The Salvation Army Oakville Community Church

The Salvation Army holds a high place in my family's heart.  The men in my mother's family fought for Canada in the Great war, and along with any muted stories that have been passed down to me about bayonets, trenches and mustard gas, I was and am always told that of all the relief and aid agencies, the Sally Anne was the only one that were consistently there for the men.

That was almost 100 years ago, but their actions then have echoed through my family and my blood so that I, like my mother, feel shame every time we pass a Salvation Army Christmas collector without giving, even if we just emptied our pockets to the fellow at the other side of the mall.

As it turns out I even have a Great Grandmother who belonged to them, but for a church that I had always heard of, "shopped" at, and have  always revered, I knew next to nothing about it before this morning.  I stepped into the small, comparatively spartan parish, nestled in a pleasant, affluent neighbourhood in Oakville for the first time about half an hour before service began and was immediately set upon by half a dozen interested greeters all 25+ years my senior.  They showed me around, listened to me talk about "All Our Sundays" and passed me from friendly parishioner to friendly parishioner, so that by the time I took a seat for the service, I'd had a quick conversation with a dozen people.

The church's insides were plain white-painted drywall dressed with simple stained glass windows.  The sanctuary had a collapsable table beside the pulpit that held an opened laptop connected to a projector, and behind that, a drum set (said one of my hosts, "We have a drum set, we're still looking for a drummer") and a simple wooden crucifix centred on the wall.  I sat in a pew ahead of Colleen, who told me with some excitement about the mission work her congregation was involved in, a large shelter called the lighthouse amongst other things, and her zeal for their undertakings was as electric as it was shared with everyone else.  She told me she had been raised in the United Church, my church, and we talked for a while about our familiar stomping ground.

I asked her casually how she had ended up with the Salvation Army, and without missing a beat she replied that they had taken her in.  This well-heeled woman, a banker, had been down and out and had needed a bed to sleep in, and the Army had been there for her.  She said it proudly and it was the closest anybody I met there got to boasting.  These guys do two things better than anybody I've yet to meet, Mission and humility.

The service started with music from a 5-piece brass band I thought was great, and between a tuba and a trumpet about forty souls piled in for service.  This particular Sunday the church was celebrating their various missions, and a contingent from their Lighthouse community centre arrived.  A number of them looked exactly like you would expect people living in an emergency shelter would look like, and you figure out very quickly that this church is busy walking the walk and doing the heavy lifting.

We opened the service with "Onward Christian Soldier, marching as if to war", which I'm familiar with but have never actually sung before, and my hosts made no bones about singing at the top of their lungs.

I was busy carrying on a quiet conversation with another "officer" behind me while the woman performing the announcements introduced me to the congregation, and then reintroduced me, and then re-reintroduced me before I turned around to pay attention (in my defence, the three ladies behind me were pretty chatty).

The main reading was from Acts 2:42 (New International Version), and the sermon was delivered by the female half of a married team of "Majors"(Wendy and Dan).  I've never heard a sermon less draped in craft, or more humble.  She talked at length clearly and simply about how incredible the growth of the early church must have been, about how church is exciting now.  She talked about numbers, about how even though a majority of Canadians identified themselves as Christian, something like 20% attended church regularly.  She called Christians who didn't go to church "orphans", and talked about the necessity of belonging and the value of being a community.

(I have plenty of friends who feel that way, who don't have anything bad to say about Jesus, but feel about church the way other people feel about the dentist.  I get some wonky answers when I ask them what they think goes on.)

The readings and the sermon were all dressed with exclamations from the crowd, and every point a speaker would make would be followed by a rousing "amen" or "Praise god" from all corners of the church.  Those sorts of exclamations are foreign to my Church upbringing, and I'm always taken by their spontaneity, but what was even more unfamiliar was the THREE WHOLE HYMNS sung in a row halfway through the service.  Three loud, sequential hymns I'd never heard before, with no accompanying sheet music.  Three songs in which a shaky tenor voice could be heard missing notes, beats and entire stanzas.  It was in-church equivalent of running a marathon blindfolded and I'm pretty sure the ladies behind me weren't giggling "with" me at all.

The Salvation Army lives up to their reputation, and it is a congregation focused on service to the downtrodden.  Church life here doesn't begin and end with Sunday service by a long shot, and while consequently the services probably aren't for everyone, when they say "welcome everyone" they really mean it, and if you're looking for a place to make a difference, they're drinking right from the well.

St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto: A Heavy Jewel

St. Anne's is the sort of beautiful that tells stories that gets under your skin the way a good Shakespeare  passage or an good preacher hitting his or her stride does.

