Sunday Stops

I haven't lived in Toronto for 35 years and I rarely took the streetcar but I noticed a report this week about the end of special streetcar stops. I had not realized that there are 42 Sunday stops near places of worship across the city. They will end in June though, the outcome of declining use and an awareness that they are at churches, not synagogues or mosques or temples.

Some congregations have protested because their elderly members depend upon the streetcars but the cancellations are inevitable. The stops were created in the 1920's but a TTC spokesperson says that we are now a secular society and times have changed.

We are seeing how dramatically those times have changed for religion in so many ways. Mainline churches have not responded at all well to those changes, to our peril. Actually, while we often ask nervously why the evangelicals are doing better they are in fact "holding their own" in Canada, rather than flourishing. Even in the States church attendance is declining and so are the numbers of those identifying as Christian. 

Is this the streetcar stop at the end of the world? Apparently not. Christianity is still vibrant and alive in many regions around the globe. Perhaps we will come to the realization that our supposedly secular culture actually needs meaning & purpose beyond what we can buy in the short time we are here. In the meantime we can be faithful, loving God and our neighbour and serving Christ with compassion.