The Top 5 Things Gateway Church Discovered Running an Extreme Weather Shelter
Above Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash: (I met Michael in a Boston subway station. I told him I liked his sign. “What matters is what it means to you,” he told me. I asked what it meant to him. “Doing a deed or expressing kindness to another person without expecting anything in return,” Michael…
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Serving a God of Change – Part 1: Why Change is Hard
Happy New Year!!! Can I still say that?! How long are we supposed to say this to each other anyway? Can I say it to someone I am seeing for the first time in the new year? If so, this could go onto until June. Is this greeting only welcome the first couple weeks into…
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“How could we say ‘no?’” Gateway CRC responds to need for homeless shelter
(Pictured Above: Larry, one of the shelter’s guests who has also started to regularly attend Gateway, sitting in the church gym.) This month, guest blogger Monica deRegt will be writing a 3-part story on the Extreme Weather Shelter opened up by Gateway Church in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Our theme for December has been “Helping Without Harming”…
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Webinar Addresses Helping that Helps at Christmas (and beyond!)
Christmas is almost here! I’m sure you didn’t need that reminder (at all!). Costco shelves and dollar store aisles have had their Christmas supplies out since October, if not sooner. Churches and charities have been busy planning and promoting their Christmas programs and ministries for a while now. Social media has been buzzing about who…
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Many People Float on the Periphery
Following our theme of “Loneliness” this month, Anita Hogeveen shared this blog post with us, which was originally published on December 18, 2017, on her blog. Anita is one of our fabulous Diaconal Ministry Developers from Eastern Canada and she writes with grace and compassion and authenticity. The church community did not let her be…
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Are You Lonesome Tonight?
I stumbled upon this quote the other day while I was doing some research on loneliness. “It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.” ~Albert Einstein While at first this may seem utterly impossible, and perhaps even absurd, I wondered how many people would agree with this statement. This quote…
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Why Praying With Others Works
In September, we spent some time learning about prayer and devotions as part of your “regular” Agenda at a Deacons’ Meeting. In our post “A Diaconate that Prays Together, Stays Together,” we laid out why prayer is a vital part of the ministry deacons do and how praying together can actually make a diaconate more…
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International Day for the Eradication of Poverty – October 17, 2018
|Photo Credit: CPJ Facebook page, Sept. 2014, ChewOnThis! event photo One day before the annual International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Citizens for Public Justice released its Poverty Trends 2018, an annual report on poverty in Canada. In this report, we read that an astounding 5.8 million people in Canada (or 16.8%) live in poverty(!!)…
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Youth Justice Initiative Coming in 2019
|By Erin Knight, Communications Coordinator for Diaconal Ministries Canada I recently watched the movie Black Panther with my two sons, aged 11 and 13. While I wasn’t exactly filled with enthusiasm to be watching yet another Avenger movie with my kids on a Friday night, some of the buzz I had heard surrounding this movie…
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Prayer/Good Meetings: Praying with Expectation
Psalm 5:3: “In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” In September, we spent some time learning about prayer and devotions as part of your “regular” Agenda at a Deacons’ Meeting. In our post “A Diaconate that Prays Together, Stays Together,”…
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