Trinity York Mills, Toronto, and Evangel Hall are teaming up for the fourth straight year to raise money for the inner-city mission. “People in the community see a congregation doing something that's not abstract. And there's real excitement in the church,” said Jerry Crowder, an elder at Trinity.
It's always the case: if you want something done, ask somebody who is busy. Take Marilynne Grant for example. She is an elder at Knox, Oakville, Ont., and she also sits on the executive of of the Oakville May Court Club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The club's 200 members raised $65,000 last year for a variety of different projects. One of the most popular is a puppet project that visits schools, teaching various life lessons, and a lunch box program that delivers food items to 11 schools in the Oakville area. They also support local groups working with disabled adults, cancer patients and people living with HIV, run a scholarship program which gave $20,000 to 21 students last year, and organize several annual fundraisers that support various community initiatives. “I've made so many close friends,” Grant told the Record. “And you work really hard to raise money and give it back to your community.”
There is a propensity for forward-thinking and innovative ministers who aren't afraid to push the limits in the Presbytery of Barrie. While remaining Presbyterian, they have embraced the 21st century with contemporary worship, a renewed focus on outreach and evangelism to win people to Christ, and pared-down services that appeal to younger and/or unchurched folk.
It takes no talent to become a widow. There's no course of study. Your spouse dies and, then, there you are, a full-fledged widow but with absolutely no experience. And even though you knew weeks beforehand that this was going to happen (as I did) you still aren't as prepared as you thought you were going to be. When my husband Art drew his last breath and I knew he had passed on, I felt utterly bewildered, not knowing just what was expected of me. Should I weep and wail, or should I be quiet and stoic? Actually, I did both — weeping and wailing in private for myself, and quiet and stoic for my children who were suffering their own deep grief.
Canadians marched outside of Toronto's City Hall on March 22 for World Water Day, a time for countries to draw attention to the United Nations' recommendations for global access to fresh water. Led by KAIROS and other social justice bodies, protesters were pressing for community control of water services throughout the world.
(AM) — The world's major international ecumenical bodies are proposing joint work, meetings and even a merger in the near future, signifying “an appetite for renewal and reform” within these bodies, according to Rev. Stephen Kendall, principal clerk of the Presbyterian Church and chairman of the finance committee at the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. “Primarily, it's an expression of the unity of the church,” said Kendall.
As convener of the Presbyterian World Service & Development committee, Rev. Karen Horst had the opportunity to reach out to Malawi's AIDS orphans. Malawi has been struck particularly hard with the AIDS pandemic and its destruction affects every layer of society. Children are particularly vulnerable when the adults who normally provide for their security are dead of AIDS. The community of Collingwood and First Presbyterian quickly understood the pressing need and set about preparing a memorable fundraiser.
Mom, stop the truck!” yelled Chelsea.
Sattler's Stained Glass Studio in Nova Scotia launched the first Maritime Stained Glass Registry to document the Maritimes' stained glass treasures last summer. The purpose of the registry is to serve as a record if a window is lost or damaged, and to act as a conservation aid.
Former moderator Rev. Mark Lewis has been appointed to one of the denomination's largest congregations, St. Andrew's, Kitchener, Ont. He will be inducted on May 7, and will fill the gap left after a three-member ministerial team had its pastoral ties severed by a presbytery-appointed committee in September 2004.
It takes an Internet search engine a quarter of a second to locate more than 32,000 references to the phrase “crisis or opportunity,” probably about the same time it took Henry Kissinger to come up with the quip, “There cannot be a crisis next week; my schedule is already full.”
It began with Pierre Berton's 1965 book The Comfortable Pew, commissioned by the Anglican church, which had chapter headings such as Pretensions to Absolute Rightness, The Lukewarm Pulpit and The Ecclesiastical Caste System. It was a hot-button book at the time, much discussed and debated, in which Berton laid out “some of the areas in which I see the church going bankrupt.” The United Church of Canada produced Why Our Sea is Boiling the same year, seeking to refute Berton's claim, if only for that denomination. But, what of the Presbyterian Church?
Wilma Welsh, an elder at Knox, Guelph, Ont., has been named moderator-elect for the 2006 General Assembly, to be held this year in St. Catharines, Ont. Her name will be presented at the opening session of assembly, where commissioners will vote.
The Presbyterian Church in Canada's website will feature a link to a new online questionnaire for the 2006 Census of Population, handled by Statistics Canada. The link will be available beginning May 2, while the census officially starts on May 16.
The last few days I have been subtly but powerfully reminded of the wisdom of our church in its decision to ordain women. This year marks the 40th anniversary of General Assembly acceding to the ordination of women within The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Recently, I have been in the presence of women teaching and ruling elders, in diverse contexts of ministry, across the regions of our country and have been very thankful for their gifts.
After several years of planning, studying, researching and debating, Assembly Council adopted several recommendations from the Healing and Reconciliation Design Team to establish a national Healing and Reconciliation initiative called Walking Together. The new commitments are as follows:
In the madcap world of gender and religious politics in the United States, Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York City's Central Park Zoo, were a cause célèbre for years. They spawned a children's book And Tango Makes Three, of which The School Library Journal said, “They cuddle and share a nest like the other penguin couples and when all the others start hatching eggs, they want to be parents, too.”
The Canadian Bible Society is celebrating 100 years of reaching “every man, woman and child with the life-giving Word of God” by distributing, translating and publishing the Bible in Canada and around the world. The Canadian Bible Society has translated Scripture into 134 languages, including 23 aboriginal languages. It also offers Bibles in large print, Braille and on tape. The society distributes New Testaments to prisons and the Canadian Forces, Scripture readings to hospitals, nursing homes and funeral homes, and offers 100 free Bibles to churches destroyed by fire.
Presbyterians are responding to the disaster left by Hurricane Katrina by volunteering their time and energy for short-term mission trips to Mississippi and Louisiana. A 26-person team from Ivy Presbyterian in New Tecumseth, Ont., will be making its way to Baton Rouge in August to rebuild homes that were destroyed by the hurricane. Ages of the mission-goers range from 12 to 70-something.
Of all the bad habits I've ever acquired, golf is not the worst. But it's close. I wrote a little golf book lately and I've been surprised at the response. Millions of people golf. And they write me letters about this bad habit. For me, golf is a marvelous and maddening game that combines three favourite pastimes from my childhood: doing poorly at mathematics, taking long walks to get away from people and hitting things with a stick. Not everyone loves golf. John Wayne gave it up out of frustration, I'm told. It's amazing that a man who drew a six-shooter with lightning speed, won the battle of Iwo Jima almost single-handedly and recaptured Bataan could be defeated by a four-inch hole in the ground. But he was. One columnist wrote that golf is “the most useless game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.” Once, after shanking five balls into a murky creek, I tended to agree with him. But mostly I've found the opposite to be true — golf is a useful game that teaches us more about life and faith than we think, if only we will listen.