Category: New Vision Notes

A reminder that we meet as Threshold Partners this Sunday to receive a report from the Trustees after worship regarding the redevelopment project at our Holton Ave. site.

The choir will be with us full on this Sunday, singing two wonderful anthems, one of which they sang at the Third Anniversary Dinner and Dance Party. We’ll see the band again in September.  That’s when we’ll see the choir again too after this Sunday. Much gratitude to them both for their amazing contributions over the past year.

A good time was had by all at the anniversary party and we raised over $300 for our Syrian refugee project. The Sunday School supplemented that with their Toonie Hot Dog lunch after our anniversary service last Sunday. I don’t have a final figure from them for their contribution.

Good news! The arrival of the first newcomer family from Syria we are sponsoring as refugees is now in process. This helps us imagine an arrival date – possibly 12 to 16 months from now.

See you Sunday ~

Rev Ian

New Vision’s initiative to develop a live music and social justice centre in the community as part of its mission was noticed this week in Hamilton:

New Vision hopes to make landmark downtown church into a music venue
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/new-vision-music-venue-1.4154570
Shared via the CBC News Android App

Our Pride Sunday worship was excellent in so many different ways. The theme “Beyond Us! The Community of Divine Diversity” played on the ancient notion of the Trinity. We were gifted at the service with the anonymous donation of an acrylic painting expressing the theme.

Monday several joined together in the Holton Ave. site bell tower to ring out the bell 49 times to remember the 49 victims of murder in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last year. Most were young, trans* or queer, and racialized. This You Tube video by Luke Fillion takes footage from our bell ringing and overlays the names of the victims. Take a moment with it.

It is not too late to buy tickets for our 3^rd Anniversary Dinner Party and Dance on Saturday evening. You can now navigate from our website’s homepage to the ticket purchasing page. Our own New Vision band will play a couple of sets and the choir will present some songs as after dinner entertainment. The link is directly below the homepage menu and New Vision banner.

Blessings on those tending our booth at Pride in the Park this Saturday afternoon. The Celebration this year is at the Corktown Park, not Pier Four. Come join us at Pride in the Park.

On Anniversary Sunday Rev. Rob Dalgleish of the United Church’s Edge: Network for New Ministry Development is our guest preacher at worship.

See you Sunday ~

Rev Ian

You are invited to our Holton Ave. site at 85 Holton Ave. S (Holton and Main E) on Monday, June 12 at 12:30 pm to remember the Orlando Pulse nightclujb mass murders that occurred last year at this time. The Affirming Committee plans to ring one of the bells of the carillon 49 times to remember the 49 victims of the Orlando massacre: 49 mostly young people who were mostly people of colour, mostly trans* and queer, targeted in one of the worst mass acts of violence against LGBTQ communities in anyone’s memory.

Enter the church at 85 Holton S by the glass doors by the parking lot.

If you want to climb up into the bell tower (youi’ll have to climb a ladder) you can join with others in ringing out our grief and our commitment to safe space for racialized, queer and trans* persons.

If you can’t attend, hold in prayer those ringing the bells, those whose lives were full of life, cut brutally short, and all those who miss them.

Rev. Ian

I’ve noticed that I have pretty much devoted these notes to letting you know what’s going on at New Vision in worship from week to week.

The funny thing is, the web can let me do so much more.

It will let me share lots and lots of things at a speed much faster than this Sunday to the next.

So I am thinking about how I can expand or shift the content of these notes to become a more stand-alone product.

Maybe they ought to be a more stand-alone product; maybe not. If you have any thoughts on the matter, let me know ~

This Sunday is our New Vision band sitting-in Sunday. I am out of town because of a regional meeting of United Churches. The Worship Committee is leading worship.

The following Sunday is our Faith Commuter Challenge Sunday. Walk, ride, roll, carpool or take public transit to worship June 4. If you already do, great! Register how you come and go on Sunday June 4 online at https://faith.commuterchallenge.ca/register/individual.

I am still working at figuring out how you can purchase tickets for our Third Anniversary Dinner Party and Dance Saturday June 17 on-line. Perhaps next week!

See you in a couple of Sundays ~

Rev. Ian

This is the long weekend edition of New Vision Notes. The long weekend means endless summer begins to lap up against the New Vision community of faith.

The last Sunday of May the band will be sitting in and the Worship Committee will lead worship while I am off to the Annual Meeting of Hamilton Conference.

