Christ Church

The Rev’d Gethin Edward, rector of our prayer partner parish, St. Matthew’s Church, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, was ordained to the priesthood on 11 December 2010. The Right Rev’d Michael Hawkins, Bishop of Saskatchewan, presided at the service.

A report on the event, with photos, has been posted at the Saskatchewan Diocese website. Click here to read about the celebration.

UPDATE (26 Jan.): Two photos from the Diocese of Saskatchewan website have been added to our photo library. Click here to view.

The Rev’d Gethin Edward, Rector of our prayer partner parish, St Matthew’s, Tisdale, Diocese of Saskatchewan, has sent us some photographs taken at his church. They have been uploaded to our new St Matthew’s photo album and can seen by clicking here. (Click on thumbnail photos to view larger versions.)

The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…

The romantic poet William Wordsworth may have had in mind the ways in which industrialisation and consumerism distance us from the natural world but there is a sense in which we become so preoccupied with ourselves and our own part of the world that we lose sight of God’s world and the Mission of the Church as well.

The Church, in a sense, is the mission. And that means looking beyond ourselves. Always. We are wonderfully reminded of the larger nature of the Church in the celebration of the Feast of All Saints. It signals a very important feature of Christian faith and teaching: the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.

The Communion of Saints connects with the mission of the Church both to the world that is indifferent and hostile to the Gospel imperatives of love and service and to other parts of the Christian Church, whether outside or inside Canada.

The challenge at Christ Church is to be an integral part of “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” not just in our parish life of worship and not just in the local forms of service in the community of Windsor and the surrounding area but also in terms of commitment to the life of the wider Church.

Prayer is the key component of any kind of commitment and any kind of connection to other parts of the wider Church. I propose that we enter into a Prayer Partnership with another Parish in another part of the Canadian Church.

The Parish of Tisdale in Northern Saskatchewan is part of the Diocese of Saskatchewan. The Deacon-in-Charge is the Rev’d Gethin Edwards with his wife Meg and their three boys, Steven (age 7), Crispin (age 4) and Sam (age 2). They just began there in July 2010. Gethin is from Prince Edward Island, studied at King’s and Dalhousie University in Halifax, and worked in the Diocese of Fredericton before going west and north. I have contacted him about the possibilities of entering into a prayer partnership.

What will it mean? It will mean keeping them and their parish in our prayers and sharing information about the various concerns of our parishes. It will be about looking beyond ourselves.

Pray for the Parish of St. Matthew’s in Tisdale, Saskatchewan!