In Season of Creation time…there’s a hum at New Vision. Next week our trustees present to the Presbytery Executive our proposed agreement to go 50-50 with a developer to turn the Holton Ave. site into market-rate apartments. From there it goes to the Presbytery meeting on Tuesday Oct 3 for approval. If you are interested in attending that Oct 3 meeting of the Presbytery to hear our presentation and watch the Presbytery make a decision you are most welcome.
A week this Sunday (Sept 24) we gather as Threshold Partners to receive and act on a recommendation from our Council to redevelop our MacNab site to increase our impact on the livability of downtown and of Hamilton more generally.
We continue with our partners at Rockville United in Rockville Maryland to raise funds and develop plans to welcome a Syrian refugee family into Hamilton. The family is now being processed by Canadian Immigration, though it will take as much as another 18 months before they arrive. We have all the funds we need in hand we are required to have to sponsor the family. Any excess we raise we have agreed with Rockville to give to Wesley Urban Ministries to support their work in settling Syrian refugees in Hamilton.
Our plans for an art exhibition upstairs at our MacNab site are developing and are being well received in the wider community. Exhibition curator Alison Miculan writes, “The show is called: “Inside/Out”. The aim of the show is to explore who/what are religious insiders and outsiders. Works may be related to concepts of God or Spirituality. They may be related to church or anti-church. Works may represent any faith background. We are inviting professional (established) artists to show their work, as well as amateurs and marginalized people. Some work will be displayed in the sanctuary – some outside. We are taking pews from the St. Giles sanctuary and will be inviting the public to paint them with representations about religion during the October Art Crawl. We are working towards a Nov. 10th opening (at the November Art Crawl).”
This Sunday’s theme is “wilderness.” Canada is full of wildernesses – from deserts, to tundra, from prairie to mountain forests. Come worship with the wilderness this Sunday at New Vision.
See you Sunday ~
Rev. Ian