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Sept 29: Contemporary Worship Service. One Main Street United Church had its first contemporary service at the Centenary site. Ever. Was it ever exciting to me. We’re getting that huge worship space to work for us as we contemplate, discuss, debate and make the future of this merging One Main St. United Church (creating a tipping point for an inclusive and affirming ministry) happen.

The St. Giles site has been holding a contemporary service on the last Sunday of the month for a number of years. The core of the service is the praise band. They and the St. Giles site people have learned many songs of this type. Now, with the praise band a natural part of the “worship landscape” for One Main St. United, we can add to this by raising up some of the excellent congregational songs (in our More Voices songbook) that just call out for accompaniment by praise band.

There’s more to a “contemporary service” than whatever “contemporary religious music” of the day is. It’s really about a spirit that begins in questioning ourselves and ends in delight in the glory of God.

Thanks to everyone who contributed on Sunday, and especially to those who took up the challenge and helped me shape a reflection on the Plate Spinner drama on the spot by offering their comments and responses to my questions.

We’re at St. Giles this Sunday for World-wide Communion.

Yours truly came to the Centenary site of One Main Street United Church in the summer of 2009. One of the first of the uniquely Centenary things in which I became immersed was the connection Centenary has with an all-girls elementary, high school and university in Tokyo.

Toyo Eiwa (the name for all the divisions of the school) was begun in the 1880s as an elementary school by the first Canadian Methodist woman missionary to Japan. Martha Cartmell was sent by the newly formed Methodist Women’s Missionary Society of Canada.

In another first, the Canadian WMS’s organizing meeting was held at Centenary just a few years prior.

Martha Cartmell was a member of Centenary Methodist, and later, Centenary United Church.

Rev. Seiichi Ariga, a United Church friend of Centenary’s and of Toyo Eiwa, told me soon after I came to Centenary that one of the forms of respect for ancestors that is so deeply rooted in Japanese culture is for respect to be shown at the grave of an important founding individual.

Thus, for many years, groups of Toyo Eiwa students, alumni and faculty have made their way to Centenary for a Sunday service and then on to the Hamilton Cemetery to visit Martha Cartmell’s headstone.

And this brings me to the latest visit — the annual visit of eleven students and one faculty member of the Early Childhood Education program at the Toyo Eiwa University that occurred on Sunday, September 15, 2013.

As usual, they came for service. Afterward, One Main St. United made them and shared in a luncheon with them. The Toyo Eiwa group then led those gathered in a sing-song. A couple of songs were in Japanese, but they also chose a children’s hymn — Jesus Loves Me — that we heartily joined them in.

Then it was on to the bus for me and for them and a quick trip out the cemetery. It was a lovely day and we paused there to show the respect that Martha has earned in Toyo Eiwa for her founding this girls schools — one of the first for girls in Japan. We ended with a prayer.

Then they were off to Niagara Falls and to complete, in the days after, the educational activities that had been built into their itinerary in Canada.

 

 

About 30 people rolled into Centenary’s sanctuary all at once at 9 am Sunday Sept 8 2013. They were a tour group of visitors from around the world — some from Australia and New Zealand, some from the United States, many from Canada, and at least one from Mount Hope on the Hamilton mountain. Their connection to each other is that they are all descendants of German settlers who came to County Limerick, Ireland, in the early 1700s from the German Palatinate.

But what is their connection to Centenary?

Their ancestors were settled in Ireland by the English crown to help establish Protestantism in that region of Ireland. Like many in Ireland, those settlers and their descendants subsequently emigrated to other parts of the world where English is spoken.

Why would descendants of such a group choose to visit Centenary? The answer helps explain our name.

Two of the early Irish Palatine emigrants to North America were Philip Embury and his cousin Barbara Heck. They came to New York City. Philip was a Methodist lay preacher.  Barbara convinced Philip to begin his preaching ministry in the city. In October of 1766 he began holding regular services in their home. 

The congregation rapidly outgrew its earliest places of worship. In 1768 the group erected a building on a site on John Street in New York City. They called it Wesley Chapel. It was dedicated on Oct 30, 1768, becoming the permanent home of the oldest continuous Methodist congregation in the United States.

In 1868 Centenary, in Hamilton, became one of many new congregations across North America that year named in centennial recognition of the establishment of that first Methodist congregation in North America. Hence the name “Centenary.”

Centenary is now a United Church because the Methodist Church in Canada merged with most Presbyterians and the Congregationalist in 1925 to form the union church called “The United Church of Canada.”

Our Irish Palantine visitors heard some of the history and the current life of the Centenary congregation — now the One Main Street United Church congregation. They sang two hymns — one of Lutheran background and the other of Methodist and they enjoyed an organ selection played by One Main Street United Church’s Music Director Brian Turnbull.

Our visitors left with us postcards from the region in which the Irish Palantine settlers were settled. The first is Embury-Heck Memorial Methodist church built in 1766 in Ballingrane, Rathkeale, County Limerick. The second is of the Irish Palatine Heritage Centre in Rathkeale, Co. Limerick