The Rev. Michael Garner was appointed Assistant Curate in October 2019 and was with the parish as it considered the possibility of disestablishing. He described the special vestry meeting where they came to their decision in July 2020:
Archdeacon Peter Crosby chaired the meeting. We decided that meeting as a committee of the whole was important initially, to just let people speak without having to speak to the motion. And it was very emotional, people talking about what Church of the Resurrection had meant to them.
I had a real sense that this motion was not going to pass, there were enough people who seemed hopeful for a turnaround, [saying] a pandemic is not the best time to do this, and then we moved back into the broader meeting and allowed people to speak to the motion. Catherine Smith spoke about why the wardens had come to this decision and parish council had wanted to put this to the parish. I don’t want to hyper-spiritualize this, but truly it does feel like the Holy Spirit moved and the tenor of the meeting changed. It was fascinating and humbling for me that people began to talk about ministry and mission, a lot of the words I had been using through the winter and into the spring about the need for ministry, the need for mission, but as a way of talking about why we needed to disestablish. Really, the crux of it was that people decided that Church of the Resurrection … could have continued to exist and be comfortable with what they had, but they decided, quite courageously, I thought, to disestablish and that investing their talents and time and treasure into St. Thomas was really an important thing to expand the ability to do ministry in the south of Ottawa….We had a vote and it was passed with I think it was over 90 percent.
St. John, Antrim — Deanery of the Southwest