The Saskatchewan Anglican December 2013 9

Christopher Dow ordained to priesthood in Saskatchewan

The clergy and bishops of the Diocese of Saskatchewan gather after the ordination to the priesthood of Rev. Christopher Dow, on Oct. 18 at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Birch Hills in central Saskatchewan. Dow is in the back, flanked on his left by Bishop Michael Hawkins and by Bishop Adam Halkett on his right. Dow’s wife Amy stands just in front of the newly-ordained priest. Photo — Mary Brown

By Stella Demery

BIRCH HILLS (Skwn) – The ordination of Christopher Dow took place on the Feast of St. Luke, Oct. 18 at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Birch Hills.

Rev. Chris Dow is rector of the congregations of: St. James, Muskoday; St. George’s Anglican

Church/Zion Lutheran Church in Kinistino; and St. Mary’s Birch Hills.

Parishioners from the three points of the parish attended the celebration and presented Chris with a gift of a chasuble and alb. St. Mary’s hosted the supper for the rehearsal, while the three congregations joined together to host a reception luncheon

following the ordination.Bishop Michael Hawkins and

Bishop Adam Halkett conducted the Service of Ordination, along with clergy from Christopher Lake, Melfort, Tisdale and Prince Albert participating in the service. Canon George Sumner, principal of Wycliffe College, preached the sermon, reminding Chris that he is

“called to see God’s hand, His call, His gifts, His warning, in the lives of the people He has given you to care for.”

Canon George is a fellow New England Patriot’s fan with Chris! Amy Dow, Chris’s wife, was cantor for the Litany. St. Mary’s choir sang a special hymn during communion.

Approximately 100 guests were

part of the celebration, including Chris’ parents and brother from Kingston, Ont.

Chris and Amy moved to Birch Hills on Dec. 30, 2012, survived one of the toughest prairie winters, quickly became active “rural folk” and grafted into the lives of the congregations and communities they serve.

Young and old Anglican and United church members in Beechy celebrate Harvest Festival with Bishop Robert Hardwick. Photo — Rev. David Nevett

Celebrating a Harvest Festival

in BeechyBy Rev. David Nevett

BEECHY (Qu’A) – St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church, Beechy, was decorated with flowers, fruits, vegetables and fall colours for a very special service on Oct. 13. Not only was it the annual Harvest Festival, but because visiting was Bishop Robert Hardwick and his wife, Lorraine.

Following the local tradition, on the second Sunday of the month, the Beechy United Church did not have a service, but that congregation worshiped with the

Anglicans. (On the third Sunday of the month there is no service in the Anglican Church when they attend the United Church.) The bishop was the celebrant and preacher for the occasion, Sylvia Haugen the organist, Carol Esson read the Scriptures, Eleanor Taylor led the prayers of the people and Hayden Connor was the crucifer and server.

After the service, photos were taken and everyone had lunch together, giving an opportunity for fellowship and informal conversation with Bishop Robert and Lorraine.

10 The Saskatchewan Anglican December 2013

Qu’Appelle Notes and

EventsObituary

Rev. David Madill died Oct. 9 in Comox, BC. He was a priest in the Diocese of Qu’Appelle from 1949-51, serving first as curate-in-charge and then Vicar Of Christ Church, Nokomis.

Ordinations

Deacons Susan Anholt and Tracey Taylor are to be ordained to the priesthood on Sunday, Dec. 1, at All Saints, Davidson.

The service starts at 3 p.m. The new priests will serve the Parish of Midlakes, which comprises St. Columba, Kenaston and All Saints, Davidson.

Diocesan website under construction After several months of being out of operation, the Diocese of Qu’Appelle’s website is undergoing complete reconstruction.

The new site really will be “new and improved.” Please check the new site for news from around the diocese, updated cycle of prayer and educational material, at quappelle.anglican.ca

A rowan (mountain ash) tree, planted to commemorate the centennial of the diocese in 1984, shelters the memorial bench in “A Quiet Place” in the churchyard of St. Stephen’s, Swift Current. Photo — Val Salter

A quiet placeBy Maureen Parsons

SWIFT CURRENT (Qu’A) – It all started when bereaved families and friends wanted to place a bench in St. Stephen’s churchyard in memory of a loved one. When the church was locked, a place was needed where people could sit, meditate or just spend a little quiet time during the busyness of day-to-day life. From this came the title of “A Quiet Place.”

