Community Engagement

I can’t recall a time I’ve been more proud of a ministry supported by Timothy Eaton Memorial Church than after visiting New Circles.

For years I have heard about their work, and I’ve admired Cindy Blakely, the founder and spiritual heart of the organization. Cindy’s journey started as a social worker. There she recognized the challenges of those underserved, living on a limited income with limited access to the necessities of life. So, she did something about it. Her vision birthed… Read more

“You’re here?!”

I get this response a fair bit when I’m at church on a Sunday when I’m not preaching. I suppose people have seen on the sign or the eblast that Dayle or a guest is preaching and figured that means I’m out of town. I still am tempted to tease the surprised person: yeah, I do have to show up for work occasionally!

Perhaps the surprise level calls for some deliberation about when I preach and don’t, when others preach and what I do… Read more

Friends I am so glad to introduce you to one of the most innovative ministries I know in Canada, and worldwide. Because they’re coming to our church.

A Rocha is an evangelical ministry of creation care and conservation. It started in Portugal—the word is Portuguese for “the Rock,” after the place of its founding. Located on the southwestern coast of Portugal, it is a major migration point for birds flying between Europe and Africa, and was threatened with… Read more

An interview by Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee with Dr. Elaine Choi, Director of Music at TEMC. 

Tell us about the Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting, which you’ve just won?

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Last Monday night we were honoured to host a gathering for prayer with three neighbourhood congregations—Grace Church on the Hill, Congregation Beth Tzedec, and Holy Blossom Temple. This sanctuary was full, with some 600 of the 800 people here our Jewish neighbours. It seemed every one of them thanked us, often with tears: ‘it’s been lonely. Thank you for your kindness.’ What we did was not hard: my sermon was short, Elaine’s conducting and Stephen’s playing were simple compared to a normal Sunday.… Read more

Friends, I am glad to tell you about a new partner sharing space in our building.

City High School in Toronto is a college preparatory program for Chinese-speaking secondary school students. They are using classrooms on our third floor, down the hall from my office, and office space off our East Chapel. I’m bumping into high school kids when I head down the hall to the water cooler or to the kitchen. And I love it.

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As many of you know, TEMC is proud to have recently amalgamated with a Welsh United Church. Wales has more than 1500 years of church history. But if you're like me, you're relatively unaware of that history. So I've planned a pilgrimage to Wales, devoted to learning about Christ's work through the church in Wales, past and present. Wales inherited a unique strand of the Christian tradition called Celtic Christianity. The Celts, called the Galatians in the Bible, were a people with a vast territorial expanse north of the Roman Empire. With no written language,… Read more

There are three other places in town that I’ve preached at most often besides TEMC. One is Upper Canada College for its chapel service. The second is Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. The third is Christie Gardens, where a number of our elderly members live and worship in chapel once a week. I got to preach there again recently and was struck how much I learned.

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Friends, I want to invite (nay—beg!) you to come to two events in the next two weeks as we start our church year.

Institutions like ours are good at starting out the year with dramatic statements. With bold plans and spreadsheets. With five-year plans and stirring announcements of ambitious goals. We need these. In fact, we will be doing some longer-range planning this fall. But these two events start us out in a different key. They are the work before the work.

On… Read more

Friends, I’d like to ask you to mark your calendars for an event early in the fall. It’ll take some doing to get to for some of our non-retirees especially, but it’s worth it.

There are lots of ways to pray. The ones we’re most familiar with are us asking God for stuff. This is good and helpful. But it’s only one way to pray. There are many more. One alternative is what’s often called “contemplative” prayer. It has more to do with attending to who God is. If prayer requests are an effort to improve the world… Read more