About

I invite you to celebrate with us in our worship and in our mission.  We re an Affirming congregation:  one that celebrates the unique gifts members of the Rainbow community offer;  we are focused on community service;  we embrace the new and the unknown.  Welcome!

The American church historian, the late Phyllis Tickle, has written that the Church experiences dramatic change every five hundred years:  from the time of Jesus to the Dark Ages;  from five hundred until the Schism between the Church of the East and of the West;  from the time of the Schism until the reformation;  and the reformation until now. 

We don’t know yet what the new shape of the Church will be, but we do know that it will not stay the same.  There are those who long for the ‘good old days’, of the 50’s and 60’s, when there were full sanctuaries and Sunday Schools.  Those days are long past:  we have a new demographic and, I believe, a new mission.  The United Church of Canada has experienced profound change nationally, in our new structure and locally:  Emmanuel United Church was created by the amalgamation of St. Andrew’s United Church and George Street United Church.  If orange is the new black, then change is the new norm.

We have a choice:  we complain that things are changing, or we can embrace the energy from that change to help shape what the new mission of the Church will look like.

Change is a good thing:  it demonstrates the dynamic of the Holy working in our lives calling us into new life, into a new resurrection.  We are called to roll the stone away.