New Vision Notes

Thur Apr 22 2021

1. Happy Easter!
2. Christ is risen.
3. Indeed.
4. And today is Earth Day.
5. One of the concerns the wider public has expressed about how we redevelop our Holton and Main W campuses is the environmental one. How is conserving 24 Main W in whole an appreciative environmental action because we conserve the energy of it in its built form, but demolishing our Holton Ave S building also an appreciative environmental action? As we engage with our neighbours and the wider community we will be asked to engage this theme and explore its depth and breadth and work with the community on arriving at an environmental bottom line answer. As we should. We are engaged in social enterprise as a social purpose organization. We have committed to evaluate our actions and make our plans based on four bottom lines: economic, social, environmental, and spiritual.
6. Ancaster is home to a hagiographer (=an expert on saints) who has pronounced on the Holton Ave. campus of New Vision United Church in a letter to the editor today Apr 22 entitled by the delighted headline editor “What Would St. Giles Say?”
7. This Sunday our Emmanuel College Soutar Award Winner 2020 Morgan Bell will join us for us to recognize his achievement, present the award, and for him to break open the word among us. The Soutar Award is awarded to the Sanford Gold Medal winner of the Emmanuel graduating class each year it is awarded. We look forward to celebrating the distinguished Sanford Gold Medalist Rev. George Soutar’s ministry with the former Centenary this Sunday with Morgan.
8. Morgan Bell was raised on a farm just outside Omemee, Ontario. A lifelong member of Mount Horeb United Church, he received his BA (Hons) in French Studies from Trent University before enrolling at Emmanuel College, where he graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in spring 2020. Upon his graduation, Morgan was honoured with the Sanford Gold Medal in Divinity which is granted on the basis of the scholarship, ability, and character of an M.Div. graduate displayed over the whole course of the academic program. Morgan is a candidate for ordered ministry in the East Central Ontario Regional Council and sits on the Roman Catholic/United Church National Dialogue. At present, he is pursuing his PhD in systematic theology at the Toronto School of Theology, where he studies the doctrine of the First Person of the Trinity and the work of Swiss theologian Karl Barth.
9. May each year is Asian Heritage Month in Canada,  a time to reflect on and celebrate the contributions that Canadians of Asian origin have made, and continue to make to the well-being of Canada. New Vision will recognize Asian Heritage Month throughout the month of May, in song, led by our welcomers and readers, and in a specially themed worship gathering on Sunday May 16.
10. One technology note: those of you who are on our Threshold Partnership e-list were sent some reports of actions your Church Council was taking with respect to the redevelopment plan at 85 Holton Ave. S. earlier this week. We’ve learned that some of those emails went into the spam/junk/promot
    ions folders of more than one or two. If you are receiving this New Vision Note, and believe you should be on the Threshold Partnership e-list, please check in those various folders for email from this address officeadmin@newvisionunited.org. If you can’t find the emails, please contact New Vision by responding to this edition of New Vision Notes and let us know.
11. New Vision Virtual Worship is experiential, participatory, image-rich and collective, just like worship in person at New Vision! Join us on Sunday mornings 10:30 am week to week during the Covid-19 emergency by clicking here. If you want to put the link someplace easy to find each week, here it is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/782292511. Please share it with others and invite them to a “different” kind of time on Zoom from the usual.
12. All of Ontario, including Hamilton, is now in pandemic lock-down. I am sad to say this means that New Vision folks without access to Zoom will have to wait for a while more to participate in person at 24 Main W in our Zoom worship gathering on Sundays. I know those gathering on Zoom keenly miss those who have been gathering in person. I am looking forward to the day we can meet again in person, and I am sad that this is the second Easter we will not be able to gather in person as a Christian faith community.
13. You can also call in to the gathering on the telephone toll free. Call 1 855 703 8985, then, when prompted, input the Meeting ID 782 292 511 followed by the # sign. Ignore the prompts for Participant ID and Password. You are in when the recorded voice says, “You are in the meeting.” If you can only connect by video on your computer with no audio, you can use the phone connection for audio and the computer connection for visual.

Hope to see you Sunday ~ again, or for the first time ~

Rev Ian