Joint statement from The Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster, Justin Welby and Vincent Nichols, concerning the ongoing violence in Syria

Since the very first days of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, we have prayed as we watched in horror and sorrow the escalating violence that has rent this country apart. We have grieved with all Syrians - with the families of each and every human life lost and with all communities whose neighbourhoods and livelihoods have suffered from escalating and pervasive violence.

And today, our prayers also go with the ancient communities of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria. The kidnapping this week of two Metropolitan bishops of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the killing of their driver while they were carrying out a humanitarian mission, is another telling sign of the terrible circumstances that continue to engulf all Syrians..

We unreservedly support these Christian communities, rooted in and attached to the biblical lands, despite the many hardships. We respond to the call from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, urging churches worldwide to remain steadfast in the face of challenging realities and to bear witness to their faith in the power of love in this world.

We both continue to pray for a political solution to this tragic conflict that would stem the terrible violence and also empower all Syrians with their fundamental and inalienable freedoms. We also call for urgent humanitarian aid to reach all who are suffering. We pray that Syria can recapture its tradition of tolerance, rooted in faith and respect for faiths living side by side.

+ Justin Welby          + Vincent Nichols

Notes from Vestry April 16, 2013

• Rector's Comments:
• • I gave a power point on the plan for the next year. It was called A Year of Discernment and Building and reflected the plan for the rest of the year. There is a two pronged plan. The first part is intensive discernment on the part of the parish as to where God is calling us. I am using the analogy of a soup pot. We will do lots of things like perhaps NCD, a parish conference, educational bits, congregational meetings and prayer activities designed to increase conversation, prayer and reflection. All of the ideas will go into an Evernote notebook for the leadership to check in with. The idea is that as we discern, God will guide us in the next chapter of our life together. The second aspect is building the healthy church as I outlined at the AGM with the addition of intentionally building community between the services.
• Janitorial: 
• • This is still in process, and a final decision will be reached by the next vestry meeting.
• Administrative Assistant:
• • We have received over 50 applications. We will narrow this down to 10 or so in the next week and begin interviews hopefully the week after that.
• Identity of Soup'd Up Worship:
• • The corporation decided that it was too early to make any final decisions about Soup'd Up Worship, and so we would wait until October to start answering the specific questions about what the service's ultimate purpose is to be.
  • We will however try to identity stats, make contact with new people, and try to follow up.
  • The Vestry approved a motion of support for Soup'd Up Worship as an outreach experiment of the congregation.
• Alpha 2013:
• • Rather than running our own Alpha, we will be in contact with Heartland Alliance church to see how we can assist them.
• Tofield:
• • I am no longer the rector Tofield. I have stepped down as of April 1st. Colleen Lynch will be their rector.
• Website Redesign:
• • We showed the vestry the website redesign that Chris did. Everyone is invited to look at it. We particularly highlighted the administrative aspect. We have turned all of the policies and job descriptions into searchable PDF's. 
• Assistant:
• • Chris has been away for a couple of weeks on study leave. Before that he put quite a bit of time into the redesign of the website.
• Financial:
• • We have a surplus of just over $6000. However, when you take into account the surplus being rolled forward from 2012 on a monthly basis, we have a deficit of $173.00 for the first quarter.
• Stewardship:
• • Gordon Voth reported the numbers from the last stewardship. There followed a lively discussion on what stewardship looks like in terms of its different meaning for different generations, what it will look like here and so on. Alison talked about the workshop she went to where the Diocese gave us a helpful book and lots of ideas.
• Youth:
• • Devon talked about our group here and the sleep over that she arranged for those from the winter camp that had been cancelled. She also talked about a big weekend that  she has planned taking a coach with the Diocese of Calgary to Sorento.
• Engineering:
• • The installation of the alarm system will start the week of the 29th of April. It shouldn't take more than a week. The question of monitoring still has to be determined.
• Wardens:
• • Alison floated the idea of community funding and having pay pal on the website. We will look into this.

