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One Main St United worshiped with Melrose, Westdale and First-Pilgrim United Churches on January 5th at First-Pilgrim. Those of us who organized the service happily called it Epiphany Sunday, even if we were a day early (Epiphany is Jan 6, a fixed date, like Christmas).

There are a couple of things that I want to mention here about our Epiphany Sunday. The absolutely more important thing is that the service was oriented around the theme of right relations between first nations and settler nations. Rev. Lee Claus, a retired United Church minister of the Mohawk nation, presided over our planning (at the planners’ invitation, more on that later) and spoke both to the children and then to the adults during the service itself.

For me, it was a very long time coming that I would participate in such a service in a local congregational setting. This past summer I attended an event in Saskatoon put on by the Prairie Centre for Ecumenism called “Reconciling Churches: Reconciling Peoples.” Its theme speaker was National Anglican Indigenous Bishop Mark MacDonald. Bishop Mark, too, is first nations. He referenced a favorite authority of his, who said, “repentance is acknowledging that there is a lie in my heart.” He wanted his predominately white audience made up of representatives from many Christian denominations to acknowledge that the relationship with the first peoples of the lands in which we live is one in which we continue to lie to ourselves.

Rev.Claus spoke of bringing gifts to our service on Sunday, an image appropriate to Epiphany. Two that I heard him offer were the healing circles with non-indigenous people that have been initiated by first nations group on the Six Nations reserve called Nations Uniting, and the other was the gift of right relations itself between the colonizing peoples and the first peoples.

Well, I see that this post has run on. I’ll mention the other thing that stuck out for me at our Epiphany service in my next post. It will come soon, I promise.

Christmas 2013

The following is my Christmas letter to the St. Giles and Centenary congregaitons

Dear friends in Christ,
This is a letter I always look forward to writing. To folk at St. Giles: receiving a letter at Christmas from me is new. For Centenarians, this is not the first.

Much has changed for members and friends of both congregations over the past year. Now you are part of One Main Street United Church, an exciting new endeavour in the United Church’s ministry in Hamilton’s urban core and lower mountain.

One Main Street United is not a church yet – it is the imagination and hope of a church, born out of the ashes of declining possibilities at both the St. Giles site and the Centenary site. In a genuine sense it is an Advent church: a church waiting for its realization in faith.

One Main Street is an opportunity; an opportunity for all of us to experience the birth of Jesus Christ in a unique way. Next year? Next year may be one for all of you as a new church, with a new name (as the temporary name “One Main Street” is set aside).

It is with the vision of a new birth church that I reach out to you with this Christmas message, acknowledging as I do that we traverse the very difficult space of endings and beginnings:
One Main Street United Church, creating a tipping point for an inclusive and affirming ministry:

• a multi-generational congregation feeding the spiritual needs of the people;
• a church responsible in stewardship, spending energy and dollars on ministry instead of buildings;
• honouring and growing from congregational identities and usable history;
• committed to offering social justice and outreach ministry 7 days per week.

May God bless you in the practice of faith in the coming year; may the blessings of Christmas be there for you.
Faithfully,
Ian

As many of you know who are following this blog, St. Giles and Centenary churches are in the final phase of a dynamic discussion of amalgamation. The plan now is for both congregations to vote on the merger definitively on February 23 2014.

This afternoon the One Main Street Choir and its guest The Tempus Choral Society of Oakville offered their annual “Gateway to Christmas” service of music and readings at the Centenary site. It was a splendid program, shaped around some very fine singing of the Christmas movements of Handel’s Messiah. As is customary I offer a few words of welcome somewhere near the one-third mark of the service, giving thanks to One Main Street’s music director Brian Turnbull, the choirs, and then asking those who attend to dig deeply and generously into their pockets for the work of both choirs.

It seems plausible that a One Main Street United Church (with whatever permanent name it decides upon for itself) will not be choosing to be a rebirth congregation at either the St. Giles or the Centenary sites. Neither building is likely a fit for the mission and purposes of this new congregation. So I found myself trying to understand and to share that understanding with those gathered this afternoon.

I looked up at the sparsely attending group and I said that in the four and a half years I have been minister in this place I have never once preached from the pulpit. I have stood behind that pulpit once (on a Tuesday afternoon I think about two years ago) and looked out on the pews that I had read somewhere once sat about 1500 people and were full. I spoke that Tuesday afternoon alone in the sanctuary in a preacher’s voice from the pulpit unaided by amplification. My voice soared into the space easily and clearly. The Centenary church was built in 1868 as a preacher’s space. It was built for my voice.

It was built for the preaching of the word.

