Thursday August 25th, 2022

While Rev. Ian is on vacation and sabbatical leave, here is what’s going on at New Vision:

1. This coming Sunday, August 28th, we will be participating in a joint service with Inwood United Church with leadership provided by their Minister, and our good friend, Rev. Christine Jerrett. We invite you to attend in person or through Zoom using the link provided below.
2. On Sunday, September 4th, we look forward to welcoming back Martine, Shannon and other summer travelers. Our worship service will be led by Helen Bradley and many other members of New Vision’s community of Faith.
3. Rev. Miriam Spies and Rev. Diane Blanchard arrived safely in Germany to participate and provide leadership in the World Council of Churches gathering. We will have more information from them at our Worship Service on Sunday, September 11th.
4. During Rev. Ian’s vacation and study/sabbatical leave, pastoral care will be available through members of our Pastoral Care Team by contacting Albert Jagt or Erin Poole.
5. The Music Hall social enterprise project is moving ahead now with an invitation to the Hamilton community and its leaders to pick up the music venue project with us. For more information, have a look at this page on our website.
6. As kids are gearing up to go back to school, we would like to thank everyone who gave generously to this year’s Case For Kids fundraiser. Together we raised a total of $1,560 for Wesley’s children and youth programs; now that’s something to celebrate!
7. The pandemic-begun Gore Park Outreach Program on Saturdays continues. They are looking for 2 or 3 more volunteers to join them in the New Vision kitchen Saturday mornings to help prepare the hot meal they serve at noon in The Gore.
8. L’Arche Hamilton is looking for volunteers: They write: Would you or anyone you know be interested in engaging with us by volunteering with Inclusion Coffeehouse? We are looking for volunteers who would be willing to volunteer alongside adults with developmental disabilities in serving baked goods, pouring coffee, taking orders and cleaning the coffeehouse space. We would love to have volunteers who are committed to volunteering with us weekly on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays in the mornings. We are a Social Enterprise where people with and without intellectual disabilities volunteer together to serve coffee and share our gifts with the neighborhood. located at the Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre and operated through L’Arche Hamilton Please email dave@larchehamilton.org if you are able to support us!
9. Another opportunity this fall: This fall, Good Shepherd will be launching a council that will engage with new projects, policies, and directives to hear how we can better serve everyone in our community. We are inviting people with living/lived experience in areas such as living without a fixed address, living with mental illness, living with a disability, and/or living through challenges related to substance use, racism, colonialism, discrimination, and other forms of exclusion from resources and equity. The Lived Experience Advisory Council will advise Good Shepherd and create a new dynamic of community involvement in social service delivery. For more info: Teresa Caterini, Lived Experience Advisory coordinator tcaterini@gsch.ca.
10. With a very contagious new COVID sub-variant spreading in Hamilton, we encourage you to get the fourth vaccination now available to all adults. We will continue our current in-person gathering approach: i) we will form the circle again in the lower hall, distancing the seats by a metre for the time being. ii) people may join the circle if they are willing to wear a mask.
11. The reason for the masks is that we will allow ourselves to sing, and masking reduces the distance air we expel travels with the increased effort singing.
12. 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.
13. You can also call in to the gathering on the telephone. Call 1 647 374 4685, 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.
14. Rev. Ian’s sabbatical leave will end January 8, 2023 and will return to our worship space on Sunday January 15, 2023.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!