Church of the Resurrection takes a brave step

Until March 1 of this year, I was the People’s Warden of the Church of the Resurrection. That was the day when Bishop Shane officially declared our church disestablished. I am sure that you can all imagine what an agonizing and highly emotional process it was for our parish leading up to this closure, but I also want to share with you why we chose to initiate this disestablishment ourselves and why we see the future as a time of hope and promise for the ministry and mission of the Anglican Church in Ottawa South.

Church of the Resurrection, or COR for short, was experiencing a sharp and consistent decline in its numbers for nearly a decade before 2020.  So, this is really not a pandemic story. While we were on quite solid footing financially, we found increasingly that we no longer had the people to perform our various ministries and even to fulfill the important roles for the parish, from altar guild to counters to positions on parish council. To be frank, we had reached a point where we barely had the peoplepower to put on fundraising events such as garage sales or even a bake sale – and it kept falling to the same, small handful of dedicated (and yet increasingly weary) people to do everything.  In short, this was simply not sustainable. Gone were the days of contributing significantly to various outreach programs and other ministries in Ottawa South, and we were struggling just to pay our bills to the Diocese every month without dipping into our trust funds.  

To be sure, we could have decided to limp along for quite a while longer, holding services for about 30 or 40 people each Sunday and doing little else, until we ran our coffers dry just paying the basic bills. But this was not what we wanted. We wanted to continue to contribute meaningfully to ministry in our area.  And so we made the bold decision last July to disestablish. By doing so, we knew that our remaining resources, in both peoplepower and funds, could continue to be put towards ministry in our community by combining with our neighboring parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Alta Vista. Of course, this decision was heart-wrenching for all of us at COR.  Indeed, a good number of us had spent much of our lives as members of this parish, a parish that had become a warm and extended family for many over its 50-year history. (I, for one, was just a little girl when I helped to turn the first patch of sod for construction of the building in 1968; I was also confirmed there and married by its incumbent.)  And yet, in our hearts, we also knew that closing was what we were called to do; we knew it was the RIGHT thing to do.

So what does all of this mean for the former parishioners of COR and for Anglican ministry in Ottawa South? On the ground, as of March 1st, the boundaries of the St. Thomas the Apostle parish officially changed to include the region previously held by COR.  The Rev. Michael Garner, who was our minister, was reassigned as the Associate Incumbent to St. Thomas in September of 2020, and COR did not reopen its doors for services after the lockdown was lifted, even though we were not yet officially disestablished.  Many of our parishioners have now joined St. Thomas, and I can attest to the fact that they now have on board a new cohort of wonderfully talented and motivated people to help contribute to their various ministries. St. Thomas has also been the beneficiary of the very extensive music library that was built up over 50 years at COR.

I do want to stress again that COR was not broke; in fact, we may well be the only parish in our Diocese ever to close that was not actually in debt!  This disestablishment was done intentionally with the hope that our remaining resources be could be meaningfully spent rather than used solely for bricks-and-mortar utilitarian expenses. 

After we paid all of our bills and legally dissolved our relationship with Riverside United Church (with whom we successfully shared a physical building and all operating expenses since 1969), we still had funds to disburse.  And so the Rector’s Warden, Bev Muma, and I made the decision to direct the bulk of our remaining bank balance to St. Thomas.   We gave $25,000 of these funds to the first phase of an ambitious audiovisual upgrade project that is now underway there. The importance of streaming services makes this all the more important during these stay-at-home pandemic times. Last month, in addition to some small donations, we sent $10,000 to a new community garden project that is in the planning stages at St. Thomas.  We also asked that an additional $5,000 be set aside to serve as seed, or pilot project, money for starting new ministries in Ottawa South. It is our hope that by providing seed money, people will test out new ideas they have—we won’t know what might work unless we can try it out first! 

We also petitioned Bishop Shane and the Diocesan Council to request that our remaining Consolidated Trust Funds be transferred to St. Thomas—again in the spirit of keeping our resources within the local community.  We are thankful that this petition was granted and so after the official disestablishment of COR, our roughly $600,000 in CTF funds was moved over to St. Thomas. Thus, St. Thomas’ financial footing is now significantly improved, and it is our hope that these trust funds are able to shore up and expand Anglican ministry and mission in Ottawa South.  

In closing, I would just like to emphasize that, as painful as it was at the time, COR’s disestablishment has ultimately meant that we here in Ottawa South are all that much richer in so many ways beyond dollars and cents, for by joining forces, we are now in every way stronger and more able to do the good work that God has called upon us to do.