7 p.m. Christ Church Cathedral — (414 Sparks St., Ottawa)
Live-stream only at  https://www.youtube.com/c/christchurchcathedralottawa

Dec. 5
Advent II 

Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks Street, Ottawa)
8:30 a.m. Holy Eucharist

10:30 a.m. Choral Eucharist
4 p.m.   O Antiphons

Dec. 6
125th Anniversary Lecture Series

7:30 p.m. Zoom and YouTube
Guest speaker author Michelle Good

Not to be missed:
Michelle Good to deliver Anniversary lecture on December 6, 2021

Michelle Good, author of the powerful Governor-General’s Award-winning novel Five Little Indians, will deliver the first lecture in a series that commemorates the 125th anniversary of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa on Monday, December 6, 2021 at 7:30 pm. The lecture is a joint presentation with All My Relations. It will be livestreamed on Zoom and on the ADO YouTube channel. See the diocesan website and social media posts for the link and further information.

Michelle Good is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. After working for Indigenous organizations for twenty-five years she obtained a law degree and advocated for residential school survivors for over fourteen years. Good earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia while still practising law and managing her own law firm. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada, and her poetry was included on two lists of the best Canadian poetry in 2016 and 2017. In addition to winning the 2020 Governor General’s Award for fiction, Five Little Indians, her first novel, won the HarperCollins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize, the Writers Trust Fiction Prize and the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Dec. 10
Compline for Advent 

7 p.m. Christ Church Cathedral
Live-stream only at  https://www.youtube.com/c/christchurchcathedralottawa

Dec. 12
Advent III

Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks St., Ottawa)
8:30 a.m. Holy Eucharist
10:30 a.m. Choral Eucharist
4 p.m. Nine Lessons and Carols

Dec. 17
Compline for Advent 

7 p.m. at Christ Church Cathedral
Live-stream only at  https://www.youtube.com/c/christchurchcathedralottawa

Dec. 19
Advent IV 

Christ Church Cathedral
8:30 a.m. Holy Eucharist
10:30 a.m. Choral Eucharist
4 p.m.   A Family Christmas Concert

Blue Christmas service

4:30 p.m. at All Saints Westboro (347 Richmond Road)
A special service for those who may find the holidays difficult, particularly if they are feeling loss or grief. The service is available for those who want to attend in-person or online.

Dec. 24
Christmas Eve 

Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks St., Ottawa)
4 p.m. Family service with Eucharist
7 p.m. Choral Eucharist
10 p.m. Festal Eucharist with Bishop Shane Parker

Dec. 25
Christmas Day

Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks St., Ottawa)
8:30 a.m.  Holy Eucharist
10:30 a.m.  Choral Eucharist with Children’s Homily at the Creche 

Dec. 26
Christmas I 

Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks St.)
8:30 a.m. Holy Eucharist
10:30 a.m. Choral Eucharist

Jan. 1, 2022
New Year’s Day 

Noon – Christ Church Cathedral (414 Sparks St., Ottawa)
Diocese of Ottawa’s 125th Anniversary Choral Eucharist with Archbishop Linda Nicholls, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada

Feb. 11-12, 2022
Marriage Preparation Workshop

The Marriage Preparation Course is designed to help participants to learn and grow through online presentations given by professional speakers, online small group discussions with trained facilitators, and couple conversations.

All couples are welcome, and participation is not limited by gender, age, or previous marital status.
Information and registration formss: https://www.ottawa.anglican.ca/marriage-preparation

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Clues are found in the context. And context comes in four parts. First, the earliest services were conducted in the VanKleek Hill school in 1846, just two years after Holy Trinity Church was built at Hawkesbury. Second, the person holding services, significantly, was the Rev. John Travers Lewis of Hawkesbury. We are told Saint John’s Church was built in 1854 and the first service was held in it on 13 August 1854, by Lewis from Hawkesbury. Third, Saint John’s was put up just five years before the church at Hawkesbury was rigorously gothicized.

The fourth piece of context is the setting. The land on which the church was built was donated by Colonel Thomas Higginson, a prominent local patriarch. The church stands atop a ridge at the end of a grassy avenue of trees. What we can’t see is the round stone tower to the left of the church that is reputed to have been built as a fort at the time of the Rebellion of 1837, and later is said to have served as an astronomical observatory.  In a word, the setting is Picturesque with historical overtones. VanKleek Hill was part of the Parish of Hawkesbury in 1854, with the other outstations being located at Alfred, East Hawkesbury (Barbe?), L’Orignal and Plantagenet.

