Reaching out to Grow!

Our partnership exploration with Prince of Faith Lutheran Church in the spring of 2023 left us with a much clearer understanding of our call to ministry as a congregation, specifically that we are a community church, with a calling to serve the neighbourhoods of Southeast Calgary. In the area of Calgary south of Memorial Drive and east of Deerfoot Trail, only three mainstream protestant churches exist: ourselves, Saint Luke’s Anglican, and Forest Lawn United. Saint Luke’s and FLUC have a demographic similar to ours, and are denominations with which our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, has partnership understandings. As of spring 2024, neither Forest Lawn United nor Saint Luke’s has a full-time pastor — just like us!

The people living in South-East Calgary, as in many modern urban settings, often find themselves disconnected from their community: elderly people with out close contact with children and youths, professional couples in new condos without extended family to help with childcare, empty-nesters coping with a new loneliness, newcomers to Canada trying to navigate an unfamiliar culture, struggling single parents in subsidized housing. By reaching out to our sister churches, and to the community organizations, we can work toward serving those disconnected populations as a community whose strength is our connectedness: our connectedness to our God, and our willingness to connect with the people God calls us to serve.

One of our first projects in collaboration with South-East Calgary community groups, is our Black History Movie night, where we will be showing the Ruby Bridges Story at 6:30pm on 1 March 2024, followed by a guided discussion on experiences of racism and discrimination.

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