Warren’s Funeral Home in Swift Current donated a bronze plaque to be placed on the stone bench. On it was engraved:

A QUIET PLACE Jesus said: “Come with me by

yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31).

The bench and garden area were dedicated after a church service on Aug. 25. Rev. Jonathan Hoskin read the names of those remembered and local artist, Keith Kitchen, sang his song Come to Me. Thanks was given to all who donated and helped to fulfil this dream.

Two dedicated ladies from the parish created a beautiful garden around the area, which has received many comments from the community. It is great to see this area being used and not just by parishioners.

Yee-haw! Cowboy church in Yorkton

Young people of the Pelly Deanery dressed for the part of Cowboy Church. From left, Jack Gilley, Alexander Todd, Kashton Sass, Courtney Gilley, Jayd Girling and Rev. Kim Silo. Photo — Steve Guliak

By Marilyn Pachal

YORKTON (Qu’A) – On Sept. 29, Holy Trinity, Yorkton hosted its first ever Cowboy Church.

It was held at the farm of Barry and Dale Sharpe, who live on the city outskirts. The service took place in “The Saloon”, which is a building that had been moved from the Yorkton Fairgrounds, and has been used for many social occasions over the years. It is a unique venue, with sawdust on the floor and antique farm implements lining the walls.

The service was one of the Pelly Deanery shared services, held twice yearly on the fifth Sunday of the month. The deanery includes Saltcoats, Churchbridge, Bredenberry, Esterhazy, Melville, Canora and Kamsack.

The congregation sat on chairs and around tables and were entertained by Prairie Blend, a gospel quartet from Langenberg.

Attendance included 106 people and five dogs, who were busy patrolling the Saloon during the service. The service was mostly songs of praise, with those present joining in some old-fashioned hymns such as Bringing in the Sheaves.

It was a beautiful fall day, and when

pot-luck lunch was served, many people preferred sitting outside to enjoy the glorious autumn colours and the peaceful

surroundings. All present thoroughly enjoyed this form of worship and would like to repeat it next year.

Anglican Foundation of Canada work in Saskatoon and Qu’AppelleEnriching life across the diocesesIn every jurisdiction, the Angli-can Foundation of Canada (AFC) works to revitalize the Anglican experience by giving grants and loans for projects to enhance church life.

Here are a few examples.SASKATOON

In Saskatoon, an AFC grant-loan combination helped restore the roof and rebuild the exterior envelope of the herit-age Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Emmanuel Church (formerly St. James) used its grant for roofing as well. St. Andrew’s in Maidstone used a grant and loan for ex-

tensive renovations, including re-shingling church and hall roofs, repairing windows and installing new sidewalks.

QU’APPELLESt. Giles in Estevan

received a grant to bring the church up to code with wheel-chair-accessible washrooms

and a lift for the disabled and later got a loan to construct a new addition.

Nehiyawe Pastoral Coun-selling, Gordon First Nation, in Punnichy received a grant to support healing workshops and educational programs for the survivors of residential schools and their descendants.

The Saskatchewan Anglican December 2013 11

Eight reasons for the existence of God

Why is the human brain capable of not only making decisions about our daily survival, but also ca-pable of unlocking the deepest questions of physics? The universe didn’t have to be comprehensible to minds like ours, Dr. Andy Bannister said. Science is ultimately based on mathematics, which “beauti-fully” describes the universe. Photo — Shutterstock

By Jason Antonio REGINA – Christian apologist Dr. Andy Bannister spoke in Regina recently about whether Christianity and faith are delusional ideas.

He debunked both such ideas, while presenting eight pieces of evidence that point to the existence of God:

1) Why does anything exist at all? This is one of the most “profound philosophical questions” humans can ask, Bannister explained.

Another question many ask is — why is there something rather than nothing?

These are two questions science can’t answer.

“Science is very good at telling you what happens when you have stuff, but science isn’t very good at telling you why there isn’t ‘stuff’ in the first place,” he continued.

Some things cause other things to happen, such as the first domino causing the next domino to fall over.

Thus, everything which a person can come up with is caused by something else.

“What we need for anything to exist at all in the first place is we need some kind of uncaused cause.