Holy Ground

One of the things I have always wondered about is the short little passage when Moses meets God at the burning bush, and God tells him to take off his shoes for he is standing on holy ground. My question has always been, why don't we take off our shoes in the presence of the holy? Why is it no longer important?

This thought came to me again this year on Maundy Thursday when I was standing with my bare feet on the cold floor of the cathedral waiting to have my feet washed by the bishop at our annual celebration. I was in line for awhile as there are a lot of clergy, and I thought of standing on holy ground in my bare feet. I don't think it was the cathedral floor especially so much as being a part of a community of clergy who were gathering in love of God and each other, and who would that night wash the feet of the various communities of which we are a part. I loved the image of us getting our feet washed and going to wash the feet of others and providing them a place to wash each others feet as a sign of service and love. That I thought must be the holy ground upon which I was standing.

The Joy of Cleaning

Today Kendra, Chris and I cleaned out the little storage room off of the Teape Room, the one with the glass doors. I think for awhile it was both and storage room and the place to put things that no one knew what to do with. Our hope was to move a lot of the stuff from the office into there to free up room in the office. A bit of a puzzle! We ended up putting most of the books downstairs in the library. We made room for them by culling out the secular books and only keeping the religious one. (By the way, the secular books will be for give away this Sunday. Easter present.) The we got rid of the desk, consolidated all of the binders and liturgical materials and now we have a nice clean storage room. I felt so productive. It was so satisfying that I went into the room three or four times afterward just to enjoy the difference.

March 19th Vestry Meeting Notes

• Rector's Comments:
• • Vitality: reviewed the imput from the congregational meetings
  • Resiliance: The first Conflict Management seminar will be May 11 from 10am to noon
  • Communication: We are in the process of developing a new website which will hopefully be published in the next week or two
  • Clarity: an explanation of how the policies, job descriptions, procedures and administration calendar will be put on the new website and how it will facilitate the administration of the parish.
• Janitorial Services:
• • There are three bids coming forward for janitorial service. We will evaluate them and decide which one to go with.
• Treasurer: 
• • Kent Heine has agreed to be our parish treasurer. He will be assisted by a team of people who will do much of the data entry.
  • Dale will continue to provide reports for February and March, and then work with Kent for April and May.
  • We are looking at striking a finance committee which will do a lot of work crunching numbers to make the financial situation clearer to Vestry when it needs to make financial decisions. 
• Identity of Soup'd up Worship
• • We had quite a long discussion about where the leadership of the parish sees the service going. Questions that came up were what was the demographic that we were looking at ministering to? How do we evaluate if it is a success?
  • Our thought is that it is an outreach ministry. But that raised the question of what is outreach. We will try to formulate and answer and bring it back to vestry next month.
• Parish Library:
• • The office staff wants to use the counting room as an organized storage facility. To do this, the vestry agreed that we could give away all secular books found in the library in the basement and then move the books from the upstairs library to the downstairs library for storage. This is a temporary pattern. One idea would be to have a bookshelf upstairs with a rotating stock of books.
• Alpha 2013:
• • There is a large initiative around Alpha in the fall province wide, and the Bishop wants all Anglican parishes to participate. The question we asked was whether we would do it ourselves or team up with another church. 
• Chris Dowdeswell: Chris reported about what he has been doing. One thing he noted is that he and Krista are going to be leaders at an upcoming Marriage Encounter weekend coming up.
• Financial Report: February was better than expected. We are about $200 to the good. (Unfortunately as I type this I don't have that report in front of me. When I get back to the office I will update this spot with the exact numbers.)
• Youth:
• • Exciting events are planned up until May. There is a good core group. There is a Diocesan Winter Camping Trip planned.