Saint John’s, begun two years after Holy Trinity, Hawkesbury, eight years later copied much of the detail of that estimable house of worship here. We must surmise this for the simple reason that we don’t know exactly how Holy Trinity looked when built, before it was gothicized five years later in 1859.  In short, VanKleek Hill seems to have copied the original pitch of roof at Hawkesbury, the large windows, the positioning of the entrance in the front gable wall, but instead of opting for the expense of building a tall tower and steeple from the ground up, plopped a square belfry with Greek details at its upper corners atop the front of the church roof.

By 1854 Neoclassic temples looked old-fashioned, but Gothic Revival had not yet made complete inroads. On this auditory box, high side walls imply a gallery over the door.  For lack of a cross, large pointed arches declared this was a Christian house of worship.  A small frame porch kept winter blasts out.  The sole conceit was its expensive brick construction, as a cheap way of making brick had yet to be invented. When the expenses of construction were paid off, Saint John’s Church, VanKleek Hill was consecrated on 18 October 1863 by their old rector, now the first Bishop of Ontario, the Right Rev. John Travers Lewis. 

If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives?  Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.  

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Humility—Prayer is not merely outward. It is not about optics, looking holy, or winning other people’s admiration or positive attention.

Matthew 6:1. Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Internal—Prayer happens inside of us. It has an interior dimension. The “secret place” is a metaphor for the heart.

Matthew 6:5-6. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Silence—In prayer we need not always “babble on”. More words spoken out loud do not make God hear us better. Prayer is not about “more-words-the-better”. “Less is more” begins to capture the quality of silence in prayer practice. 

Matthew 6:7-8. When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Trust—Prayer is not so much about asking God for things, because God already knows what we need before we ask, but rather sharing what is on our heart. We begin prayer already trusting in the faithfulness of the Divine Presence to us.

Matthew 6:8. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Spirituality—We need to go beyond material wellbeing alone and give priority to the spiritual treasures of the kingdom of God. In prayer and in our discipleship, we need not deny, but learn to value what is not accessible merely by our senses or obtained by our efforts to acquire and amass things.

Matthew 6:19-21. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Peace—We need to learn to stop worrying about the future and to trust in God. Anxiety is not conducive to prayer. Anxiety makes us too self-centred and prevents us from realizing the gift of love already in our hearts.

Matthew 6:25-32, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them ……..Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?…….” 

Attention­‚­­—Prayer is about “setting the mind on God’s kingdom first.” In other words, be present to this moment. Be attentive and mindful that prayer is not about quantity (i.e., saying prayers that sound great) as much as it is about quality (i.e. paying attention to what is on our heart).

Matthew 6:33. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

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This popular expression of the manger scene misrepresents the events as found in holy scripture. This incredible event, according to the scriptures, was not an earth shattering event with all the world taking notice, but an event in an obscure part of the Roman empire involving a poor couple who could not find even a simple room, but only a stable, in which to give birth to their only child.The people of Bethlehem, concerned with all the demands of everyday complicated by the influx of people coming to be registered for the tax census, were unaware.  

In our nativity scenes, the one group that is often over looked, and who were there on that Holy night as it was unfolding, were the shepherds.The shepherds, who are often found somewhere in the background of the nativity scenes behind the wise men, as if in a secondary and not too important role.Yet the shepherds can give us some insight in our walk of faith and be an example to us as we prepare to celebrate Christmas.

The shepherds were responsible for the care and protection of the sheep and the goats, a mainstay of the local agricultural economy. They spent their days and nights out in the areas around Bethlehem, moving their animals constantly to look for food and protecting them from harm. They had to be people of courage, who also possessed a knowledge and understanding of the local environment.They had to be constantly on watch for changes in the weather and the world around them. Their concern was not for themselves but for the animals placed in their care, and for their families and communities that depended on the animals for food and trade. 

If you are fortunate enough to have been out in the country, perhaps at a cottage or camping, and away from the bright lights of the city, you soon notice both how really dark it can be and the brilliance of the stars and moon at night. In the city, we miss the glorious heavens because all the lesser lights of the city obscure our vision.

This is why I think only the shepherds heard and saw the heavenly hosts that first Christmas. The shepherds were focused not on themselves and their challenges and problems. They were looking out and up, and they caught the heavenly vision. 

