this week

The Dream Weavers Presentation and Invitation on March 29, 2009

Emmanuel Howard Park United Church is a spiritual community and a building that was given to us by our ancestors. Over several generations EHP has grown and thrived, struggled and survived.

But we are facing critical challenges: we worship in an 80 year old building that will require major capital expenditures to keep it safe and functioning; in recent years we have rarely balanced our budget; our tireless volunteers actually do get tired and sometimes dispirited. The United Church of Canada itself is only a little older but it is also facing huge challenges that question its relevance and its future.

In an increasingly fragmented world, do we really matter? Is EHP worth the effort? What do we stand for? Who are we? Who do we want to be?
EHP’s church council recognized that we didn’t just want to cope and survive, but to thrive as a community. And to do that, to make all the effort worthwhile, we need a compelling vision.
The council asked a small group of us to start the ball rolling in order to come up with a concise vision statement by early this summer. We have already met several times and are beginning to see our way forward with the help of a book called "Holy Conversations".

Our role is not to create a vision or impose a vision but, in continuing holy conversations with this congregation, arrive together at a broader and deeper sense of our mission in this world.

We are calling ourselves the Dream Weavers because we want to help this congregation weave a dream from its many threads. We are excited about that possibility. The Dream Weavers don’t yet know what the dream, the vision, for this church and this community will be. It will be a product of the people who come here to worship and to be together. We also hope that the dream will reflect the larger community who comes to use and be in this place just occasionally, from time to time.

We can’t and won’t weave this dream alone and present it to you as a finished product. That’s because it is not the dream of the Dream Weavers. It is a dream of what EHP is and might be, a dream that needs to be broad and textured enough to encompass our precious diversity, but which will also give us a powerful vision of the deeper unity of our community.
You have probably noticed the two huge blue banners hanging outside of the church “Hear God’s Music in the Voice of a Child” and “Welcome to this Holy Place : Love Grace Community”. Imagine if you could replace those with a banner that captures the essence of what EHP means to you, or what it could mean. It might be a slogan, a headline, a hymn or line of poetry. It might even be a drawing. Put aside any apathy, cynicism, fear or isolation that you may feel; we need to know what sings to you about the spirit of this holy place.

If you know of anyone who is not here today or anyone who has stopped coming to EHP for whatever reason, please invite them to be part of this conversation. Give them a strip of this paper and ask them for their best vision for our church in ten words or less. Bring those strips back to us because we really want to dream big.
Even if you are here today for the first time we welcome a few words on what drew you here or what you need to find. If you don’t know why you are here, a question mark might be a good contribution.
It doesn’t matter your age or what you believe or who you are. We need everyone’s dreams. The more threads (of varying materials, colours and textures), the greater chance we have of weaving a dream tapestry that truly reflects the spirit of this community.

We will collect these at the same time as the offering later in the service. We are going to extend this same invitation at the evening service and over the next several Sundays, and to the community groups that use our premises. By the end of April, we are confident that, with a little creative enthusiasm, we will have a lot of material to work with.

Then it will be time for the Dream Weavers to engage in some arts and crafts. As a committee we are going to do a lot of cutting and gluing and weaving with all these strips of paper. The end result will be a tapestry of everyone’s dream threads which we will put at the front of the church for everyone to see.
We want to use this tapestry during May to have smaller group discussions with those of you who want to continue this holy conversation, about what we have dreamed and hopefully to begin to discern the outlines of a vision for our future.

We are aiming for June to come back to the congregation as a whole with a vision statement that is big enough for the very big heart of this community and strong enough for the profound challenges ahead.
That’s a very tall order. Maybe it’s too much to expect.
But I take great comfort in the name of our church, Emmanuel Howard Park. EHP is the descendant of several different congregations; that’s the reason why we have a double-barreled name - Emmanuel Howard Park. It’s a mouthful and we usually shorten it to EHP. But what about the meaning of the words embedded in our name?

Emmanuel is a word used in the Bible meaning “God is with us”.
Howard Park is another older name for High Park . It was John Howard who gave the land for the park to the city back in the 1800’s and it is High Park that has become the name for this neighborhood. Parkdale would have also derived its name from the park because of its proximity.

So the Howard Park part of the name represents “here”, our community, our congregation.
Emmanuel Howard Park means “God is with us . . . here.” What at first glance may have seemed a clunky, inelegant name, captures in a powerful way what our spiritual ancestors bequeathed to us. It’s a precious legacy and one that deserves our very best dreams.

Rob Rose.

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