Caledonia Times
February 2014 The Diocesan Section of the Anglican Journal
St. James, Smithers turns 100 years old!
By Mel Coulson
On November 30th, 2013, the congregation of St. James’ Anglican Church celebrated its 100th anniversary with a Gala dinner at the St. James Centre. St. James’ history began in March, 1913, when a Vestry Committee was formed to take subscriptions for building a church. Sir Alfred Smithers himself gave the first subscription of $50. The church has come a long way in those one hundred years: from the humble first St. James’ Church building at 1st Street and King, the Church was Smithers’ oldest building (in fact the first frame building to be erected in Smithers) The first church building is now renovated and re-purposed as the “Old Church” Performing Arts Centre. It serves as the multifunctional St. James Centre on Princess Street, a 7-day-a-week building which serves the community as a worship space, a Montessori Day Care, a Thrift Shop and a Soup Kitchen. On June 15th, 1913, the Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. F.H. DuVernet held the very first service in Smithers in Mr. E. Orchard’s large dining room tent. At that time nothing but tents were allowed on the town site, The tents were subject to removal at 30 days’ notice as the town lots were not yet on the market. At the first service led by Bishop Du Venrnet, was attended by 25-30 people. The Bishop announced the appointment of Rev. Henry Grasett Kingstone,
BA, to the parish and who would serve both Smithers and Telkwa on alternate weeks. Rev. Kingstone held the first service in the not quite completed St. James’ Church on 7th December, 1913. The church register shows that 25 people attended and a collection of $5.80 was taken. If this sounds a rather paltry sum, I might mention that the full cost of building the church back in 1913 was $1,501, whereas when a group of us renovated the derelict building in 2004 to create the “Old Church” the cost exceeded $250,000! Using these figures to calculate a rough inflation factor, this $5.80 translates into a respectable amount of $966 in today’s terms. It seems that at that time the church was still without a name. I have on file a letter dated 15th December, 1913, from Bishop DuVernet to a Mrs. Plumtre of the Senior Branch St. James’ Women’s Auxiliary in Toronto accepting, with great relief, a gift of $300 on behalf of her mother, the late Mrs. Wild, stating that he would gladly agree to the church being named “St. James” provided Rev. Kingstone consented. Smithers’ first marriage was solemnized at St. James’ on 2nd February, 1914, uniting Mr. & Mrs. Ernie Hann. Their family still
resides in Smithers. Rev. Kingstone was from Eastern Canada and had volunteered to this pioneer diocese for 2 years. It seems he did not forget his 2 years here however, and his legacy lives on. In 1957, when he died, he bequeathed a substantial sum to the Diocese, expressing the wish that it be used to benefit youth ministry here. It fell upon Canon (later Archdeacon) Arthur Hinchliffe, minister in Smithers at the time, after much cajoling of the Diocesan Executive, to realize that wish by purchasing a large piece of property on Tyhee Lake and establishing Camp Caledonia. Camp Caledonia has since served as a spiritual, multicultural and socially diverse meeting place for the diocese and the wider community for half a century. Of the 22 ministers who have served St. James’ since 1913 Canon Hincliffe’s tenure remains the longest at 11 years. All have contributed in some way to the life of the parish. It is an enviable record of dedication and service and a source of inspiration and pride as the Anglican Church of St. James looks forward to its next one hundred years. Editor’s Note - all pictures sent to the paper, including the ones for this Celebration are placed on the Diocesan Facebook page if you would like to check them out!
Bishop’s Notes
How many stars would we rate? The other day I was booking a business trip to Toronto, and needed to arrange a hotel room. I did what I normally do, which was to go to Expedia. ca and search for hotels in the area I was going to be visiting. Expedia, like most travel sites, rates hotels by a variety of standards such as cleanliness, staff efficiency, and so on, and expresses this as 1 to 5 stars reflecting the quality of the particular hotel. What is interesting is that not all hotels within a given hotel chain ever have the same rating – there are variances by location. I usually try to balance out a reasonable cost with cleanliness and efficiency. Although we don’t use this type of rating system within the Church, I sometimes think we could benefit from doing so. As we struggle with the many challenges that are part of serving God, how would a visitor rate our particular parish? Are people friendly and helpful? Are the services well delivered? Are the premises clean and well maintained? Would a visitor want to return to our parish, and would they recommend our congregation to others? This is the type of question we often don’t ask
ourselves because we so easily simply see things through the lens of our experience. And when this happens, we sometimes become so focused on our personal experience that we are blind to the experience of those around us, or to what God is trying to accomplish in our midst. If we look up from our own experience and try to address other member’s needs, and those of visitors, we usually find ourselves trying to hold two seemingly contradictory principles in tension with one another. On the one hand, the doctrine of our faith must be timeless – after all, if we expect people to take our proclamation of the Gospel seriously we cannot be changing the message every other day. On the other hand, we must explore and discover new and effective ways to express those timeless truths in the Gospel to each generation. And so we find ourselves, individually and corporately, facing changes that are sometimes subtle, and other times dramatic. Since change often embodies both fear and excitement, reluctance and enthusiasm we can find ourselves stressed and reluctant to be involved. So how we approach change becomes very important. One of the least effective ways of managing change is to spend time lamenting how things are. Change comes upon us whether we like it or not, so time spent discerning how to respond to change is usually more productive. One way though this is by simply asking questions.