“Or, we need an unmoved mover, as the Greek philosopher Aristotle put it.

“(Someone) who can put the whole chain of being into beginning and into motion.

“Someone who can put the first universal domino into motion.”

2) Why does science work? Science is a “fantastic invention,” Bannister said, and may actually be the best invention mankind has ever come up with.

Another question to ask is, why is the human brain capable of not only making decisions about our daily survival, but also capable of unlocking the deepest questions of physics?

“Why is the universe even comprehensible in the first place?” Bannister continued.

The universe didn’t have to be comprehensible to minds like ours.

Science is ultimately based on mathematics, which “beautifully” describes the universe.

Why does math even work? If there is no God, then the

alignment of math and science is merely a “happy accident.” But scientists don’t like luck, they like explanations.

So if God does exist, that explanation is easy: A rational and coherent God created a rational and coherent universe

filled with humans who have rational and coherent minds to understand many things.

3) A fine-tuned universe. There exist numbers which underpin the universe and are built into the laws of science, math and physics. These are called constants.

These numbers have to be exactly right, Bannister explained, otherwise we wouldn’t be here at all and neither would the universe.

If certain protons or neutrons had different values by only a small fraction, they would tear themselves apart and nothing could exist.

“I find it not difficult as a Christian philosopher,” Bannister added, “because according to the Bible, a God who is rational, coherent and loving created a world that He described as good for His creatures to flourish.

“It is no surprise to me that that universe is precisely balanced.”

4) The human brain,

particularly reasoning and thinking. Everything you believe, do, have, hope for or invest in, all require you to trust your mind, Bannister pointed

out. Thus, if you don’t believe

in God, then our mind is just a chemical reaction. If there is no soul or spirit, then your mind is just a chemical reaction “fizzing away.”

“Furthermore, if you believe your brain has simply evolved over millions of years – time plus chance plus natural selection – then you’ve hit an even bigger problem, one spotted by the father of evolutionary theory himself, Charles Darwin,” the Christian apologist added.

Even he had doubts about the mind, because evolution selects for fitness, not for the truth or what you believe.

“If you believe a rational God is behind everything…and we are not just biology, you can trust your mind. If you can’t trust your mind, that would make you deluded (according to Darwin).”

5) The feeling of desire. This was popularized by C.S. Lewis, who wrote that all creatures have inner desires that correspond to, and can be fulfilled by, something in the world.

But if we are ever faced with the idea that we have desires

which nothing can satisfy, humans do one of three things: blame the world for not meeting that desire; suppress the feeling because nothing can meet it; or conclude that these desires are pointing somewhere and we can only find satisfaction in God.

6) Beauty and aesthetics. What is beauty? Bannister explained it has to be more than just a subjective idea or personal preference, otherwise it is meaningless. It has to be grounded in objectivity.

“If your worldview can’t explain the world, don’t reject the world,” the apologist said. “Get a new worldview. So beauty is a powerful pointer in terms of being far more than just chemistry, physics or biology.

7) Goodness and morality. When C.S. Lewis was an atheist in his younger days, his main argument he used against the existence of God was the problem of evil.

He pointed out the evil in the world and questioned how there is a God who is good and powerful when such bad things happen. When Lewis became a Christian and looked back at his arguments, he noted the

argument contained “the seeds of its own destruction.”

Lewis argued if God didn’t exist, then objective morals, values and duties don’t exist, Bannister explained. But since all three do exist, so does God.

What it means to be objective in these areas is all three are independent of you and aren’t values you make up. You can’t change them. We “instinctively” know morality exists.

The Christian apologist noted that atoms, particles, physics and biology can’t impose morality on a person. Science tells us what happens when someone ingests arsenic, but can’t tell us whether that person ought to.

8) God stepped into human history through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity is not a list of doctrines, Bannister explained. It is not a set of morals. It is not a philosophy or collection of ideas. Christianity is about a person who lived in history.

This makes Christianity not only the only historically verifiable religion, but it is the only historically grounded religion.

If we were to take any other religion and remove its founder from history, that religion would still stand and exist.

“Christianity, however, is different. It is not a set of teachings brought by Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ.

“If you take ‘Christ’ out of Christianity, all you have is ‘ian’.

“And Ian cannot help you,” Bannister added with a grin.

