Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Hello everyone,

I hope your day is going well.  I have some great news!  The task force set up by the session to look at ways of addressing the annual deficit met with the minister and another staff person from Trinity York Mills yesterday morning for over four hours.  It was an excellent meeting and we appreciate the time spent by Trinity Staff.  They were amazed at the possibilities ahead of us here at St. Andrew’s in terms of using our building to drive the mission and ministry of the congregation.  Trinity was delighted to see that we had a mission statement for our building because it helps us to move in this direction.

I will try to summarize the conversation we had with Trinity;

Trinity York Mills makes a distinction between Trinity the Church and Trinity the Entity.  Trinity the Entity is a building with a purpose (a mission statement) – that of being a place used by community organizations including other churches who share similar values.  Some of these organizations partner with the church in mission and ministry in some way.  They include 4 other churches, a Montessori School, St. John’s Ambulance, a health and safety organization and a variety of other community groups.  They also host about 30 weddings a year where people bring their own minister and simply use the building as a wedding venue.  When they began this process, approximately $47,000 a year was raised on an annual basis.  Now in 2023 they have raised $255,000 and counting.  Their goal is to reach $300,000 annually.  They are almost there. Trinity York Mills building is 27,000 square feet.

When looking at our space – all 42,000 square feet of it, they were overwhelmed, incredibly excited about the possibilities before us and very strong in their encouragement to get started right away.  From their perspective, they could easily see St. Andrew’s raising $500,000 annually by sharing this building with others on a long-term basis.  That is incredibly exciting.  An infusion of those funds would enable us to follow though on our vision to Experience God in Worship, engage Jesus in the streets and become an Outpost in the Kin-Dom of God.  Oh, and by the way, they said we have to shorten our ‘tag line’.  😊 Trinity’s tag line is simply ‘Amazing Grace, Warm Embrace’.  We need something short, simple and memorable like that. So, put your creative minds to work.  What tag line comes from our values of a strong worship experience that calls on us to listen to and respond to the needs of people in our immediate community?

Trinity also talked about the importance of ‘branding’ We need to create recognizable colours and a font for use in our correspondence both within the congregation and out into the community.  This ties in beautifully with the work that Lauren Wasyluk has been doing.  Lauren will be making a major presentation to the Operational Council on Tuesday night, November 7 and ‘branding’ is part of her strong recommendations. 

This shift to sharing our building on a full time basis with other churches and other community organizations will be both exciting and at times challenging.  But it will, undoubtedly, build on the strong legacy of mission and ministry here at St. Andrew’s, enabling us to face the future boldly, confident that God is at work in our midst, now and in the days ahead.

Take good care everyone

Marty