To use an example that every congregation has encountered, what opportunities arise for us to deepen our Christian witness and express our love of God when we are faced with the loss of a parish priest, and the search begins for a new one? And what lessons can we learn from these changes that can be applied to how we live in our respective communities when we are fortunate enough to have a priest? After all, the loss of a priest forces us to address questions we normally don’t worry about; who will prepare and deliver the sermon? Who will prepare and lead the Sunday liturgy? How will we minister to the sick and shut-ins? And who will greet and help the visitor to engage in our particular congregation? The list is long. If we are particularly bold, we might ask questions about how we supported, or failed to support, our past rector in prayer and through acts of kindness – the hallmarks of Christian behaviour we find outlined in the New Testament. February is the month when many of our parishes hold their annual general meetings. It provides an opportunity to pause and consider how an outsider might view our communities, and what we can do to support one another in carrying out God’s work amongst us. Finally, I would like to say “Thank You” to the many congregations who so generously supported the work of the Church over the past year. We came close to achieving our budget goals for which I am grateful and are thus able to continue the work of God throughout our diocese in the year ahead.
+ William Caledonia
Important Episcopal News and appointments
A new Canon for the Cathedral Chapter: the Bishop on December 22nd 2013, Appointed and collated the Rev. Canon Clyde (Gary) Davis of New Aiyansh Parish as a Canon of the Diocese of Caledonia. The honourary title was bestowed on Canon Davis for his service to the Church and his council given to the Bishop. An Ordination to the Priesthood: God willing, the Bishop will be ordaining to the sacred priesthood, the Reverend Deacon Canon Doctor James LJ Nuzzo on Sunday March 2nd 2014 @ 11am. The Ordination will take place at the Cathedral in Prince Rupert where Canon Nuzzo serves as an honourary assistant. All members of the diocese are invited to come and participate in the service. The clergy are invited to come, to robe, and to participate in ordination. The colour for the service will be red. A Welcome to the Diocese, for the Rev. Enid Pow! The newly appointed rector of the Parish of the North Peace arrived January 9th 2014. After getting sorted out and somewhat acclimatized to her surroundings, she will begin her ministry. The Page 2
Bishop hopes and plans to visit the parish shortly after her arrival so that orientation can be done. The Bishop announces the departure of Archdeacon Ernest Buchanan: It is with regret that the Bishop announces that the Ven. Ernest Buchanan, Rector of St. Matthew’s and Archdeacon of Caledonia West, has resigned to take up a new post in the Diocese of Adelaide in the Anglican Church of Australia. Archdeacon Ernest’s tenure will finish at the end of June, 2014. New Bishops for the Canadian Church: The following people have been elected to be Diocesan Bishops in diocese across the country in recent weeks. They are as follows: The Ven. Geoff Peddle, Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador; Bishop Ron Cutler for Nova Scotia and PEI, The Rev. Canon Melissa Skelton for New Westminster and the Very Rev. Logan McNamaie for British Columbia. The consecrations will take place in the New Year.
