Worship this week focuses on Indigenous Day of Prayer, which is marked the Sunday before National Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21), is an opportunity to celebrate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples’ values, customs, languages, and culture. We will also mark the Moose Hide Campaign, which began as a BC-born Indigenous-led grassroots movement to engage men and boys in ending violence towards women and children. It has since grown into a nationwide movement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians from local communities, First Nations, governments, schools, colleges/universities, police forces and many other organizations – all committed to taking action to end this violence.
Most of the Transition Team attended reVITALize Halifax last week. We had inspiring speakers, opportunities to worship in a beautiful, flexible, and yet traditional space, and exposure to new ways of being the church! Some of the highlights for me were a session on the changing demographics of Canada and what that means for our ministry, the session on reconciliation, a session on moving our bodies while we worship and sing, a couple of sessions on sexuality and spirituality, a concert by singer/songwriter Sarah McGinnis, who has undertaken the Legacy Song Project, where she writes songs for people who are near death or who have died as a way of remembering and immortalizing them. The Transition Team will explore what will be useful to implement and experiment with at St. James.
Joyce Wylie and I headed directly from there, to the Region’s Annual Meeting, the first in person one since 2019. The theme was The Story of Our Discipleship and theme speaker, the Rev. Dr. Michael Blair, General Secretary of the UCC, was both inspiring and challenging as he spoke about discipleship. There was the usual mix that I have come to expect from regional meetings: business, worship, opportunities to network. I also led two workshops on Power, Influence and Authority. Shauna MacDonald was installed as President of Bermuda-Nova Scotia Region at the end of the Celebration of Ministry service on Sunday.
This week, aside from the usual ministry related tasks, I am headed out to Trinity United Church in Timberlea on behalf of the Future Directions Committee this evening, Thursday evening the Trustees are meeting to discuss applying for a grant to upgrade our AV system, and on Saturday, I’m making a presentation on Good Beginnings and Endings to the Summer Distance students at AST.
As we continue this journey of Intentional Interim Ministry, here is a great article that asks: Is It Time to Change the Questions Your Church Asks?
I’m a huge fan of podcasts, Alan Alda has one called Clear and Vivid; this one, entitled The Joy of Getting Good at Something Hard, speaks about how practice brings about mastery. As we try and shift some things in our congregation, we need to remember that just doing them once or twice doesn’t bring mastery or ease. But it’s constant practice and suddenly you are doing something you didn’t think you could! Whether it’s being more welcoming, both in worship and coffee time, to how we interact with each other at meetings, to how we engage with the community. We can’t act into a new way of thinking/believing, but we can’t think our way into a new way of acting.
St. James United Church Dartmouth 