November 18, 2025

Greetings Beloved Community!

 

As we look towards the Feast of the Reign of Christ on Sunday Nov 23, we approach the end of one liturgical year and, the following Sunday, the start of Advent, the start of a new year again.  If you have been around the Church for long, you might think – oh here it comes again… already?!  A fair question!   Has another year passed?  Are we heading into the four Sundays of Advent again?  And I enthusiastically reply, Yes!  Yes, again!   Yes, another chance to hear the ancient story!   Yes, another chance to enter more deeply into the reality of this story of God coming near to us in Jesus Christ!  Yes, another chance to open our ears and our eyes and our hearts to the invitation of God-among-us to a life that is really life!  We need to hear that invitation again and again, and the liturgical year is one of the ways the Church keeps placing it ever before us.

 

In theories of education, some scholar-practitioners speak of the idea of ‘spiral learning.’  This is the simple notion that you’d don’t learn something once and move on in a linear fashion, rather you continually circle or spiral around it, as your ever-growing experience opens up new understandings of even those things you learned a long time ago!   Think about how old you were when you first heard the story of Baby Jesus in the manger?  Or of the angels coming to announce the news to Mary?  Or of her dramatic response, bursting into song in what we call the Magnificat?   I, for one, heard those stories proclaimed long before my rational mind could even comprehend them (a baby hearing about the birth of a baby!) and yet each year as we return to this season of anticipating God-come-near in Christ, I find myself inspired yet again.  Perhaps you too find something in your heart opening as we approach this new liturgical year?  Perhaps in the pain and disorientation of your last year, a new longing that the long-promised One would come near speaks to your weary heart, as it does mine?  Or perhaps the simple joys of welcoming a new child or grandchild into the world with that shocking sparkle of newborn eyes, gives you fresh eyes to wonder at God taking on flesh in the little baby Jesus?   

 

As the old adage goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  And so, again this year we find ourselves caught up in the drama of God coming near in Jesus Christ!  This is the faith that we proclaim – not simply of a heaven sweet by and by, not simply a nice set of moral teachings, not simply a social program to help a hurting world (though it contains all these and more).  The faith we proclaim is of God coming among us in Jesus Christ, not just 2000 years ago, but in every generation, in every year, at every moment, inviting us into life that is really life!  How has your life prepared you to receive that invitation as we enter a new liturgical year?

 

As I have journeyed with our community over this past year, I have seen many ways we have responded to that invitation.  I have seen many of us move from the nervous desire for deeper relationships to taking those first risky steps of opening up to know another.  I have seen young and old come together every week to receive the source of life in bread and wine plunked down into empty open hands.  I have seen neighbours fed and nurtured, with the help of our partners at NPNA and QomQem.  I have seen us stand together in the of much uncertainty, illness, diagnoses.  I have seen meals show up unexpected and the warmth of human care wrapped around those most needing it.  I have seen tears well up in our worship, and I have seen painful wounds that the Church has inflicted slowly tended with care, right in our very midst.  What have you seen as you reflect on what we have been up to together?  What do you see as you reflect on what God has been doing quietly in our midst?

 

In addition to these scenes above the surface, there has been a lot of work happening quietly hidden from view over this past year through the creation of our very first AbbeyCouncil!  At our community meeting last year, we affirmed the creation of AbbeyCouncil to provide a more transparent leadership body for AbbeyChurch, to help discern and make decisions about the direction of our community, to empower, support, and hold accountable our clergy and staff, and to provide a steady prayerful leadership team for this rag tag bunch of beautiful humans!

 

As I wrote at the time, “My prayer is that these proposals nurture the roots of our beautiful growing plant and provide a few necessary stakes to support and steady us at this stage of growth and as we bear fruit!”  And as I look back over the 12 months since, as the Council has met and worked together, I see many ways in which this has happened!  Supportive stakes have been carefully placed, and our roots have indeed deepened.  New shoots are also springing forth reaching ever towards the light!   

 

We will begin our community meeting on Sunday with some looking back in gratitude for what has been over this past year, and you will hear from each of our six council members about a bit of what we’ve been up to last year – and we will elect a new members to join the council in the next year.  We will pray together and seek God’s wisdom in our finances and the focus of our time and energy as we move forward in ministry together in 2026.  This is good work, and I look forward to digging into it together.

 

A more detailed agenda and hard copies of the 2025 YTD financials and proposed 2026 budget will be available at the meeting on Sunday just after worship.

 

All are warmly welcome at the potluck and community meeting – we need your voice!  


Yours in Christ,

Matt Humphrey