Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:
January 25 Worship Service Video
Join us for Sunday morning worship at CUC is at 10:00 AM with the He/SheBrews Café following
in the Van Roon Community Hall.
- Online Hate Prevention Event – We are pleased to host and co-sponsor “Examining the Aftermath and What Lies Ahead” a presentation by Dr. Andre Oboler, CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute on Thursday, January 29 at 7:00 PM in the sanctuary. Dr. Oboler will be looking at the Bondi Beach Hanukah Attack and what we need to do to confront hatred that is spread online. This is an open, free, community event so please share the invitation with others.
- 3rd Annual Mental Health Awareness Evening – Join us on Monday, February 2 at 7:00 PM for our annual Let’s Talk About Mental Health Event. This year we are hosting a conversation with Dr. Mark Koltek, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist with the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre (MATC). Dr. Koltek will be discussing the challenges of good mental health and looking at the practices that aid in positive mental health outcomes in young and old. This evening is open to the community and anyone with interest in robust conversation for personal well-being is most welcome.
- We were saddened to learn this week of the death of Dennis Lloyd. Plans for a funeral are pending. Please remember Doreen and the Lloyd family in your prayers this week.
Dear Friends
Welcome to worship for Sunday, January 25, 2026.
As I write this, it is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (WPCU). Last January I participated in the city-wide Ecumenical Service because we at Charleswood hosted one of the week night services. This year, I was asked to take part in the West Winnipeg regional service which was held Thursday evening at our good neighbour St. Mary Anglican Church. It was terribly cold outside but reassuringly warm within.
There is always something new to learn even about the most familiar of events. I didn’t know until reading earlier this week that WPCU is not something relatively random but has a deeper meaning. It is intended to run specifically between January 18 and January 25, a period of time some scholars refer to as the Unity Octave. The local organizers always observe it for eight days between two Sundays for obvious pastoral and practical reasons. But the historic rationale for beginning January 18 and ending January 25 is that on the Roman Feast Day calendar the 18th was a feast day of St. Peter and the 25th was known as the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Eight days between Peter and Paul. Interesting but what makes that serendipitous timing for a focus on Christian Unity?
We don’t think of it this way, but in a sense Peter and Paul do represent a form of denominationalism in the very earliest days of the Christian Church. While Acts 10 tells us that Peter underwent a conversion of his own in Caesarea in the company of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius (“I now know how true it is that God has no favorites”), Peter nevertheless assumed leadership of the early Church in Jerusalem. That church primarily focussed on the ongoing experience of Jewish-Christians as all the disciples had been. Paul meanwhile, having undergone a conversion or spiritual awakening of his own on the road to Damascus, understood his mission to be about bringing good news to the gentiles, people of non-Jewish origin living in the Roman controlled Mediterranean world particularly in Asia Minor (Turkey), Macedonia, and Greece.
Peter and Paul knew each other. It might even be said that Paul recognized the authority of Peter because he sought permission for his missionary work by travelling to Jerusalem while he lived in Antioch (Syria). Peter was happy to oblige, believing himself that something bigger than he understood was unfolding by the Holy Spirit. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to give Paul a few rules to follow and asked him to take collections for the Jerusalem Church on his travels.
Anyway, Peter saw his ministry one way while Paul saw his in a different way. Yet they had to acknowledge that God was working in the life of the other. Which brings us back to why there is some logic in having the WPCU to be framed by the memory of Peter and Paul.
As we observe it in Winnipeg, safely and with trust in the intentions of our neighbours, Christian Unity or ecumenism (a word from the Greek ‘oikoumeme’ meaning the whole inhabited world) is a lofty goal and results in shared appreciation of one another’s gifts and traditions. At the very least it says that we have more in common with one another than our differences. And still, here in Winnipeg as elsewhere, there are many churches and denominations who refuse to participate in ecumenical events like WPCU, presumably out of a fear of acknowledging that God works redemptively in the life of all who by their baptism are the Body of Christ in the world.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity invites us to ask ourselves if we can be more than what we have understood ourselves to be. It forces us to face our similarities and our differences and to question why they exist. It welcomes reflection on the paradox that Christianity can be many things, but does that mean it can be any thing? While retaining the broadest possible definition, I would have to say no. Where the gospel is used to justify violence or hatred or slavery or greed or hostility or nationalism, or superiority, then unity is all but impossible. We have a long way to go to attain the balance that Peter and Paul found they could live with.
But praying for one another is a good place to start.
Grace and peace,
Michael
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