At  the AbbeyChurch, we hope to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, share meals, care for our neighbourhood and God's creation - and practice the radical ways of Jesus as best we can.

We're all hungry in our own ways.

We're at different places in our journey - but we share a guiding story as found in sacred scripture and summarized in the creeds.

We find faith to follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and with our questions and doubts.

We hope to be truly diverse; old, young, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, single, married, LGBTQ2IA+, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving (to name a few).

We believe that Christ's love binds our differences together in unity as we gather at Jesus' table of welcome.

We aren't scared to keep church weird.

We trust that everyone will be safe, but that no one will be comfortable.
[adapted from Rachel Held Evans - Searching for Sunday page 72]

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A bit more...

Rather than having big budgets for music, staff, clergy & buidlings - we are experimenting with a grassroots, ‘small is beautiful’, patiently-fermenting model – focusing on the gifts of people – and planting right in the neighbourhood where many of us live (focusing on, but not limited to Fairfield-Gonzales, Fernwood and Oaklands).

Unlike many church plants, we are not funded by big outside sources, though we do get some small grants from our parent denominations as we start up.

We don't come from far away or another country to plant a Church.  We started this because we wanted to worship in our own neighbourhoods.

We accept all people at Jesus' table of welcome and in leadership and seek to model this with both female and male clergy leadership as well as the full leadership and participation of LGBTQ2IA+ folks.

In this sense we hope to be an organic, sustainable, rooted presence for the long-term and not dependent on large outside donations for staffing or building budgets.

We also brew beer... But that's another story.

The AbbeyChurch is a ministry of the neo-monastic Emmaus Community  which seeks to engage a way to live our faith 24/7 and be sent together into our neighbourhood and beyond. As a community we pray together most weekdays and seek to live lives of hospitality with and to those on the margins.

As a community we have a commitment to prayer, presence and simplicity. AbbeyChurch members are welcome to participate in the life of the Emmaus Community as they wish.

We are actively looking for others to form the core “AbbeyChurch” team! Interested in participating or even in donating to the cause? Let us know.

The AbbeyChurch is supported by or involved in the following networks / denominations:

The Anglican Church of Canada - Diocese of British Columbia

The United Church of Canada - Pacific Mountain Region / Leadershift Church Planting Project / EDGE Network

The United Church of Canada - Cruxifusion Network

The NewLeaf Network

The Parish Collective

 

Please drop the team a line at info@abbeychurch.ca and we’ll tell you more.