We’re looking ahead to a lively June. We’ll have our annual Pride worship Sunday June 11. Then Sunday June 18 we’ll mark our third anniversary with Rev. Rob Dalgleish breaking open the word for us. Rob is director of the United Church EDGE network of which we are a part.

Saturday evening, June 17, we’ll party as a community of faith celebrating our third anniversary with a dinner and a dance. Our talented New Vision band will play the dance. A way to purchase tickets for the party will be available on our website soon.   We’ll contribute whatever money we raise to our Syrian Newcomer Refugee Project.

See you sometime in endless summer ~

Rev. Ian

From time to time I’ll share some perspectives on our heritage. New Vision emerged from the embers of Centenary and St. Giles churches.  It is increasingly likely that the St. Giles building will remain pretty much as is on the outside and be adapted to housing. It will continue to be owned at least in part by New Vision on behalf of the United Church.  We are looking into, as well, the very strong possibility of a role for the Centenary building in the local music and performance scene as we work out our calling as a community of Christian faith.

We opened the doors of our MacNab site (aka, former Centenary building) to the community this past weekend as part of Hamilton’s Doors Open. About 100 people came by to see it. The occasion allowed us to turn over a few stones and learn some things about the building. Begun in 1866 and finished in 1868, its construction framed the year of the founding of Canada. This means that next year it will be 150 years old. At its opening it was understood to hold 1800 people. This was reduced in the 1910s to 1600 by order of the fire marshal, who told the congregation that it couldn’t continue to put fold-up chairs in the aisles!  Today, Hamilton’s Fire Prevention Office has determined that the maximum capacity for the sanctuary is 1100 people. (Click on the thumbnail photo to see photo full-sized.)

The volunteers for the Doors Open project prepared a fact sheet which I will post on our website later today or tomorrow. Check there (http://newvisionunited.org/) to learn more about this fascinating part of New Vision’s congregational heritage.

And see you Sunday, for community ~

Rev. Ian

A rainy day, but a busy one on the MacNab campus of New Vision. Every Thursday we recreate our Thursday outreach program. It has been a part of this site for over twenty years.

Volunteers are waiting at the door when our custodian arrives for work in the morning at 8 am. Tables are set up, food is prepared. A tub filled with whatever baking was left at 3 am in the morning at the Tim Horton’s at John and Jackson comes in and the contents placed on trays to be made available as snacks. At 9:55 all the volunteers gather for announcements, news, and a prayer. The doors are opened at 10 am and participants come in. There is an early rush for the food cupboards that our companion church Graceworks and we offer. As the rush subsides, community time around the tables with coffee and tea and snacks develops. A volunteer led worship service occurs at 11:45 ably assisted by New Vision’s music leader. Then it’s lunch time, and everyone present is served a hot meal. Today we had turkey and trimmings. The participants finish their meal, and make their way back out of doors. Volunteers wash up, clean up, sweep and mop the floors, and put the garbage and recycling out. Today the last volunteer was out at 1:45 pm.

Many volunteers contribute, and that’s why I’ve not named names. All are welcome – to the meal, to the community time, to whatever is available in the food cupboards or on the clothing table, to volunteer. We’re all recreating the Thursday Outreach program together, each week.

This Sunday New Vision does its first Threshold Partners’ Affirmation and Commitment as part of worship. Then, following worship and after a brief all purpose pause, we’ll gather again as a community of faith to vote on some questions the United Church is asking all of its communities of faith to answer. Then we’ll head back outside again. I hope the rain will have stopped, and the skies are clear.

See you Sunday!

Rev. Ian

We’re an ‘at the threshold’ community of faith, and we’re looking for those who also see themselves there and want to join us and share with us in stepping over the threshold into a new kind of belonging together.

From my experience this is not an easily found or discovered kind of moment in the world, and yet here it is. Let’s share it widely and broadly.
We’re at the threshold of a “welcoming, inclusive, artistic and bold” community of faith.

In a couple of Sundays (May 7) we’ll be including in our worship an Affirmation and Commitment of Threshold Partners. That will be all of us who want to join together at the threshold and invite others, and greet others there as we continue to develop this New Vision community of faith.

Sunday the band sits in and we celebrate the 3rd Sunday of Easter. We’ll hear the story this Sunday of the disciples walking the road to Emmaus; They were encountered by a stranger who revealed himself to them to be something the world seems to believe is surprisingly unremarkable.

See you Sunday ~
Rev Ian