The challenge to remain a church

The year 2007 was one of great change for First United. This was the year in which a decision was made to close the congregation at First United and to change the leadership model. Both decisions would have significant impacts on the events of the following four years.

The congregation which had existed for 122 years and survived the Depression and Two World Wars had shrunk to what was perceived to be an unsustainable size. It had had an illustrious history with some incredible leadership over the years. By the time of its closing, it was described as a destination church, its membership mostly made up of people from other parts of the city who were committed to the work of First but who did not live in the neighbourhood. It had a half time minister and a small budget. A large portion of its funding and administrative support was drawn from the larger mission, an entity which shared space with it at Gore and Hastings and which was in so many ways the well-known face of the organization called First United Church Mission.

The Mission had an Executive Director and a staff of over a dozen. Its governance structure came from a two line description in The United Church of Canada's Manual. In practice, it had an Oversight Board approved by and accountable to Vancouver-Burrard Presbytery. I sat on the Oversight Board in 2000 and it was a somewhat odd structure with representation at the Board meetings from staff, the congregation and from the Lower Mainland churches but without a voice from the Downtown Eastside. At least the structure seemed odd to me when I arrived. Usually church boards are made up of people who have an on-the-ground experience of a faith community. In 2000 when I sat on the Board, I had very little connection to First. I went to First once a month for a meeting but I lived and worshipped on the North Shore. I didn't know anyone who accessed the services of First United. I only saw them when I came into the building and frankly speaking, they scared me. I didn't know a whole lot about their lives beyond what I had read. I didn't know what opinions they might have about the role of a church in their neighbourhood.

The decision was made to close the congregation and in June 2007 a final service was held to celebrate the legacy of ministry that had been the congregation's contribution to the neighbourhood, and to mourn its ending. The Vancouver Sun focused on the ending saying that First United Church had closed somehow missing the fact that the mission portion of the work was continuing on the corner of Gore and Hastings and that the Presbytery and Oversight Board were in fact working on a visioning exercise and a new model of leadership.

The Oversight Board contracted Michael Clague, former Executive Director of the Carnegie Centre, to conduct a series of workshops in the neighbourhood to pose questions about the work of First United and its role in the future. Residents, activists, religious leaders, and agency staff were gathered together to talk about First United. Out of those conversations came the very clear directive. First United should not become a social agency. It should remain a church.

For those of us who would arrive soon after to provide leadership, (Ric arrived in August 07 and I arrived in January 08) there was no clear indication of what it meant to be a church without a congregation. The Joint Needs Assessment which had been completed by the Oversight Board in partnership with the Presbytery articulated a vision of an intentional Christian community and examples such as the Sojourners community in Washington, DC, Glide Memorial in San Francisco, and the Iona community in Scotland were listed as possible models. In front of us, then, was the exciting task of reimagining church at the corner of Hastings and Gore.

It was clear that the old congregational model had outlived its usefulness in this location. What a new model would look like was unclear. Our sense was that whatever emerged, it had to emerge from the needs of the DTES community. It had to be a response to the needs of this place in this time. We believed that together with our Board we could create a theologically grounded vision of what a new kind of church could look like. We believed that we had been given the mandate to do that work - that given the decline of our denomination it was our responsibility to search for a new way of being a church.

We felt privileged to be working in a place where there was time to do that work. We had a large staff and a relatively secure budget. We had a supportive board who had clearly indicatd a willingness to think "outside the box." And so we searched the literature of the emerging/emergent and missional church movements in Canada, the United States and Britain. We visited Yonge Street Mission, Fred Victor Centre, Toronto Christian Resource Centre and Sanctuary in Toronto. We looked at the other models of faith community in the DTES. We participated in the community ministry discussions in the United Church of Canada. We reflected on the historical marks of the church and what that might mean for lived ministry at First United. And we created a vision that we felt was theologically solid, that was possible given enough time and effort and that was a faithful expansion of the mandate we had been given in our call to ministry in this place.