Praying Hands.
By Michael Wilson Pastoral Letters January 17, 2025

Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:

January 19 Worship Service Video 

 

Join us for Worship Sunday at 10:00 AM followed by fellowship and refreshments in the He/SheBrews Café

 

  • WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY 2025 is a week long series of worship events beginning and ending with city wide services (https://www.weekofprayer.ca/). Charleswood United Church is going to host the West Winnipeg gathering on Wednesday, January 22 at 7:30 PM. Please join us for this mid-week worship celebrating the unity we have in Christ with Christians of all denominations.  The City-Wide Ecumenical Service will be held on Sunday, January 19 at 7:30 PM at Holy Family Ukrainian Catholic at the corner of Grant and Harrow.

 

  • LET’S TALK 2025 – MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS – Dementia Care -Last year we held our first mental health awareness evening to coincide with the Bell Let’s Talk Initiative. We are returning this year with a new topic and a guest resource person. On Tuesday, January 28  at 7:00 PM we will welcome Jennifer Licardo, Education Manager of the Alzheimer’s Society of Manitoba. Jennifer’s presentation is going to be on the topic We all have a reason to care.

 

Dear Friends

Welcome to worship for Sunday, January 19, 2025.

Wade Davis is an acclaimed Canadian adventurer, writer, and photographer. His academic field is ethnobotany, the study of how cultures interact with their plant life, but he is captivating on topics as broad as anthropology, history, Indigenous peoples, and environmentalism. His 2009 Massey Lectures book “The Wayfinders” is among my favorites.

So, it was I was keenly interested when Wade Davis was a recent guest on CBC Ideas promoting his new book of essays titled “What Lies Beneath the Surface”. One of the events he mentioned several times was the Apollo space flights of the 1960’s and the ways in which these first photographs of Earth radically changed humanity’s understanding of our commonality and shared fortune (or fate). There is one planet, one home, for all of Earth’s creatures.

In describing how this new perspective shaped anthropology he said something that I thought was widely applicable. Speaking of our need to respect all the cultural ways life is lived on our planet he said, “The other peoples of the world are not failed attempts at being you, whoever you are…every culture is a manifestation of the human spirit.”

I happened to hear this as this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was approaching. The name is somewhat self-explanatory but requires a little unpacking. The word we use to described inter-church understanding is ecumenism.

It comes from the Greek word oikoumene which broadly means ‘the whole inhabited world’. When used by the church, ecumenical refers to all the traditions, denominations, and structures professing Christian faith in the world at any given time.

But it is a movement not an organization. And it is hardly new. One of the lines in the Nicaean Creed, written in 325 CE is that those gathered believed in “one holy, catholic and apostolic Church”, (catholic here meaning universal). Ecumenism is the advancement of understanding, respect, and cooperation between and among Christians. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is organized by representative members of many church bodies who invite us to consciously pray for and with one another.

This brings me back to the observation of Wade Davis. I belong to a particular tradition. I am ordained by a particular denomination. I work in a particular congregation. And all that is good. To borrow from Dr. Davis, other traditions, denominations, or congregations are not failed attempts at being me…they too are manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Personally, I think the same thing can be said for other religions and spiritual understandings (but that topic needs a letter of its own). It is very, very easy to judge that of which we are not a part. But what is served by judgement? Should we choose, it is also easy to approach other churches in the manner taught by Jesus. Loving our neighbour as we love ourselves (or our church).  

Charleswood was invited to host one of the regional services during WPCU this year. We will do so next Wednesday at 7:30 PM. The rallying City-Wide service will take place this coming Sunday, January 19 at 7:30 PM at Holy Family Ukrainian Catholic Church on the corner of Grant and Harrow. But if ecumenical worship services are not your thing (and they have their problems too) please pray for the well-being of the Christian family wherever it is found.   

Oddly, the Bible begins with a sort of view-of-earth-from-space in narrative form. God was looking at the whole of Earth when saying “Let there be life” and the world became inhabited. The whole inhabited world, oikoumene in Greek. One creation, one people, loved into being by One God.

 

Grace and peace, 

Michael

 

  • For news and events please have a look at Life & Work on our website: Life and Work

 

  • Did you know you can support this ministry by e-transfer, automatic withdrawal (PAR), and gifted securities, in addition to weekly or monthly cheques? For Offering Information please visit: https://charleswoodunited.org/support/  We have begun to receive donations for this summer’s Roofing Project which will be held separate from Operations and Mission & Service. Thank you for your generous support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Wilson / About Author
Michael’s involvement in the wider church has included ministry with children and youth, membership on the National Division of World Outreach, supervision of campus ministry, and the Ten Days for Global Justice National Committee. He has been blessed by the opportunity to represent the United Church of Canada in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Africa on different occasions. Michael has taught at the University of Winnipeg – Faculty of Theology and is past President of the Conference of Manitoba and North Western Ontario.
More posts by Michael Wilson