The building, those walls, those impossible ceilings, the idiosyncratic and so very alive artwork spaced in conservative symmetry here and there, it all must have worked in such terrific concert with a Toronto that stepped politely into the roaring twenties shy of a century prior.  Erected by a buzzing Anglican working class beaming it's confidence and quiet dignity.  St. Anne's is a church in the same way that Glenn Gould was a pianist, the same way Johnny Bower was a goalie.  It is bold in scope and subtle in its art, and the wealth of paintings and sculpture worthy of a museum are enough to have fuelled at least one Post-Grad thesis.

It's the only Byzantine-styled church in North America, it's home to a museum's worth of Group of Seven art (housing their sole and exclusive religious-themed efforts) and you do yourself a terrible disservice by not visiting, believer or otherwise.

Today St. Anne's Anglican Church lies smack in a far corner of a Parkdale thrice adopted by different groups of immigrants, Ukrainian, Italian and Brazilian/Portuguese, who all used (or are using) it to spring board to Suburbia and Canadian economic success.  As you might have guessed, theses three ethnicities are not rife with potential Anglican converts, and for a lifetime the membership of the church has been composed of people living separate parishes and "commuting"to Dufferin and Dundas.

I arrived forty minutes early for the advertised Morning prayer study and a custodian lets me poke around the sanctuary for a few minutes unattended.  Then I have a short, pleasant conversation with the leader of the prayer group, who was boning up on the days reading, John 3:1-17 in the stark, minimalist chapel of the large, more pragmatic side building.  We line up a half dozen steel chairs by twos and after a pleasant introduction went into a quick service that was accompanied by a tape player recording of a hymn and was composed mainly of call and response readings, with a quick meditation and an even quicker discussion on the reading and a rush to join the hustle and bustle of preparing for the main service an hour later.

In the big church meanwhile, close to a hundred friendly parishioners wade into the pews that could fit a thousand under the blessings of a good ten member choir.  The crowd had a mix of ethnicities and ages, but fifty years-plus Anglo-Saxons ruled the day by a fair margin and there wasn't more than ten children in all (I did notice a pair of bassinets leaning against a back wall, but I didn't see them employed).

After a quick opening hymn the young people were immediately called to the front for a quick lent-focused lesson delivered by Reverend Lance Dixon, followed by Sunday school elsewhere.  Reverend Dixon is a younger man and has a friendly, distinctly engaging delivery, a good example of  "new school" oratory done a small disservice by a microphone feedback issue.  The mediation proper was delivered by a different priest who did a nice examination of Nicodemus in the passage, the gist of which was that Christians have to embrace the mystery of Christ when he says "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? (John 2:12)"

The latter preacher was an older gentleman possessed of a composed, quiet, gently self-depreciating humour and I am lead to believe that his performing the meditation and later communion in his colleague's stead was the exception rather than the rule.

Two things struck me as out-of-the-ordinary cool.  One, the floors under the pews were of bare planks, it was a strange juxtaposition to the wild beauty everywhere else and it made me very happy.  Two, A boxer named "Tyson" attended service, and was even involved in the "stand up and greet your neighbor" segment of the service.  I can't remember ever having a dog in a service, let alone in a heritage building, and I was more than a little proud of the knee-jerk happiness he inspired in me.

After service I was involved in a conversation with two heavily involved parishioners, who both said that St. Anne's musical history and contribution is what gave their congregation it's identity, even more so than it's architecture. Of the future, both were cautiously optimistic about their community's prospects, and brought up their work-in-progress plans for the future.

The congregation aspires to grow, and more impressively, genuinely aspires for a new identity and a good solid voice in the larger Christian community.  They are as welcoming a group as I've had the pleasure to meet and they have a plan for growth (a part of which, ironically, is "crossing fingers" and a patient wait for gentrification).  At the moment though, I think it's fair to call the congregation at St. Anne's, though welcoming and thoughtful, custodial rather than organic.  No one seems comfortable with the numbers as they are, and everyone at St. Anne's seems to be waiting for a push.

The fact of the matter is upkeep for this nationally recognized heritage site has run routinely in the neighbourhood of seven figures, and external funding, (vigorously federal and reluctantly provincial) along with "swing-for-the-fences" fund raising is the law of the land, not internal financial infrastructure. In fact day to day expenses are covered largely by rent fees charged to various wonderful community-based Not-For-Profits, a gift of legacy from more affluent days that sustains where the reality of collection plate numbers simply cannot.

It's an uphill battle in a neighbourhood largely Roman Catholic or non-practicing altogether. The act of preserving both the building and the heart of the church is an ongoing concern, but it's a challenge the people at St. Anne's are embracing, and I think it might be an important thing for the wider Christian community to pay close attention to as well.  Places like this are few and far between, a building raised up like a nuanced, clever prayer to heaven.  St. Anne's is a whole chapter in Toronto's long conversation with Jesus Christ.