A Tale of Two Churches: Part One by Dave Jaffe

   A Tale of Two Churches: Part One..




   One church is tiny. One church is reasonably sized. The small church has about 10 to 20 people come to it every Sunday. In the bigger church hundreds flock to its services once a week. The tiny church has a n annual budget of close to $30,000. "Our budget," the forty something head minister of the big church proudly told me, "is close to $850,000 annually." 
      The big church has lots of stained glass windows, a full throated choir and is staffed by four full time ministers. The tiny church has no minister, no choir and no ordinary service. It's surrounded by evergreen trees that circle the tiny house and protect it from the elements. I go to both these churches from time to time. For both of these churches support a liberal version of Christianity which is now my favourite religion.
    The tiny church  is a Quaker worship house that sits at the edge of southwest Vancouver. Few people come to this place of worship. When they do, they sit in silence in  a circle of comfortable chairs.for about an hour. Once I counted the amount of persons in the room. I don't think the total came to more than 30. Some times there are an  even dozen in this house.  At times there may be even fewer people in the small upper floor of the house that is the worship space.
     "Don't get hung up on numbers," a political organizer told me years ago. And at the Quakers I forget crowds or masses of people. I sit in silence and happiness, often recalling what the Quakers' founder George Fox discovered in 1650's England. The divine light is within everybody Fox said. To worship the divine you don't need big churches, massive choirs or even expensive places of worship. All you need to do is focus on the divine light within you.
      I agree with all of this and have spent some lovely hours in the Quaker worship space. Yet sometimes  I tell myself, "I need a regular church service." Then I head off to the Canadian Memorial United Church where there is everything that most people think of when they mention the word "church". A wonderful set of stained glass windows with a social theme line three of the church's walls.  A big choir belts out hymns in the fall, winter and spring. In the choir three or four wonderful young women singers sometimes come forward from the choir to do solo turns. As one woman once said to the church congregation after the choir stopped singing, "You couldn't get this music anywhere else."  She was right.
     As for numbers of people who come to this church, the crowd sometimes swell to over 300. people. This is a huge contrast to the Quaker congregations.
    The church's regular minister Beth Hayward often gives sermons, explaining parts of the Bible while giving inspirational twists to her comments. Lonnie Delisle, the music director and minister
works long and hard to keep the choir and solo singers on track. And all kinds of groups and people work on program and committees.. There's a healing centre in the church's other building that 's right across the alley from the church. This building is called the Peace Centre for reasons I'll explain below. Some people do meditation before the church service starts. The church serves meals once a week to street people. And the list of church committees goes on and on.
     The Canadian Memorial United Church on Vancouver's west side was founded by a Canadian veteran who came back from World War One determined to remember those killed in that terrible event. He set up the church as a memorial to those that had passed away. 90 years later the church still has a strong social conscience and a liberal and pacifist outlook that not all United churches share. The church holds many of its political events in the Peace Centre. Many of the stained glass windows in the church refer to wartime events as well as Jesus and the apostles
     Churches are still important in Canada, even though less than one in four Canadians go to churches on Sunday. I'm one of those that do and I'm glad that liberal churches are still around. I've not joined either church but I have given money to both. They have enriched my life in many ways.
   "This is a magnet church," one of its loyal members Susan tells me. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver."  Susan herself comes from the outer suburbs. Her loyalty shows that the Canadian Memorial Church has put down deep roots in people's hearts and minds.