I have found that in the rush of planning for Christmas I often fail to stop and look up from my own needs and challenges to see the beauty in God’s creation and in the lives of the people with whom I live and work. In stopping, looking and listening to the world around us, we are opening to the possibility of seeing God’s presence in the midst of all the noise and confusion.

Perhaps we need to take a moment to offer a prayer of thanksgiving in the midst of family and friends for the gift of each one of them. 

Take a moment to look up at the wonder of the star-filled heavens and thank God that out of love for you, the One who created the wonders of the universe became like one of us to bring us back to Him. 

Take time to listen with an open heart and imagination to the words of sacred scripture during Advent and the Christmas season and hear Christ speaking to you of mercy, hope and challenge. 

Take a moment to ask God to give us grace to see him in the midst of the round of our daily routines. 

Finally, as we gather in our parishes to celebrate the hope and promise of Christmas, take a moment to thank God for all who are gathered with you and to rejoice that he has called us in all our fragility to be the body of Christ in the world.

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This new year of the Youth Internship Program (YIP) is off to a great start. 

Our Faith Formation team includes me, our intern, Aimerance, and the Reverends Arran Thorpe, Geoff Chapman and Mary-Cate Garden. Our leadership facilitation team is led by Breanna Pizzuto of Talk Tools, and she will be joined by Susan Young and Mylène Côté. 

The privilege is mine to introduce you to some of this year’s interns. Please meet:

Naomi is returning to YIP for a second year and is looking forward to building more lasting relationships. She is doing her work placement with the National Planning team for CLAY 2022. 

Jane is a grade 11 student at Holy Trinity in Kanata. Some of her interests include interior design, architecture and culinary arts. She enjoys cooking, baking, taking photos, listening to music and watching movies. She is also a dancer, piano-player, oldest sister of four, and babysitter. This summer, she worked as a camp counselor at Circle Square Ranch at Big Clear Lake. Jane is looking forward to the new experiences and knowledge she will receive during her work placement at the Bishop’s office working with Heidi Fawcett on event planning. 

Fares is a 17-year-old student at Brookfield High School and is from a family of seven.  Fares likes to walk, ride his bike, swim and play video games. He also likes to watch Turkish TV shows and soccer. Fares is excited to be working at the Glebe Wellness Centre.

Étienne is a Gr. 12 student at Lisgar Collegiate Institute, where his primary academic interest lies in creative writing, a subject he hopes to pursue in university. He is fluent in English, French, and German and studied Latin at his elementary school. Étienne also enjoys athletics, participating in the school’s cross-country running, Nordic skiing, and track and field teams. As for employment experience, he once operated a local paper route and has also volunteered at a soup kitchen with his church. Finally, Étienne has a fascination for trains, and his obsession for Star Trek has resulted in him being the head of his school’s Star Trek club. Étienne will be doing his work placement with Centre 454. 

Deborah is a Gr. 11 student at Canterbury High School with a passion for visual arts. She enjoyed art at an early age. Finding beauty in art forms leads her to find beauty in the world around her. Having grown up in the Christian faith, Deborah is looking for ways to help others through art. She is looking forward to developing her leadership skills and presence as a “strong female lead” and is inspired by her mom’s various roles in the local and national church. Deborah aspires to lead within Girl Guides of Canada. She is looking forward to working with a diverse group of people and hopes to strengthen her communication skills in her work placement as the YIP intern at the Ottawa Art Therapy Centre. In YIP, she hopes for new experiences and new relationships, to develop a deeper sense of faith and self-understanding with colleagues and mentors, and to have fun!

Claire is in grade 11 at De la Salle High School. She worships at St. Alban and St Bernard Anglican church on Sunday mornings. This past summer, Claire was a camper counsellor at a summer camp for children with autism. Claire will be the YIP intern for L’Arche, an international federation of faith-based communities, creating homes and day programs with people who have developmental disabilities. Claire is looking forward to learning with the L’Arche community and within the Youth Internship Program.

Aimerance is a YIP intern doing her placement with the YIP leadership and faith formation team. She is a student at the University of Ottawa studying Psychology. She enjoys reading, dancing, and having fun with her friends and family. She is passionate about helping others and sharing the gospel and the love of Jesus Christ with the world. She is looking forward to learning and experiencing new things this year with YIP.

Alexis is doing a second year with YIP. Her work placement is in the Enriched Support Program Department at Carleton University. Alexis thinks this is so amazing because she also goes to school there and is learning a lot of skills that will be helpful in the future. She is working with the most amazing people. Alexis is studying engineering. 