Jesus doesn’t fit the category of a “good, moral teacher”, considering He said some fairly radically things, such as in John 14:8-9. Jesus didn’t claim to teach about God, He claimed to be God made flesh.

“C.S. Lewis pointed out, this whole claim that Jesus made forces us to make a choice.

“When you read what Jesus actually said and taught, you are forced to one of three conclusions: He was a lunatic and deluded for His claims to be God; He was a liar and a great manipulator…and took people in; (or) that He was who He claimed to be.

“All of these pieces of evidence, they don’t offer a knock-down blow on their own,” Bannister added. “Together they point consistently in a fascinating direction…The evidence is simply overwhelming.

“Faith simply means trust. Have you put your trust in Jesus Christ, and if not, why not?”

12 The Saskatchewan Anglican December 2013

Priest finds lost churches

(TOP) Rev. David Harrison stands in front of the former St. Margaret, Spadina, in Toronto. The church closed in 1909 and an art deco facade was added later. It is now a fabric store. The bottom picture is a photo of the former church (far right) in 1920. Photos by Michael Hudson and City of Toronto Archives.

By Carolyn Purden

TORONTO – Since the founding of the Diocese of Toronto in 1839, some 50 Anglican churches in the City of Toronto have disappeared—either torn down for new development or used for different purposes.

Rev. David Harrison, the incumbent of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto, writes a blog, “Lost Anglican Churches”, which brings these churches back to life with photographs and anecdotes.

Since 2012, Harrison has uncovered histories of 25 of the missing churches and intends to explore the remaining 25 churches in the next year or so.

He says while his blog is about local history, it is also about death and resurrection. Congregations develop, churches are built, then local demographics change and the church is no longer required.

But churches often serve new purposes—as worship centres for other Christian denominations, or else their names (and sometimes their furnishings) find new life in the suburbs. In fact, Harrison experienced this himself in his previous parish, St. Thomas, Brooklin.

A fast-growing area, Brooklin needed a new Anglican church and one was built. The new building incorporated some of the furnishings from St. Clement, Riverdale, which closed in 2006.

“So there is a sense of continuity with the past,” Harrison says. “And we are about death and resurrection in our Christian journey, so that plays out in this story of lost Anglican churches.”

A historian by training, Harrison started investigating lost Anglican churches through his interest in St. Jude, Roncesvalles, where his grandfather was the rector and he was baptized.

Closed in the 1970s and later torn down, it had an interesting post-Anglican history: the church was used by other denominations, while the parish hall became a farmer’s market and then a dance rehearsal hall for the Mirvish theatrical productions.

A new St. Jude’s arose in Bramalea and it inherited some of the older church’s memorials and the font.

Harrison started the blog because he was looking for a new hobby. Working on his own time, he tracks down former Anglican churches through the diocesan archives, visits and photographs them, obtains

archival images and posts the story on his blog.

To date, the blog has received more than 7,000 visits.

Sometimes he finds the church still exists but is no longer used for worship. After it was closed in 1909, St. Margaret’s at Queen Street and Spadina Avenue was given an art deco façade and is now a store crammed with fabrics.

“You can see some of the architectural details are still there inside and along the exterior side of the building, but I walked by Queen and Spadina almost my entire life and had no idea that that was an Anglican church,” he says.

Sometimes Harrison has to do some sleuthing to find a church because it has disappeared. St. Barnabas, Halton, torn down in the 1970s, was described only as being on a corner at an intersection.

However, Harrison found the site when he visited the locale and saw a building on one corner that was newer than the structures on the other corners.

In one case, even the land has disappeared. In 1911, St. Nicholas was built on Fisherman’s Island, a sandbar that ran south from Cherry Beach. Church and island disappeared when the harbor area was filled in 1915.

Harrison is particularly

interested in churches that have gone to other denominations. He talks of Eastern and Russian Orthodox churches that fill the plain interior of an Anglican church with icons and colour.

“The shell is still there but all

this richness has been added and they’re really quite spectacular,” he says.

As well as Toronto’s lost churches, there are another 126 lost churches outside the city. “That’s a long-term project, if

I ever decide to tackle it,” he says. “It’s a retirement project.”

Visit Lost Anglican Churches at http://lostanglicanchurches.wordpress.com/.

Story courtesy The Anglican of Toronto