The above pictures are of the most recent General Council, a picture of the whole group (reminiscent of the photo of the first meeting of the United Church of Canada on June 8, 1925), and some of the youth and young adults at General Council in Calgary from August 7-11. From reading summaries and articles in Broadview magazine and on the United Church website, there was much to celebrate for the commissioners, and also much to challenge them. T
General Council ended on Monday evening with the installation of the Moderator, Rev. Kimberly Heath.
You can read an interview with her at:
New United Church Moderator Kimberly Heath on her vision for the denomination | Broadview Magazine
In particular, this section speaks to me at this time:
Do you think the church needs to change how it’s operating to become more aligned with what God has planned?
KH: “I think that the structure of the church has to follow where the Spirit is moving and not the other way around. How you do that is another story. I don’t have strong answers on particular structural things that need to change, but somehow, we need to change so that we can follow the Spirit. And seeing yesterday in the court, we had a big youth presentation, and they want to be present. They want their voices heard. And so again, it’s like the Spirit is moving in that. How do we make the structure work so that they can have a stronger voice in our church? Same with les ministères en français, and there is life in the Francophone church community. And so again, how do we say, okay, there’s the spirit, there’s the life. Let’s empower and support it.”
The Moderator is talking about the presentation on Saturday evening by youth and young adults. You can read more about it here:
GC45: Youth call out church tokenism. More on the new moderator.
Or, you can watch the whole video starting at around the 8 minute mark, which includes an apology from the Chair of the Business Committee for the experience of youth being marginalized or not listened to during the discussions over the past several days. The testimonies from the youth are very powerful.
GC45 livestream - August 9 6:30pm ET
I will talk more about this on Sunday, when we look at the idea of multiculturalism when it comes to families. And I will explore the many ways that multiculturalism presents itself, including between generations, families of origins and regions of the country.
Here is a summary of General Council on the UCC website:
Have a great weekend folks! See you … either in person or virtually on Sunday.