No wonder, then, that the Centenary sanctuary is a beautiful place for choral and instrumental music. The Gateway to Christmas service attested to this in so many ways. The parts in the singing were clear to be heard, no muddledness from the acoustic, reverberation from the large choruses piling up in richer and richer tapestries of sound.

And yet, this building and the Centenary congregation just appeared together in 1868. There was no gathering of a small band of people wanting to start a church worshipping in a school hall somewhere nearby. There was just a need in bustling 19th century Hamilton in which Methodism was a vital part for another sanctuary to accommodate the overflowing number of Methodists in town.

Centenary.

There was a grace that informed that appearance of building and congregation, a grace that informs all our efforts as people of faith to be better people than we are. The building itself now appears no longer to serve us in our efforts as people of faith to be better people than we are. The pews have been a long time without anywhere near those 1500 people they could sit. But the grace in which Centenary appeared in 1868 is also the grace in which something new is being born in the merging of St. Giles and Centenary.

The song we heard sung today in the Centenary sanctuary is a gateway through which we all may go with thanksgiving and joy to the new life that just awaits our realization.

In and with genuine love and respect for all those who live in the land three faith traditions call holy — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — members of the United Church of Canada are being urged this Advent by their church to begin non-violent resistance to actions of the State of Israel which demonstrably stand in the way of peace in Palestine Israel.

It is very difficult for those of us who have not visited the region to understand what has most recently come to pass since the 1948 partition in the area that led to the creation of the State of Israel and a large stateless population of Palestinians. In Hamilton Presbytery we have been blessed with explanations by three of our number who in recent months accepted the invitation of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in faith to “come and see.”

What they saw confirmed that which our General Council has asked us to open our eyes to see: the destruction of homes, the expropriation of property, the building of security walls on Palestinian land, the development of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. All of these actions truly stand in the way of peace. All of them are being carried out in direct contravention of Geneva conventions regarding the obligation of occupying forces. The occupation is destructive of human lives in Palestinian territories, and it is corrosive of the very spirit of democracy which the State of Israel claims it seeks to safeguard and promote in the region.

The occupation needs to end.

We members of the United Church of Canada are being encouraged to pray for this, to study it, and to act to help bring it about. Here is a link to the United Church of Canada webpage that outlines the pray, study, act elements of our UCC initiative.

• Unsettling Goods Campaign

On Tuesday, December 3 at 12 noon we members of the United Church will be joined by other groups expressing solidarity with our initiative for peace at the Federal Building in Hamilton at 55 Bay Street North. We will pray, reflect, sing, and then be invited into a non-violent act of protest. To begin.

To begin. Be there if you can.

Centenary and St. Giles United Churches are delving into the stuff dreams are made on. It was just one year ago this weekend that United Church Moderator Gary Paterson preached at St. Giles 104th anniversary service. Centenary cancelled its service and came over to St. Giles and joined in, as did First-Pilgrim United Church. You can see a video file of Moderator Paterson’s sermon here:

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Since then St. Giles and Centenary have been journeying on a road to merger. They were saddened when First-Pilgrim dropped out.

In June of this year St. Giles and Centenary threw their lot in together on a Sunday morning and began one common worship service each Sunday, alternating between the two sites by month.They are moving toward a formal vote to merge early in 2014.

During one of these common services of worship in September I asked the congregation(s) to think through and feel through with me the kind of merger they thought they might be embarking upon. I offered two different kinds of mergers for consideration: a continuation merger, and a rebirth merger.

A continuation merger is a blending of two congregations’ programs and styles. The other, a rebirth merger, is a new start, with the intentional dissolution of previous entities. While a continuation merger forestalls closing, the pattern of decline usually continues. Continuation mergers are least likely to result in growth and most likely to result in closing. The rebirth merger works best with a new location and new ministry personnel. It has a better track record than continuation mergers.

People present that Sunday wrote down on recipe cards which kind of merger they expected, added comments, and put the cards on the offering plate. I’ll say more about the comments they wrote in another blog post, but the numbers are interesting in themselves. Those anticipating a rebirth merger that day outnumbered those expecting a continuation merger by two to one.

in his blog post on November 28 2012 Moderator Gary Paterson ended with these words as he reflected upon his experience with us in worship on November 18 2012:

“Amalgamations are hard, I know. We are often wedded to a spirituality of place, church buildings rich with memories, where we truly were encountered by the Spirit. But we also know that the Spirit keeps moving and transforming, and we need to do the same. I wonder if these three Hamilton churches might all be willing to sell their buildings and bring the wisdom of their history and the power of their vision…and with God’s help, create a new church, a new mission.”