Caledonia Times
Publication of the Diocese of Caledonia Editor: The Dean of Caledonia Published monthly, except July and August by: Diocese of Caledonia, 200 – 4th Avenue West Prince Rupert, BC V8J 1P3 (250) 627-1143 or (250) 600-7143 Address correspondence and copy to the address above. Or to caledoniatimes@gmail.com Submissions must be receivedby the 1st of the month for the following month’s issue. Send subscription orders, address changes Diocese of Caledonia c/o Anglican Journal 80 Hayden St. Toronto, Ontario M4Y 3G2 Printed and mailed by: Webnews Inc., North York
Caledonia Times — February 2014
Editorial: Hey wait a minute! The “P”s of the Priesthood: Purpose One of the great joys of being an ordained person is in helping other people discover and begin to fulfill their vocations and ministries in the Church. Whether it is helping a parishioner discern a new gift that enables them to move into a ministry or it is working with a postulant who is working his or her way towards joining the ranks of the clergy, there is a great amount of satisfaction of watching and aiding others in ministry. Over the past while, I have been working a lot on this front with people all across the diocese. And at the same time I have noticed, that there has been a sort of debasement of the role that the ordained clergy play in the life of the parish and the diocese. So in light of what I am seeing and hearing, I thought I might spend some time looking at the role of the ordained people of our diocese and how we might understand better what it is that those in holy orders do and what they are so that we can build up the ministry of every member of the Church and enable the clergy to do their ministries even better. So how do we being to tackle this subject? I’m going to suggest that we look at it through the four “P”s of the priesthood: purpose, presence, prayer and power. I should tell you that I am basing this on the sermon that was preached at my own ordination to the priesthood several years ago now. The first thing that we need to consider about the ordained person is the purpose of ordination. Ultimately, ordination is a call to come to God first, before anything else. It is a call to come into a closer relationship with God in preparation before coming into a closer relationship with God’s people the Church. The Church is the royal priesthood of God on earth. And we as such a community are to present and represent God to the wider community. The Church as a whole acts to draw others who do
Books on The Way By Ruby McBeth Recently spirituality has been a popular topic in the media. As people have broken away from their Christian roots they have sometimes taken more interest in prayer than they had before. Instead of “saying prayers” they now want to learn how to pray. Many turn to Buddhism in their search for meaningful prayer. They could, however, go to the Orthodox Church (the churches of Greece and Russia) where there is a central concern with interior prayer. The Jesus Prayer is typical of Orthodox prayer. As many will be aware, the Jesus Prayer involves repeating the words “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner.” While this simple Prayer has been used by the Orthodox for centuries, it became more generally known with the publication in English of an anonymous Russian book called The Way of a Pilgrim. The Way of a Pilgrim is the story of a poor man who crosses Russia from the Ukraine to eastern Siberia. His aim on this journey is to learn to pray
Caledonia Times — February 2014
not belong to the community, in the Church and into the Kingdom. We as believers need to go and baptize and make disciples and teach them what Christ has commanded us to teach, knowing that he is present with us and to us in this work. Consider the nature of the Church community. There are 4 distinct characteristics that make the Church the Church: it is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic community of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are one, meaning we are at peace both with God and with each other. We are made holy, sanctified by the presence of the Spirit. We are catholic, meaning that we are a universal community throughout the world who are interdependent of each other in our ministries as we hold a common faith and preach the need for the repentance and the coming of the kingdom of God near to every soul. And lastly we are bound by the teachings and leadership of the apostolic community within the Church, as they are faithful to the teachings and leading of Christ and his first apostles. The Church is the servant community that cares for the Other. It seeks to see Christ in others and to serve Christ in them – the least the last and the lost. Such ministry leads the Church into sharing the pain and suffering of the world and shows the world God’s compassion and grace to overcome and to renew making God’s presence and peace evident and all-encompassing.
continuously. Early in the book the pilgrim encounters a monk who teaches him the Jesus prayer. The pilgrim begins saying it and finally after much persistence connects it to his heart and breathing so that he does not need to say it aloud. He relies on the kindness of people for food and lodging. His stories about the people he meets give us an idea of life in Russia at the time. Because it makes mention of the Crimean War, the book is thought to have been written after the middle of the 19th century. In the second half of the book entitled The Pilgrim Continues His Way a professor joins the pilgrim. They are then joined by three others. One of them reads from a text called “The Mystery of Salvation, Revealed Through Ceaseless Prayer.” This essay points to “Prayer [as] the source ...by which salvation is attained.” It recommends the Philokalia (a book often referred to in The Way of a Pilgrim) as a valuable collection of writings by 25 holy fathers about prayer. A discussion follows the essay and then we are given a second essay called “The Power of Prayer” which is in turn discussed. The book concludes with a list of 10 “Brief Directives for Prayer of the Heart.” An appendix includes short excerpts from the writings of the
