoing issue for the church, for the congregation, why we need to provide these things in a wealthy city. We have an old prophet called Stuart who is a retired minister, now 94, and he’s a bit curmudgeony and puts people off. But he’s always pushing us towards those questions of justice and why don’t we go further in the analysis and the advocacy and the protest.
I don’t personally think the aim is to get people into church. That might happen, and in my personal view the best case scenario is people see the church or the congregation is 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. We want people to be part of our community, but there’s no attempt to convert or proselytize the guests who come to Out of the Cold.
Many of those who come are very religious; they are normally the ones who raise those questions. We have a lot of volunteers who aren’t members of the church. We’ve had a lot of discussion over the past year among members of the congregation and volunteers called to the program. Someone in the church let it slip that they thought it was a good recruiting ground for members, and that really provoked a reaction among volunteers. It’s a healthy discussion. A lot of volunteers find this their way of being a compassionate person. It’s not the aim, but as we look at what the church is in an urban setting, the Church with a capital C would cover all of those people. I wouldn’t want to make the lines clear between church members and volunteers and guests. In terms of how I think of being a Christian and what Christian community is about and how we share around tables as children of God, how do our structures and definitions of who’s who fit into that?
Before I was at St. Andrew’s, I never volunteered in an Out of the Cold program and I did critique them because it is primarily a compassionate venture for people on the margins from people who are not. It’s not full justice. It doesn’t provide housing or anything needed for a full life. But as I’ve been involved in it, it does create a space of community and links people who would otherwise never talk to each other or know each other. It is the nucleus of something that can be transformative. It is important to respond to immediate needs; people are hungry, people are lonely, isolated, there are tons of people with mental health issues and substance abuse issues, and if the other side is to say we’ll work hard and advocate and get the right legislation and someday we’ll have a society where everyone is housed and has enough to eat, well, that person is still hungry, standing outside the door or needs someone to talk to.
For me, both are important and need to interact. Programs even here can become very sterile and get divided between those who give services and those who receive. It’s always that dynamic going on.
Vallejo: What does it mean to be church in the city? Church is the community, or where we can provide a safe, hospitable place. Even if that means for only an hour, it’s still an hour where people can feel I am a human being after all or I have an opportunity to feel respect for who I am regardless of how I look or where I come from or the colour of my skin. Eighty per cent of the people in jail are people of colour. Poverty in this city is racialized. You can see that in my church and the people at the program.
Faris: A diversity of people come to our program; a significant number are white. What I’ve noticed when I overhear conversations is that they’re very racialized and there’s a lot of blame—thinking that one particular group is getting more than another group. Especially the aboriginal community; people think aboriginal people get a lot of privileges. The number of coloured people who are incarcerated is disproportionate. But there are white people who are homeless and suffering from mental illness, so we get the whole spectrum of people in the city coming to us. We, perhaps, have more white people in our programs because of where we’re located.
I think a lot of the generalized models of the urban church in our Presbyterian church are based on a 1960s and ‘70s understanding. The understanding was that the urban core, and particularly in this part of the city, was poor. It was where the drug abuse happened and the sex trade happened. It was true; the cores had become places of poverty downtown. But since the late ‘80s and ‘90s, with gentrification, a large number of the people living in the downtown core are now very wealthy or comparatively wealthy. You have to be rich to afford to have a house here.
There was a debate recently where the deputy mayor said you don’t want to raise kids in the downtown area because it’s dangerous, etc. But actually, when you look at what Toronto has become, the areas that are poor and experience more violence, where the shootings have been happening, are the inner suburbs. Although there is also poverty in the suburbs, people move out because it is cheaper to buy a home outside the city. They are being pushed out because of high rents.
So when you talk about urban ministry you’re talking about a very rich group of people. In the papers there was a map showing the difference in income levels across the city. It is a dramatic change. The concentration of highest income is in the core.
Vallejo: If Toronto was a square, there is a core where the rich live and a U shape where the poor live. St. Michael’s Hospital is called the hospital of the poor.
Faris: The problems are affecting the whole church. Queen Street East is on the edge of the U. Although the congregation being served is poor, the people who live around the edge are not poor and there is a development around Portland that is going to expand that divide. Hospitals downtown are being challenged because of the number of people moving into the core. The people moving in are moving into the condos and are higher income and this is putting a strain on people who are poor living downtown and stress on mixed income communities.