Sermon for March 17th

• Sermon Outline:

• Today is St. Patrick's day. You know he wasn't Irish right? :)
• • Amazing story: kidnapped and sold into slavery as a teen; six years in slavery when he escaped. Got back safe and sound, and felt called to go back, to take the Gospel. Went out of love, was hunted, persecuted, trial after trial and he kept going. Where did he find the inner strength to go on? That is what I want to explore for a few minutes with you this morning.
• For some reason it was this question that came to me again and again as I meditated on the Gospel passage for this morning.
• Jesus and the story that Holy Week tells
• The place of this story
• • Six days before the passover, three days before Palm Sunday. This is the reading that gets us ready for next week: Palm Sunday
  • Mary: love the detail: the fragrance filling the room
  • Judas Iscariot 12:6 is interesting, probably because 12:5 actually does make sense. It was a tremendous amount of money. Clearly ad hominum.
• But then Jesus says a surprising thing on the surface: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
• ____________________________
• Odd about the passage is that on one reading it can be used to ignore the poor.
• The irony is that this is a quote from Deut. 15:11 "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.""
• That is pretty clear as a command. It is an OT injunction, and Jesus seems clear that we are to follow it. In fact, it seems to be assumed that this would be a mark of Jesus' followers.
• But why does he indicate to serve him first, and then later the poor. Shouldn't it be the opposite?
• To my mind this is 
• My thoughts: what does it mean to serve the poor, or anyone for that matter. Service to others seems to be what Jesus was describing.
• We can do it because we are commanded to, because we have to. But I don't think that is what God was imagining. 
• I think he was imagining that the impetus comes from being part of a community that is marked by compassion, naturally.
• Ministry out of duty has a coldness and hardness about it.
• Service from the heart just has something of a beautiful quality about it. This is one of the reasons I think the new pope has a lot of people being interested, even amongst us who are not catholic. Church of the poor.
• But even if you minister out of compassion and love, the love gets stretched.
• Jesus was right; there always seem to be more poor, there is no end to the suffering of the world, and no matter how much we do it seems to always be overwhelming. I remember working with someone with addictions: patience and compassion would be stretched as he wasted opportunity after opportunity. Fight with tiredness and anger.
• But this is any ministry, social work, parish ministry, 
• The question is if we are in this for the long haul, where do we find our strength?
• It is Jesus. That is the reason for the order. 
• Importance of the Sabbath
• Have to have time before God for several reason: to pray and intercede, to scrape off spiritual junk, to renew. There is an energy and power in coming before Jesus.
• The secret to the spiritual life is simple. Show up everyday. 
• Story of the restaurant selling soup. New management watered it down. Profits for a while, but ultimately killed the golden goose. They lost their customer base. : you will be tempted to shortchange what works. Don't
• Metaphor for avoiding shortchanging the spiritual life.
• End with Chariots of Fire speech

Congregational Reflection Documents

Reflections on the 8am Congregational Meeting

Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussions about our early service. I really appreciated the chance to listen and reflect with you.

From our conversations I basically heard a strong affirmation of this service as we do it. The people who come appreciate the traditional language of the service and the quietness and reflective spirit of the service. There seemed to be a great deal of unanimity around not shortening or cutting anything out of the service, but to keep it a full service. I heard agreement that we should keep the BAS for the most part, but openness to using the BCP on a minority basis, perhaps once a month or in months where there is a fifth Sunday. I also heard agreement around things that would compromise the quiet and reflective spirit of the service. There was discussion about having longer times for reflection, asking people in the foyer to speak quietly, even to the point of rethinking the timing of the 9am service, if it could start later. (That would obviously entail a much longer term discussion.)There was also a strong appreciation of the gathered community in the peace and a wonder if there could be a larger space and time for fellowship after the service.

Reflections on the 9am Congregational Meeting

Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussions about our contemporary service. I really appreciated the chance to listen and reflect with you. The discussions were quite animated with lots of good ideas and topics covered.

