Rev Tom Miles

Revs Kathryn Ransdell & Gary Paterson

Silent Night

Thanks to Mark Anthony for the pictures ]]> http://www.standrewswesleychurch.bc.ca/blog/index.php/2010/01/01/christmas-eve-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.standrewswesleychurch.bc.ca/blog/index.php/2009/12/02/december-1st-board-meeting/ http://www.standrewswesleychurch.bc.ca/blog/index.php/2009/12/02/december-1st-board-meeting/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:18:31 +0000 admin http://www.standrewswesleychurch.bc.ca/blog/?p=227 The Tuesday meeting was much more efficient than normal. We are trying to have all the reports written and emailed to the Board a week before the meeting.  This way we get a chance to read them before hand and come prepared to discuss them.  This is the first time we have tried it and there were several positive comments.

Highlights

The Santa Claus Parade happens on Sunday after church.  Meet at the float which will be in the 1300 block on Alberni by 12:45pm.  There will be pews on the float so if you don’t want to walk you can sit and wave just like Queen Elizabeth.

Friday at 7:00 is the Carol Sing.

Thursday at 7:00 the Tibetan Monks who are building a sand mandala are having a concert with traditional dancing, chanting, masks and those great 7 foot long horns.

The Empty Suitcase needs filling with new items of pyjamas, nightgowns, robes, slippers, socks, underwear, hats, gloves, scarves and toiletries or $$$$$.

The next meeting will be January 5, 2010 at 7:00pm

November Board Meeting

A St. Andrew’s-Wesley Board meeting is a wonderous thing.  The November 3rd meeting was no different with 16 reports being shared and much discussion on the topics raised.

Highlights

The new boilers are being installed within the next two weeks and we can look forward to being warm this winter, using a lot less fuel and saving money .

Who would have thought a year ago that a church with a proud Presbyterian tradition would have a candle/prayer stand and that it would be so popular that a second one is needed.  The new stand will arrive soon.

The second phase of the “Living Our Promises” has been completed with good results.  Over 100 people who were not visited last year were visited.  Our thanks to Michael Dobbin, Alan Lowe and their team of canvassers for their hard work.

In 2010 the Cunningham Foundation is sponsoring a Hymn writing competition. It will be open to all.  A similar event in England was hugely popular.

The Teddy Bear drive is starting – only Teddy Bears need apply!!!!

Tuesday,  September 1 was the first Board meeting of the fall.   Thirty members were there and they got a chance to meet Rev. Kathryn Ransdell and Michael Dobbin.  Kathryn is soon to be installed as our Minister of Faith Formation & Education – as soon as Toronto finishes with the paperwork.  Michael is our new Director of Development and he is already hard at work making the church more financially viable.  After meeting both of these outstanding people we are looking forward to their involvement with us.

Financially we are 2/3 of the way through the year and while we are not meeting our budget expectations revenue is exceeding last years.  Thanks to all who support us financially.  The follow-up to last year’s “Living Our Promises” stewardship campaign was announced. It will take place in the fall with visits or phone calls to those who were missed last year. Fund raising projects will now be co-ordinated so that we are not inundated with requests for money.

The newly decorated room that will be part of the Sunday School will be called “Marnie’s Room” in honour of Marnie Tunbridge, who passed away earlier this year.  Marnie was a long time member of our congregation who had been a deaconess working in education in Japan before retiring to Vancouver.

A motion to support the use of the Bosman Motor Inn on Howe St. for supportive housing was passed.  This hundred room facility will be part of a test that is funded by the Federal government and is based on recommendations of the Kirby commission.  Another motion approved the transfer of our archives to the Vancouver School of Theology.

The next meeting is October 6 at 6:30 in the Salons and is open to all.

Jim MacLean Cruickshank
Return to the Home Page

Easter Sunday, 2009

GLEANINGS…. “Easter” by Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark

Christmas has a large and colourful cast of characters including not only the three principals themselves but the Angel Gabriel, the Innkeeper, the Shepherds, the Heavenly Host, the Three Wise Men, Herod, the Star of Bethlehem, and even the animals kneeling in the straw.  In one form or another we have seen them represented so often that we would recognize them anywhere.  We know about the birth in all its details as well as we know about the births of ourselves or our children, maybe more so.  The manger is as familiar as home.  We have made a major production of it, and as minor attractions we have added the carols, the tree, the presents, the cards. Santa Claus, Ebeneezer Scrooge, and so on.  With Easter it is entirely different.

The Gospels are far from clear as to just what happened.  It began in the dark.  The stone had been rolled aside.  Matthew alone speaks of an earthquake.  In the tomb there were two white-clad figures or possibly just one.  Mary Magdalen seems to have gotten there before anybody else.  There was a man she thought at first was the gardener.  Perhaps Mary the mother of James was with her and another woman named Joanna.  One account says Peter came too with one of the other disciples.  Elsewhere the suggestion is that there were only the women and that the disciples, who were somewhere else, didn’t believe the women’s story when they heard it.  There was the sound of people running, of voices.  Matthew speaks of “fear and great joy.”  Confusion was everywhere.  There is no agreement even as to the role of Jesus himself.  Did he appear at the tomb or only later?  Where?  to whom did he appear?  What did he say?  What did he do?

It is not a major production at all, and the minor attractions we have created around it — the bunnies and baskets and bonnets, the dyed eggs — have so little to do with what it’s all about that they neither add much nor subtract much.  It’s not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it.  It doesn’t have the ring of great drama.  It has the ring of truth.  If the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus indeed rose from the dead, they would presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster.  Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was.  The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself.  When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty.  That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.

The symbol of Easter is the empty tomb.  You can’t depict or domesticate emptiness.  You can’t make it into pageants and string it with lights.  It doesn’t move people to give presents to each other or sing old songs.  It ebbs and flows all around us, the Eastertide.  Even the great choruses of Handel’s Messiah sound a little like a handful of crickets chirping under the moon.

He rose.  A few saw him briefly and talked to him.  If it is true, there is nothing left to say.  If it is not true, there is nothing left to say.  For believers and unbelievers both, life has never been the same again.  For some, neither has death.  What is left now is the emptiness.  There are those who, like Magdalen, will never stop searching it till they find his face.

Happy Easter