Tenants Thomas Burton, Amy McClelland and Bailey Fleming at an October open house.
(Photo: Doug Dicks)
We're still recovering from our wild night of revelry on New Year's Eve. I was still awake at 10:30 and have been paying for it the past two days. Yet here I am blogging in 2020.
Not long ago I saw an encouraging and pleasant piece in Broadview magazine, the publication for the United Church which was formerly known as the Observer. It was about an initiative by Eglinton St. George's United Church in Toronto to provide housing for young adults who may be challenged to find affordable accommodation in a city where rents are sky-high. I have a bit of history with this congregation, having attended there from time to time with my late mother after her separation from my father. In more recent years I had a conversation with a search committee about the lead minister role but realized we couldn't afford to live anywhere within a hundred kilometres of the church.
The congregation owns a house which could have been sold for a lot of money, but instead chose this courageous direction. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:
The rent is set at $750 per housemate (market rate is around $1,000), and the goal is to create an intentional community for young Christians, where instead of simply sharing space, the roommates also plan common activities including meals, spiritual practice, downtime and outreach to the broader community.
Rev. Sarah Chapman, the church’s next generation and growth minister, pitched the idea to the congregation as an experiment. “The church had wanted to sell the house because they would get over a million dollars for it, but were brave to try this,” she says. “Noticing there aren’t as many young adults in our congregation, we asked, ‘how can we reach out to that generation?’”
I'm impressed by this decision because I've witnessed very different attitudes. During my ministry I served three congregations with a million or more in investment assets and at times grew frustrated by the hoarding mentality of some (certainly not all) who were applying outdated financial principles rather than gospel vision to their stewardship. In latter years those investments were yielding very little for the benefit of the ministry and mission of the congregations, yet the outlook persisted.
There is also a personal aspect to my appreciation of the article. I watched the young woman in the centre of the photo above grow up over the past 15 years. Amy McLelland and her family were and are actively involved in a congregation I served and she and her siblings were a delight. I asked Amy to sing at my final service at St. Paul's. It's wonderful to see her flourishing.and that Eglinton St. George's is helping that to happen.
Congregations do need to prayerfully, imaginatively ask what God is calling them to do and be in what is a very different and challenging time.
Thoughts?
https://broadview.org/eglinton-st-georges-affordable-housing/
1 comment:
Catching up into the New Year on your blog and saw a familiar face. What a wonderful offering Flourish House is to young United Church folk in Toronto. For Amy it was a chance to work her co-op term,in this expensive and often impersonal city, with immediate and meaningful connections, and to have a church family to experience and explore this stage of her life and her faith alongside. And for the church, how awesome to have these committed young people to share a new generation's vision. Win-Win, if you ask me.
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