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.
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.
An opinion piece made the rounds among us pastor types recently. Its author was saying goodbye not just to a congregation, but to pastoral ministry. It’s an old and creaky narrative that congregations are stuck in their ways. We clergy fancy ourselves more forward-thinking than our timid flocks. It’s also a… Read more
I’ve been grateful to hear from our finance folks that y’all have responded well to my financial appeal. Several dozen of you have gotten in touch with that office to increase your giving and explicitly mentioned the letter. We’re a church that steps up when called upon. I’m proud of that.
My colleague Bishop Jenny Andison of St. Paul’s Bloor Street tells me of a meeting with a new family at their growing church. They were eager to join St. Paul’s. They turned to her with enthusiasm and asked, “How much are the… Read more
Written By Rachel McMillan
A few months ago, I was gifted the privilege of taking a trip down bookish memory lane. A few of us, including Rev Lori, went to town attempting to organize the TEMC library. On that first day, we weeded and organized and sneezed through the dust of books that had sat untouched for many years.
If you have ever been inside the library, you know it is a bookish haven by virtue of its design alone. There is a cozy window… Read more
Friends, if you’ve been in our sanctuary recently, I hope you’ve noticed our heritage cabinet on our eastern wall, not far from the entry to the atrium. There, our own Charles Sweetman has been gathering mementos, photos, articles, and memories from our history. He has done this with seasonable appropriateness: first Christmas, then Valentine's, then St. Patrick, then Easter, and perhaps more that I missed. His displays have been beautiful, poignant, funny, and profound.
These displays show us a church that is… Read more
Lent is a season for giving up good things to remember the ultimate. It’s a season when the church refrains even from saying “hallelujah.” That’s an Easter word. Lent is a preparation for the cross, and a time to reflect on our own sins that send Jesus there.
I found myself giving up something during Lent last week, but not intentionally. It was greeting you all before and after our service. I’ve had a virus (not covid, not even strep), and didn’t want anyone else to join me in the purgatory of illness. But I hated missing this time together. It’s… Read more
“Hey Jaclyn, we want to do something fun, what should we do?”
I noticed this sort of request to our own Jaclyn Didiano early in my time at TEMC. The staff would be gathered at the church or elsewhere. We’d have time to kill. And Jaclyn would alleviate our boredom. Soon we would be playing some game or icebreaker, something Jaclyn accrued from her years in camping or recreation. Ice would be broken. Laughs laughed. Tears shed. Humans humanized.
You probably know Jaclyn… Read more
Friends, TEMC’ers and beyond: we are doing a brave thing this weekend. We’re launching a new ministry initiative. We don’t even know what to call it yet. But we know it needs your prayer and well-wishes and support.
It’ll be launched by our own Nupur James-Araujo, our beloved minister for children and youth, who now has “young adults” added to her portfolio. We don’t know exactly what a young adult is, but we figure it’s around 18-35 years old. Nupur and her husband Aaron have had a hankering for a version of church… Read more