In addition to being coached and participating in Faith Formation and Leadership sessions, each intern is offered the opportunity to work with their own Christian/work mentor. The idea for our interns having a Christian mentor/ work mentor comes from 3 places:

In their exit interviews, our first cycle of interns said having their own mentors would have made the program better. 

We want to help develop inter-generational relationships between youth and adults. In our exit interviews, 60% of all our alumni rate their relationship with their mentor as very high and important to them.

Finally, one of lectures I attended during Ask and Imagine; hosted by the Faculty of Theology at Huron University in 2016. The research from the lecture was based on a 2004 study which looked at the factors that made a difference to the 19-21% of young people who continue to identify with the church after the age of 21. Spencer Edwards, a guest lecturer, stated that the number two factor was having adult Christian mentors engaging, connecting and relationship building with them.

Watch for pictures next month from our Faith Formation, Leadership sessions and maybe even a mentor gathering. 

If you have any questions about the Youth Internship Program, please email me at donna-rourke@ottawa.anglican.ca

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Episcopal Elections

Chancellor Henry Schultz explained that the motions relating to episcopal elections did not make any substantive changes to the process of electing bishops, but “filled in some gaps.” The changes:

• clarify deadlines to kickstart the electoral process
• create a new supplementary committee that will make an effort to encourage diversity in the number of candidates participating in an episcopal election. (This replaces a provision that gave the House of Bishops the authority to automatically nominate candidates.)
• create a new transition advisory committee, a group of officers who can advise the bishop-elect, enabling that person to get ready to take office and giving the bishop-elect an introductory role in the governance of the diocese. (This also acknowledges the existence of the office of bishop-elect, which was not in the canons previously).
• provide each candidate in the election with their own chaplain instead of just one for all the candidates

Episcopal remuneration

Schultz said that an interesting gap in the canons was that “We are one of the few dioceses that have canons that make absolutely no mention about remuneration of the bishop, so we are going to cure that gap.”

He noted that not only would the canons now confirm the authority to pay the bishop, but the changes in the bylaws make “the process of paying the bishop as transparent as the process for paying all clergy.” The process will be very similar to that for salaried clergy in the diocese, he added. “Basically, we’re saying that bishops will be paid a salary under a structure approved by Synod with rates for component elements of the salary structure determined annually by Diocesan Council, and that the Synod and Council may enact bylaws for pension and benefits.”

The changes also added the authority to provide at least some remuneration for a bishop-elect, which Schultz noted would be important if a bishop who came from outside the diocese were elected.  

Associate Incumbents

The changes also recognized the position of Associate Incumbents and defined the position as “a cleric who is appointed to a parish and who, in agreement with the Incumbent of the parish, shares collegially with the Incumbent in fulfilling the canonical and pastoral duties required of an Incumbent.”

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The team has interviewed 78 congregations across the Diocese and three special interest groups. Martin and Clysdale gently joked about some common themes that emerged in parish challenges: “Everyone seems pretty sure that if we could just get the young people back in church, all of our problems would be solved,” and “If we could only change everything up and be a new church while still doing all of the traditional things we already do, but better, then we would be fine.” But then seriously and sincerely, they expressed admiration and appreciation for the “amazing work being done in all corners of our diocese.”

Barbara Gagné thanked everyone in the parishes for all the hours and work that went into preparing for the interviews. 

She explained that the consultation team had produced two-to-three page parish profiles from the interviews combined with demographic reports and summary statistical review data. The profiles would be sent back to the parishes for review.  All of the profiles would then be published together in the Parish Compendium in late November.

The second stage of the work, moving from data gathering to analysis will run from November to February 2022, Gagné said. “The objective for every parish will be to use the Compendium to consider the local realities and how each parish relates to the wider Diocese. The SPM Team will provide a toolkit with training or facilitation as needed.

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Sanjay Grover, director of financial ministry, gave Synod delegates an overview of how the diocese weathered the pandemic financially in 2020 and how it is fairing in 2021.

Anglican dioceses across Canada experienced about a 20 percent drop in revenue across the board, Bishop Shane Parker told the Synod in his comments about his experience at the House of Bishops gathering in late September. 

“We did fairly well compared to other dioceses across the country,” said Grover, noting that the drop in revenue was just under 20 percent in the Diocese of Ottawa in 2020. 