So what is the purpose of the ordained people in the midst of the Church Committee? Bishops, priests and deacons act as the visible sign of the community through their public ministry and to show the Church how to live out their several ministries in everyday life. The clergy are there to exemplify the Christian life as a constant remainder to the community that we together are I.H.S. – In His Service. Therefore, by its very nature, the ministry of the clergy is publicly incarnational. The clergy live out the life, death, resurrection and ascension in their lives day by day, day after day while recognizing that Christ is both the source and strength of our common ministry. Public ministry is more intense and thus is in need of a deeper spiritual life supplied by the strength given through the regular study of the Scriptures, the regular offering of prayer and the frequent invocation of the Holy Spirit for self and for others. Thus there is a need to bless, consecrate and infuse our leadership through the laying on of apostolic hands with what God can and will bless them with. The purpose of the corporate ministry is to create the environment is which ministry is done and in which prayer and worship are rightly offered to God. The ongoing ministry of the Church is invigorated by the infusion of new members, by the discovery of new gifts and talents and when members are released into the world to do ministry, using their talents and gifts. The clergy are there to enable all that, not just to be doers alone. The next time you come across your clergy, ask them how they got involved in ministry and then see how you might get involved to help them and your Church and be with them. Jason+
Holy Fathers of Orthodox Christianity including St. Simeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory of Sinai. Bishops of the Orthodox Church were uneasy about The Way of a Pilgrim when it was first published. There are two main problems. Firstly, it tends to treat the name of God (or Christ) as a sort of magic spell. Secondly, there is a tendency to count on prayer rather than medicine for healing the sick. Because of these issues the Bishops insisted that no one who was not a monk or nun should read the book without having a spiritual advisor to consult. A foreword by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. who was a prisoner in a Soviet gulag for 15 years tells us that the pilgrim “shows by his example what it means to place one’s trust in God.” This classic of Orthodox spirituality is recommended generally for adults with, of course, the proviso that the reader finds a spiritual advisor while reading it! The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Translated by Helen Bacovcin. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
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Diocesan Life in Caledonia
From Holy Trinity, Vanderhoof: On December 21, 2013 the Town of Vanderhoof was treated to a “Presentation of the Nativity” in Riverside Park. Eight of the Churches of Vanderhoof accepted responsibility for their particular camp site which represented one scene from the Nativity. At the entrance we had erected the Nativity scene borrowed from Holy Trinity Anglican Church with a sign “Welcome to Bethlehem.” There was a place to gather there, as song leaflets and coloring books for the children were distributed. Angels then led groups of 10-30 from site to site, introducing each site as they went. The sites included The Prophesy of Isaiah, The Angel Gabriel coming to Mary, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem, No Room at the Inn, The Birth of Jesus, The Angels appearing to the Shepherds, and The Wise Men. There was then an opportunity for the “Angels” leading the groups to share the story of the Cross before the next site where “Eagle’s Wings”, a family group from Fiji led a carol sing-a-long. This was followed by Hot Chocolate and Cookies for all. We wish to thank the District of Vanderhoof for their cooperation in making this possible. Feedback from the Community has been overwhelming and we look forward to making this an annual event. PCreds - G.Andrews.
Wider Church Life - in Brief Churches unite to hire youth worker Five Oshawa churches—four Anglican and one Lutheran—are banding together to hire a youth worker for two years who will set up a joint program for their young people. The Rev. Canon Sister Constance Joanna Gefvert, SSJD, the interim priest-in-charge of Christ Memorial, says the idea developed last summer, after the leaders of her church’s youth group said they could no longer run it. When she spoke to clergy from the other churches, funding was a problem for all of them, and they also wanted to do more outreach into the community. “We thought that by combining our forces we would have the funding,” she says. The four other churches are St. George Memorial, St. Matthew, St. Peter and Grace Lutheran. All five churches will share responsibility for the ministry. The plan is to have the youth program’s location rotate among the churches and the youth minister spend some time in each parish on a regular basis and provide some teen pastoral counselling. The (Toronto) Anglican Bishop Clarke commends alternative charters Speaking at an interfaith dinner in Montreal in November, Bishop Barry Clarke of the diocese of Montreal, who has expressed misgivings about the Quebec government’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values and its restrictions on religious symbols in public places, spoke to the mostly non-Anglican and non-Christian audience about other charters he views more favourably. He held up as an example the Anglican Communion’s Marks of Mission and its call “to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and
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reconciliation.” He also commended the Charter of Compassion that religious scholar Karen Armstrong has been promoting since 2008. Montreal Anglican 22 tonnes for Belize Fifteen volunteers with connections to the archdeaconry of Trinity-Conception returned home on Nov. 25 from a nine-day mission to Mahogany Heights, Belize. The mission sent materials and a container to St. Agnes Anglican School, with the aim of establishing a library for the school, providing clothing, bicycles, school supplies, toys, first aid supplies, bedding and linens, and offering public health education resources. Volunteers also intentionally spent time with the people in the community. The project took over a year to plan and received support from thousands of people in Conception Bay North and surrounding areas. The estimated total cost for the effort was about $50,000.
Surfin’ For the Lord By Ruby McBeth To learn more about prayer in the Orthodox tradition go to <www.orthodoxprayer.org>. This website is jam packed with ideas about prayer. The homepage is tastefully designed. A sidebar leads to “Daily Prayer”, “Jesus Prayer” and many others as well as “Orthodox Way of Life”, and “Orthodox Way of Life Blog.” Clicking on “Prayer Articles and Books” took me to a listing of Orthodox spiritual leaders and saints - pictures and short bios (helpful for someone like myself unfamiliar with the Orthodox fathers). Saint Theophan the Recluse›s four sermons on prayer look excellent. They will give me something to chew on in Lent. Happy surfing!
The Comic Life!
The container was placed on site and converted into a library, complete with bookshelves and about 2,000 books from Newfoundland and Labrador. Anglican Life (in Newfoundland and Labrador)
Caledonia Times — February 2014