By Lloyd Mackey

ITS OFFICIAL NAME is the Three Saints Ministry Team (TST), and its activity over the next year is being closely watched by Anglican diocesan leadership on Vancouver Island.

The team involves three Anglican parishes, St. Michael and All Angels in Royal Oak, St. David by the Sea in Cordova Bay and St. Peter in Lake Hill. The latter two had been scheduled for closure under the far-reaching restructuring plans which were announced last year by the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, which covers Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.

Among the restructuring plans proposed by the Diocesan Transformation Team was the idea of making St. Dunstan’s in the Gordon Head area into a ‘hub church.’ The plan called for the closing of St. Peter and St. David by the Sea and incorporating their worshipping congregations into the St. Dunstan’s structure.

St. Michael and All Angels, for its part, was left alone in the restructuring plans.

But the Anglican folk worshipping at Royal Oak, Cordova Bay and Lake Hill had some different ideas. They wanted to stay put, and while they appreciated the hub church concept, they came up with a different plan.

In short, it was to develop a ministry team that would be committed to keeping all three parishes active, building on their joint strengths and developing unique worship and program activities that would reflect and serve well their respective communities.

Island Insight talked to Lucy Reid, the team rector in the TST and the rector at St. Michael, about the plans and hopes for the new setup.

Reid is a British-educated minister who served as a chaplain at the University of Guelph in Ontario before moving to Victoria with her husband, David Howells, also an Anglican cleric, almost three years ago.

Reid recalled that “St. Peter and St. David didn’t want to close. The wardens invited St. Mike’s to talk. There had been some informal relationships [among the three parishes] in the past, and they wanted to see if something could be worked out.”

What “worked out” was the TST plan.

Reid’s team consists of Canon Christopher Parsons, Scott McLeod and Deacon Betty McLeod-Miller (no relation to Scott). McLeod and Parsons had both been at other now-closed Anglican churches in the Victoria area.

The TST setup also includes three other less obvious elements. Those three are:

• St. Dunstan’s, whose leaders were disappointed that their church did not become a hub church, but who nevertheless opted to buy in to a vital sector in the new ministry setup – the development of a youth program. About 40 young people are a part of the program, drawn from all four parishes.

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• The Sisters of St. John the Divine, an Anglican Order whose Victoria House is adjacent to St. Peter’s. Noted Reid: “The team really needed to be undergirded with prayer, and the sisters bring that prayer element to the task.” The team’s weekly meetings are at the order’s house, where the members participate in worship with the order’s four sisters.

• Reid’s husband, David Howells, has a ‘day job’ as chaplain at the Victoria Hospice at Royal Jubilee Hospital. He is honourary assistant at St. Michael’s and, in that role, keeps busy on weekends leading services at all three churches.

 Reid said the team ministry plan “was accepted very quickly at a March diocesan synod meeting, [and] we were given one year to show a viable model – September to September.”

Each parish brought certain strengths to the partnership.

“St. Peter’s had financial difficulties, but a lively congregation with a cross-section of ages. St. David’s was a small congregation and mostly elderly. But they had sold a piece of adjacent property and had a good financial basis. And they were renting their former church, now a church hall, to a dance school,” Reid pointed out.

As for St. Mike’s (the affectionate informal name for St. Michael and All Angels), the congregation is strong and long-standing, with 127 years of history.

“It is known as ‘the little country church on the edge of the city.’ People come from all across Victoria to attend. It is both traditional and thriving,” Reid noted.

As part of the plan to add innovation to the strengths already available, the team is engaging in two new programs, congenially but provocatively named ‘Messy church’ and ‘Theology on Tap.’

The latter is a regular session at Bekliln’s, a pub in Cordova Bay near St. David’s. Chris Parsons writes about it in his blog at stmikevictoria.ca. He describes Theology on Tap  as a way to engage people who are not into church in spiritual discussions. Ironically, the pub used to be a United church.

Messy Church is an intergenerational event, held on either a weeknight or a Saturday morning, at the different churches. “It is not a place where the parents dump off their children,” Reid emphasized. Crafts, games and the telling of a gospel story are all part of the program.

Both events are drawn from experiences and programs that other churches have developed in other places as they have sought ways to renew and encourage Christian witness and discipleship, Reid suggested. And the leaders are well trained and prepared to assume their roles in the early stages of the programs.

Reid has the hope that, when the year is up next September, the Three Saints Ministry Team will have had some experiences that will be of help, not only to the three parishes, but to Anglican and other Christian leadership in Victoria.

Meanwhile, Reid finds TST a “real joy and blessing – I love working in team.” With her adult children far away in Montreal and Halifax, she enjoys the additional team opportunities to work informally with her cleric husband.

November 2010