And the Diocese was able to draw on its collective resources to help support parishes. “As you all recall, in 2020, diocesan support was provided to parishes in the form of forgiveness of parish fair share, insurance and ECOPS [equalized cost of priestly services], and that totalled an expense of the diocesan books of $1.735 million dollars,” Grover said. The Diocese then applied for the federal wage subsidy program and recovered $1.8 million. “I want to thank all of your for sending in your monthly reports as to the changes in revenue [and] donations,” Grover said, noting that those reports for each parish were needed in order to file claims for the wage subsidy.

“In 2021, we provided support for one month [the cost of] which was $875,000. To-date we have filed the wage subsidy reports until April. We project that we will recover $762,000,” Grover said. “The subsidy is based on revenue drops, and revenue drops have been smaller in the last year or so….so there is a bit of a deficit,” he explained. “All in all, the wage subsidy and the benefits provided to the parishes is going to cost the diocese close to $29,000, which we will absorb.”

The new challenge going forward for the church is that the federal government ended its wage subsidy program in late October. “We will not be receiving any more wage subsidies from the federal government, so there will be a decision made early in the next year about how we proceed going forward as far as any additional support going to the parishes,” said Grover. “Hopefully, with us opening up again and moving forward, we should have some good news as far as finances both at the parish level and at the diocesan level.”

Consolidated Trust Fund

The Consolidated Trust Fund (CTF) was the source of a bit of good financial news as well. 

The total investment asset value of the CTF is $59 million (In 2019, it was $52.3 M.) The unit worth at year end was $27.32 a unit, up from the previous year’s value of $25.14. “An 8.67 per cent increase year to year, which is quite good,” said Grover.

He noted that ownership of the CTF fund breaks down this way: Parishes (including Rectory Trusts and cemeteries) owned 59% of the fund, the Synod about 32%, the Cathedral Hill Foundation about 6% and the RAF (retirement fund) (and third parties) about 3%.

The dividend rate per unit of 77 cents was increased from 75 cents, the rate for the previous year.

Grover noted that $1,624,547 worth of dividends were paid, which represented a return of close to 3 percent. “As you are aware, even though our returns are higher, we do have a very conservative dividend rate at 3 percent, so that we can pay dividends regardless of what the markets do, so that provides stability in parish operations,” Grover explained. 

“Having said that, the property and finance committee has approved a dividend rate of close to four percent. There is more information about that being sent out to parishes down the road to expect a little bit more as far as dividends are concerned, which is a bit of good news during these times.”

Bishop Parker thanked Grover, the property and finance committee the auditors and audit committee. “I think we can all feel a reassuring sense of our collective strength as we see our financial reports,” he said. “It is only one dimension of our strength, but it is important, and I hope we can celebrate that in some way and use and leverage that collective financial strength as we go forward.”

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“Diocesan communications developed incrementally over the years without a guiding strategy or clear lines of responsibility. The Diocese has always had gifted staff who produce a variety of communications products, but these products were not integrated with each other and lacked consistent messaging and branding,” he explained. “As a result, the Diocese has not been as effective as it could be at communicating with parishes, individual Anglicans and the wider world. This weakness has been apparent for some time, but COVID-19 underlined the critical importance of improving communications.”

The Communications Advisory Panel, appointed in May 2020, developed a three-year strategic plan based on a vision of what Diocesan communications should be, focusing on target audiences and the best ways to reach them, and analyzing existing communications channels. The first priority for improving communications was a branding exercise that would explore and name the Diocese’s vision and values, and then express them in a logo and common look and feel for all communications channels. 

The Toronto advertising firm BT/A was chosen (in a Request for Proposals process) for branding the Diocese and rebuilding the website. BT/A partner Victoria Laurence unveiled the new look. explaining how the firm worked with various groups to develop a brand that would reflect the vision of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa and help it connect with parishes, community ministries and people outside the Anglican church. Through that process, BT/A staff heard that the identity the Diocese wanted to communicate to target audiences, both Anglican and non-Anglican, was one of; 

• A collaborative leader, 
• Dedicated to lifelong formation, worship, and hospitality
• Effective stewards of parishes and ministries
• Open to change and engagement with the world
• Anglican: distinctly different from other Christian groups

Laurence described the concept for the new logo as “many different lines beam from and come together towards an invisible source or common purpose. The feeling is joyful and energizing.”

Thanking her, Bishop Shane said, “I believe that we can see how this celebrates us and how it will also challenge us to live up to those values and that essence and the way we wish to be understood in the world around us.”

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