The renewal of Regent Park is a case in point. Poor people are now living in Scarborough; they’re now living in East York, York, parts of Etobicoke. Those churches are becoming more the churches of the poor. Those churches aren’t equipped to deal with the change in demographics. Those churches in suburban areas are remnants of what was the suburban church in the ‘60s and ‘70s. They want to see church be like it was back then and it’s not going to be. It’s going to be a very different group of people on a racial or income level.
Vallejo: A good way to test the statement is to go to church and listen to what is being spoken about. I’m doing groundwork on guns and gangs and I think, how many of our churches, knowing the reality of guns and gangs in our city, talk about it during worship? It’s an open question. I guess behind that question is the feeling I have is that we need to talk about guns and gangs; it’s an urban reality and that’s what church in the city is about. It’s another world when you go into church, a world that is insulated from everything else that is out there. Maybe that’s why people come to church, because it’s so rough out there and I just need this one hour where I’m alone with my God, or I am with other people who believe things like me. It is a place of solace and of comfort and a place that is not changing against a world that is changing.
Faris: There is already some push back and my colleague, who had similar kinds of views, has felt it as well. St. Andrew’s is different from Queen Street East. St. Andrew’s is from 1830; Queen Street East is 135 years old. In the present location, the current structure was built in 1870, but it came out of an earlier congregation, built right across from an Anglican cathedral. There was a little mission church where St. Andrew’s was. There was a part of the congregation that agreed to move there because they agreed to have an organ and hymns in worship rather than just singing songs, and it was certainly the church of the Scottish elite in the city. It’s a beautiful building. In Ontario terms, it’s an old building that we have to spend far too much money on to renovate.
St. Andrew’s has a lot of quite traditional Presbyterians who like a higher form of liturgy, who like things done properly. We have a paid choir and it is a very formal high church kind of liturgy. But for much of its history there has been a balance with its social programs and outreach. In the 19th century, it had St. Andrew’s Institute, and a bank for the poor, training programs for workers, women’s programs, shelter, a bowling alley and youth programs, because the area was quite a poor area.
But, don’t quote me, you have to be very careful in how you speak and how you frame your words to the members. You could very quickly make people angry, and they may decide they want to leave or get you out, which is more likely. In every congregation, there is an educational role, and many of the people in the congregation are beneficiaries of the current economic system and have very good jobs in the financial district. They don’t want to be put on a guilt trip and they fund the programs through their offerings. Many organizations, like Starbucks; we become beholden to the people providing the funding and then can you say anything about the fact that Starbucks charges far too much for their coffee? Why is it taking over the independent coffee shops? And on another level, you have people who are high up in banks sitting in your pews and you’re talking about economic justice. How do you soften it or say it in a way so that you can get a hearing? How do you get them to see that the scripture reading has something to say about the system that we’re all a part of?
Vallejo: It’s like the entire gospel message is being compromised in some way.
Faris: Well, compromised in some way, the way it is told and the way it is heard are two different things. Sometimes when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees or Romans, it was with a harsh judgmental tone, and other times he engaged them in conversation. He wasn’t being confrontational; it was with a parable or a story and what does it mean for your life. There is a place for the prophetic voice and a tone of judgment. You have to be careful because while some people hold important roles in the system, we’re all beneficiaries of the system.
The growing edge of the membership is young urban professionals, and there is a significant ethnic diversity among them. They are the people moving into the condos downtown. St. Andrew’s is one of the few churches that still exists in the downtown core. Mostly they come from Presbyterian or Christian backgrounds. Interestingly, we’ve done quite a few weddings recently for people who are from different Christian backgrounds, but find S.t Andrew’s a place where both can feel some comfort. The church is 50/50 white and non-white—maybe a few more white.
Vallejo: At my church, about 70/30 non-white to white.
Faris: There is huge contrast between my church and yours: numbers, colour, style, location, income. I’ve heard this about outreach a number of times: Jesus came for the rich as well as the poor; God doesn’t see distinction based on wealth.
For me, St. Andrew’s has the breakfast and Out of the Cold and an AA group meets there regularly, and it’s all part of who we are. Certainly when you come you are struck with ‘this is a wealthy church.’ We can decide to spend an extra $250,000 on building renovations if we want. Yet there is poverty; there are a variety of people who make up the church.