The first and strongest thing that I heard was an appreciation and affirmation of the work of Tapestry in providing musical leadership for the 9am service. Overall people appreciated the fact that the music was good, contemporary and that there was a wide variety. Tapestry is definitely at the heart of the 9am service. The second thing that I heard was an appreciation for the value of creativity. People who worship at this service connect best with God when the worship is not rote, boring or stale, but rather innovative, joyful and participatory. There is a strong experiential element in the service, the tangible feeling of the Holy Spirit in our words, singing, activities and community. This style of worship lends itself to an informality that is marked by children present and active, appreciation of spontaneous moments of both joy and difficulty, as well as the clergy not vesting. There is an appreciation of variety in the prayers used and the methods of reflection, but while there were some voices who would look for a more radical transformation of the service on a regular basis, most seemed to look for a variety of content rather than in structure. There is a strong appreciation of the gathered community which is strongly symbolized by the holding of hands during the peace as well as the coffee hour afterwards. The service is marked by a desire to allow a wide group of people to participate both in their worship and through the use of their talents. There have been creative ways of enhancing worship, the two of which people most pointed to were the drama and dance ministries. Part of the challenge is to find even more creative ways for people to use their gifts.

Some of the questions raised had to do with evolution of the service where it began with an emphasis on breakout groups, and these groups have been missed by many. Added to this is a desire to listen to a wider variety of voices than just those of the clergy. There were also several voices who have missed the prayer ministry group since it has not functioned at the same capacity it did in the recent past. Another question has been the struggle around the time. The Sunday School has a wonderful program, and yet for several families the 9am is felt to be too early. However, many who feel it is too early prefer the service because it better matches their worship style, and added to this is the fact that there are no children’s ministries at the 11am. There was a strong minority voice that wished to have more 10am combined services. Many people expressed the wish to move the chairs, but also expressed an acceptance that this is extremely difficult given the time constraints. There was also a variety of voices on the amount of worship enhancements such as drama and dance, whereby some wanted quite a bit and some appreciated it on a less frequent basis. The last point was that of hospitality. A few were concerned with the fact that fewer and fewer were participating in that ministry. However, it needs to be noted that the disagreements were not major. Most agreed about the substance of the service and what they appreciated about the service.

Reflections on the 11am Congregational Meeting

Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussions about our 11am service. I really appreciated the chance to listen and reflect with you. It was good to be in conversation and listen to what everyone reflected on about the services.

The strongest thing I heard was a real appreciation of the music ministry of the choir and organ and the leadership of Connie and Rob. There was a real feeling that given our size and budget we are fortunate to have the high quality of music that we do. When describing the characteristics of the service itself that were appreciated many people used words like reverence, appreciation of traditions, time for reflection, quiet, but also a service marked by joy and fellowship. Perhaps a good way to put it is to describe the service as attempting to balance reverence and joyfulness. There is thankfulness for the community. Overall people seemed happy with the service as it is currently happening. There was openness to having a regular procession and recession of the clergy and choir, and there was openness to small doses of extra liturgical activities like chanting.

There was less consensus on the number of hymns from the beige book. There was a significant group that liked the more contemporary hymns, just not a contemporary worship setting, as well as a significant group that thought the hymns from the Common Praise were adequate. One question that was raised at two tables was the key the hymns were sung in to make it easier for male voices. Many people appreciated the 11am time slot because they felt it was more difficult to come to an earlier service. There was also concern about the parking issue. Many in the 11am service arrive while the 9am service cars are still there. There were also concerns about the noise as people from the earlier service leave coffee hour. Another question raised at several tables was the role of children and the welcoming of families at this service. There is recognition that there is a tension in not having a children’s program; it makes it difficult for families to worship, and there is added noise to the service from children, but there is also little appetite within the 11am to create a children’s ministry. Overall however, I did not perceive the questions raised and the disagreements being raised to be divisive. There was far more agreement than not. If there was one place of unease that was articulate is a perception that there is a significant split between the worshipping congregations based on history, worship and parish socializing.