Our congregation gathered on June 22 to approve the appointment of a new associate minister at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. Dayle Barrett is that minister. You have heard him preach, you have volunteered for his events, you have given thanks for his gifts—now let’s get to know him a little better.
How did it feel to get the congregation’s overwhelming approval for your ministry with us?
It felt great! I feel blessed to be here, it’s an amazing place to be, I’m really looking forward to hopefully a long time of ministry, getting to know the people here and serving.
Does this actually change the nature of your work with us?
Somewhat. It allows me to think further ahead, and to serve with a broad future in mind. But the things I’m passionate about remain the same: reaching out to the marginalized, proclaiming the gospel, sharing faith with people. One thing that’s a bit different is there’ll be a learning aspect to my role now, so we’ll spend some time doing educational things.
What are you proudest of in your time at TEMC (about a year) so far?
“Proud” is a funny word. I have a keen sense of none of this being me. I’m happy about the success of the dinners (4 so far—with some 2000 people served) and the people who have come in. But the coolest thing to me is watching people come to faith, or seeing people who are struggling gain a new understanding of where God is in their situation. That’s the stuff you can’t measure.
What have you been most surprised by?
How willing people are to serve: the sheer number who have wanted to get involved in initiatives. And how broad our tent is as well, how diverse our congregation is, even when it comes to ideas and thoughts. We have every breed of Christian in this church and I think that’s something special.
You’ll remember we warned you that you’d be lucky to get more than 3-4 volunteers for your first event.
I was surprised to get 80! I was hoping I’d get 30. 70 for Easter. When I had my first tour and saw the space, I saw how much opportunity we have. There’s so much we can do here that other churches wish they could even dream about. I thank God I’m somewhere he can give me a big dream and it’s actually possible here, and we can do it excellently too.
What’s something unusual about you that folks wouldn’t likely know yet?
I was once a carny–I spent four summers with a traveling carnival. I was a basketball game operator, and that’s where I gained my love for small-town Ontario. We were the only thing going on all year in these small places, and they’d be fascinated by that black guy. I had dreads at the time, and no Jamaican accent, and they’d be thinking I was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. I was a bit of a freak show. I had fun and met some of the coolest, most genuine people. It’s still where I run away to on the weekends, I disappear where I can go fishing.
How long have you actually been in ministry?
I preached my first sermon when I was twelve, and then I was Sunday school teaching until I became a youth pastor at age 16. I’ve been in ordained ministry for 10 years, but am now in process of entering the United Church of Canada. But I’ve been doing this a while.
You recently finished seminary (and won the Sanford medal as Emmanuel College’s top graduate)—what’d you learn there?
I learned a lot about different Christianitys. There are certain things you have to agree on to normatively be called Christian, but I also found there are so many ways of expressing those. There’s a real beauty to it. I gained a deeper appreciation of sacrament and liturgy I didn’t have before. I grew up super low-church Pentecostal. Then I was introduced to the richness of Orthodoxy, and I’m trying to find my middle. I know we need ritual and signs and symbols to show us this great mystery we can never understand just with words alone. But I also love the freedom, expression and liberty of charismatic worship, that’ll always be a part of me. Seminary was a great place to learn different ways of interpreting scripture and to understand where people are coming from when they interpret differently and even if I disagree.
Tell us about your family and place of origin.
I grew up in London, England. Both my parents were hard-working Jamaican immigrants. I have two older brothers: one is the head of music at a Catholic high school, the other runs a camera rental business. I have two wonderful nieces in their teens. One is actually an adult now, which I struggle to accept. And I grew up in a Jamaican Pentecostal church in southeast London. In the neighbourhood then we were one of a handful of black families. Now I go back and it’s very different and diverse. My dad was a building control officer for the London burrough of Greenwich, and my mum was a supply teacher.
I didn’t always realize how blessed I was to have parents who taught me scripture. Before bed, my mum and I would pray together every night. She had a “promise box” with scrolls with scripture written on them. I’d pull one out, open it, and she’d try and get me to memorize it. That’s why I still know the Bible so well. I thought that’s what all Christian parents did!
So even when I turned from my faith, I remembered the psalmist “Thy word is hidden in my heart.” I definitely sinned, but not without a nagging knowledge of what I should be doing. I never had the luxury of being an atheist: I was too steeped in the faith to think God wasn’t real. I just didn’t like him for a while.
And you had family in Canada also, right?
My grandparents lived in Kingston, Ontario. I came to stay with them at 18, and went to college in Kingston, and then on a traveling journey. I was a bit of a wild child, but had to go figure things out. There were tough times, but God used them all. That time formed me in terms of understanding people I’m now passionate about spreading the gospel to. I learned God can reach anyone, anywhere. The people on the margins of our communities are often just people that are doing what they feel they have to, to survive.
Be careful what you pray for: I asked God to use me to help broken people. I had no idea what those people were like! God answered my prayer, but I had to go through some stuff first! I didn’t know how to speak their language. This is how God redeems all the mess of creation. Joseph says to his deceitful brothers: “God meant this for good” (Genesis 50:20) That’s what God does. Certain things I meant for evil, God smiled and said, ‘you have no idea what I’m going to do with this mess.’
Finally, is it really true that you had lunch with the queen?
I was a 16 year-old member of youth parliament for Bexley Burrough. My aunt sent this photo to me last year, and I howled. It’s a proof. What that means is that Bexley Council sent proofs to my parents to purchase and my dad was so cheap he just took the proofs to work and photocopied them instead of buying them! And I will forever love my dad for that. That’s immigrant thinking.