At Queen Street East, I’ve heard people saying what we need is to get a whole group of young people in—young urban professionals who have the leadership skills and money to put in the offering plate. That’s the growing edge of population and what the community is becoming. If that happens, Queen Street East could potentially be a very rich church. The challenge is, then, being church in the urban reality which has both poverty and wealth, with a diminishing middle class. We’re becoming like Brazil or South Africa—we have incredibly expensive condos and ways of living next door to poor living conditions. Are we just a church of the poor, or how does the church interact with the wealthy? There’s a guy at Bible study who is a very wealthy lawyer. When I say the early church grew in poor communities, he points out that it also attracted a number of wealthy people who actually funded it, offered their homes, offered women to the cause and, within a short time, a lot of the people in the church were from higher standards than at the very beginning. You always live in that tension.
Vallejo: It’s a difficult question to answer, what is the future of the church in Toronto, because what is Toronto? Where is Toronto? The city is so diverse, it is many realities not just one, and we cannot speak of a whole. Our churches are not very far apart geographically but our realities are almost from different worlds.
Faris: Already the church is quite different from what it was. The churches that have survived the last three or four decades of decline are ones that have been innovative in some way and responded to a new reality. Going forward, it’s going to be more of that. People are reading Diana Butler Bass and talking about what the church is now and what it will be in the future. There are communities that are willing to respond to where they are right now.
I think there are some people in the presbytery who think Queen Street East is still a number of older people who just want to keep it the same as it is. That’s not what the congregation is now. It’s a different group of people with different challenges and it does reflect the diversity of the community.
St. Andrew’s is flourishing as much as it is because it is responding—a case of adapt or die. It is the congregation that refuses to do that, who won’t consider alternative ways of being involved in the community. I need to be careful with my language here because I don’t think it’s just about programs; it’s about how you are a Christian faith community in the midst of the community where you live, to the extent that people are able to make that shift and realize that this isn’t a Scottish or Irish immigrant enclave anymore. But some people at Queen Street East still think it is.
Once the issue is realized, God can change and grow the church in miraculous ways in those kinds of communities—to be more vital and engaged and be good news in the midst of whatever they’re in. If the focus is on re-establishing the church as it’s been and putting the emphasis on having to follow the Presbyterian way and having all the same committees and the same structures, then it’s only a matter of time before we disappear. Queen Street East has survived and thrived in some way in the past couple of years, but all the Presbyterian churches in the city face the same kinds of challenges. Part of what the future might be is that we talk to each other and we’re not in competition and we think more in terms of the city.
What’s happening at Flemingdon Gateway Mission is that the congregation has ceased to exist, but what’s happening there is dynamic and wonderful and has the support of a number of other congregations in the presbytery. That’s a very interesting way to be church. The people were putting all their energy into making sure there was a service on Sunday morning and somebody to be a representative as presbytery and enough people to make up a session and put on the annual statistical report. And if that’s all the church is, then it’s not a church anymore.
The signs of the time are pointing to reimagining and reconceptualising what church is, what church in the city is about. I’m only beginning to understand it myself. Toronto is a big city; one cannot speak of it all, you’d have to speak to each particular neighbourhood. But the reality of urban church is interesting because it is always situated somewhere and one cannot speak for somewhere else. Even within the same denomination, the same city, even the same street, the neighbourhood can change, the church can change. It makes us redefine what we mean by ministry and being church in these places. In the way we minister and serve, we are challenging what it means to be church. Listening to people talk about drug abuse and prostitution and food—such a basic issue as food—then you begin to realize, how do these things come together and redefine what we mean by church.
We’re being pushed to look at what it means to be church outside the Constantine model, where the church stood beside the state and the parish system and established church; where churches were meant to be the same and do the same thing and address the same thing. I think we’re pushing back or learning lessons from the very earliest form of the church. These were very diverse cities in an empire, and they were the crossroads where people met and mixed ideas and that’s more our reality in the urban church, whether in Toronto or London: dynamic, diverse, changing cities. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus and proclaim the gospel in these dynamic places? It’s exciting and interesting, but people who have this Constantinian model of the church find it scary and threatening.
The patterns in society are showing us we have rich church, poor church, and that reflects the history and current state of that church. As much as we’re inclusive in our preaching, there are still people who won’t go to a church because they say, ‘that church is not for me’ or ‘I won’t fit in in these clothes,’ etc. At Queen Street East you see the great unwashed. At St. Andrew’s, the stereotype is there but it’s changing and that’s good because it’s beginning to reflect the profile of the city we’re in. I think people come into church and look at the faces around them and make a judgement on whether I want to come back or if it’s the right place for me. Based on that, it seems some churches are more welcoming of a certain social class. There are people at Queen Street East who will walk in and feel welcome as soon as they come.
