obituary as a pdf file.
Author: admin
Thursday Outreach Photos
photos taken in July 2012
UCW ‘Golden Celebration’ group visits Centenary
All women of the United Church were invited to gather for a Golden Celebration on July 23-27, 2012, at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, to celebrate the past, share the present and anticipate the future, hosted by Hamilton Conference UCW.
On Wednesday July 25th, 34 women from this group toured Centenary and enjoyed a short organ concert with music director Brian Turnbull.
There’s a FAB new team in town
There’s a fab new team in town. When Centenary decided on May 6 2012 against disbanding as a congregation, we committed to a future that would be different from our present and past. Conversation at the Church Board subsequent to that congregational decision focused on how to get the changes that would lead to that future. The Church Board saw we needed a coordinating team to help us do this work. This team would help Centenary keep all the balls in play we need in play for the transformation to be successful. This coordinating team would help us to use the limited time we have in the best possible way to make good and effective decisions.
Out of these insights the FAB Team was born. FAB stands for Fundraising, Amalgamation and Building. The Team’s job is to advance the transformative work with the congregation that it began on May 6 2012 when it overwhelming decided against disbanding. The FAB Team will help the congregation to keep coordinated the themes of fundraising, amalgamation discussions, and what to do with the building. To get the ball rolling, Joey Ruiz, Karen Mathewson, Tom Betts and Ian Sloan joined the team at the Board’s request.
Here are starting points the FAB Team has come up with for each area:
- Fundraising: The FAB Team is talking about organizing major annual fundraising events that draw on members of the wider community for significant support: we’re looking for major fundraising event ideas and themes!
- Amalgamation: Through the FAB Team Centenary is joining the discussions with First-Pilgrim and St. Giles that are focused on the idea of amalgamating the three congregations into one “Main Street Ministry.” We are also continuing our conversations around cooperation in ministry with the other “west end churches”: Binkley, Westdale, Melrose and First-Pilgrim. These were the churches with which we were involved in the combined Pentecost service.
- Building: Through the FAB Team Centenary will explore with downtown stakeholders (eg.our New Globe Youth Centre, City of Hamilton, Hamilton Community Foundation, Social Planning and Research Council, service agencies and arts organizations and businesses, individuals) the feasibility of sustaining the current built form of Centenary’s building. Is there more value to be gotten out of it through new business and organizational uses while we retain ownership on behalf of the United Church and continue to use it ourselves? If not, what?
The FAB Team will begin to connect with the congregation in a sustained way when the congregation returns from its summer visits to First-Pilgrim, Melrose and St. Giles to worship again at Centenary. We begin worshipping again at Centenary on the second Sunday of September, September 9th.
Until then, have a FABulous summer!
The FAB Team
Bulletin July 15, 2012
Painting the Church Hall
Photo from our intrepid custodian Luke whose summer project is to paint the church hall. Here are the test strips with the two prospective colours.
First-Pilgrim organizing theatre trip
First-Pilgrim United Church invites you to join us for our annual theatre outing. This year we will see Pirates of Penzance at The Stratford Festival.
| Location: | Stratford Shakespeare Festival Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St. Stratford, Ontario |
| Date: | Saturday, October 27, 2012 |
| Time: | 2:00 p.m. |
| Cost: | $34.00 |
Transportation will be arranged at a later date for a fee.
If interested, please call the First-Pilgrim United Church
office at (905) 522-9900 no later than July 15, 2012
Bulletin July 8 2012
Reflection for July 15, 2012
Religion is, first, an open hand to receive a gift, and second, an acting hand to distribute gifts. —Paul Tillich
Singing for gold in old Cincinnati
On July 5, 2012 the Hamilton Spectator did an article on Brian Turnbull’s Oakville-based choir and its quest for gold at the World Choir Games in Ohio. Brian is our organist and choir director at Centenary. Here is the text and photo from that article.
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Brian Turnbull and his Tempus Choral Society aren’t singing for second best at the 2012 World Choir Games in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“My aim is to get gold,” said Turnbull from his Oakville home just before he and 34 of his 88 choristers left for the 11-day event, which kicked off yesterday.
Turnbull, organist and choir director at Centenary United in downtown Hamilton for the past five years, founded the TCS in late 1999 as an amateur community choir based in Oakville. Their repertoire focuses on jazz and Broadway tunes as well as seasonal favourites during the Christmas run-up. Turnbull also runs the 22-voice Tempus Chamber Choir, a TCS offshoot, which rehearses in St. John’s Lutheran, a hop, skip, and jump from Centenary. As far as contest experience goes, the TCS has sung in the Rotary Burlington Music Festival plus competitions in New Orleans and Boston.
“We’ve got one silver. Everything else we’ve got is gold,” said Turnbull proudly.
And thanks to those competition results, when the TCS registered for the Jazz category at the World Choir Games last September, they were placed in the Champions Competition stream rather than the Open Competition stream.
But you’re probably wondering, “What are the World Choir Games?”
Well, it’s one of many international choral events organized by Interkultur, a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 by Guenter Titsch, 65, a former accountant and tax consultant based in Pohlheim near Frankfurt, Germany.
According to interkultur.com, Titsch likens his biennial World Choir Games to “a kind of Olympic Games of choir singing.”
Stress the “kind of.” Sure, all of the 362 participating choirs from 48 countries in the Games’s 23 categories are amateur. So, the Oakville Children’s Choir and the 14 other choirs in the Open Competition Musica Sacra category don’t have to worry about being outsung by a best-in-breed professional choir like, say, the RIBS Kammerchor from Berlin.
But Titsch’s Games differ from the Olympics in one major way: scoring. If any choir in the Champions Competition receives a score of over 80 points from the panel of seven judges, they get “gold” medals. So, let’s say that there are five choirs competing in a category. If they all score over 80, they all get gold. In any event, the choir with the highest score is named Champion of the World Choir Games for their category.
No wonder Turnbull and his choristers are pumped.
“You start this up and you start training the choir and then when you get closer you see the adrenalin, the hype and the excitement,” said Turnbull. “They’re just so excited to go.”
Alas, not every TCS chorister was able to get off work to go to Cinci. Those who could, including five of the TCS’s Hamilton area members, paid their own way to Ohio.
Tomorrow in the Mayerson Theater, the TCS is up against seven other choirs hailing from Croatia, Denmark, Holland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and the United States. If the TCS want to return home singing We Are The Champions, they’ll first have to nail their selections of Home in That Rock, Basin Street Blues, Mississippi Mud, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the latter two arranged by Kirby Shaw who’s one of many workshop leaders at the Games. While in Cinci, the TCS will also sing Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at a Friendship Concert.
“It’s just another feather in the choir’s cap as far as an experience,” said Turnbull. “And also, we hope to network with a lot of choirs from around the world, and hopefully, maybe do exchanges.”
Just like last year when they hosted a choir from Germany at Centenary United after having met them at a choral festival in Charleston, S.C.
Prior to heading up that highway to Cinci, Turnbull got a call from a choir director in Hawaii who wants to show him some of her music while at the Games.
“I think Hawaii would be a nice exchange,” said Turnbull.
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Leonard Turnevicius covers classical music for The Hamilton Spectator.