A Trip worth writing about

I have stood in a lot of churches. It is, after all, central to my work in the Diocese of Toronto. But nothing quite prepared me for walking into York Minster for the first time and being moved to tears. There is a scale to that building, to the physical manifestation of devotion, and to the centuries of prayer inside it.

In May 2026, I travelled across the United Kingdom alongside my good friend and colleague Peter Misiaszek, director of stewardship for the diocese.

Over nine days, I visited eight communities and met with 20 people across 15 different organizations: the Church Housing Association, the Church Development Agency, the Office of the Bishop for Housing, the Churches Conservation Trust, Revitalize Trust, the dioceses of York, Birmingham and Gloucester, Canterbury Cathedral, Scotland’s Churches Trust and more.

I came with a list of questions, and I was blessed by how willingly my counterparts answered them. I wanted to know how the Church decides what land to keep and what to let go of. I wanted to understand what goes into financing a housing project on church land, and how they think about affordability in a way that holds up over multiple generations. I asked what happens to a church once it closes; who decides its next life, how long that process usually takes and how big the backlog of unresolved buildings really is. I pushed on heritage, too: when does a building’s historic status help it find a future, and when does it just get in the way?

And underneath all of it, I kept asking a more personal question: if you were advising a diocese back home that’s iterating and living this kind of strategy, where do you tell them to begin, and where do these efforts usually stall?

The first thing I learned is that we in the Diocese of Toronto are not alone. The tensions we wrestle with here are the same tensions being worked through in Edinburgh, Birmingham and York. Geography changes the details, but it does not change the grief…or the opportunity.

What struck me most was posture. Across every conversation, whether we were talking about land and property strategy, housing or the future of a closed building, there was a consistent instinct toward being proactive rather than reactive – thinking several years ahead, rather than waiting for a crisis to force a decision. This approach sees real value in a diocese having a clear-eyed strategy before it’s needed, not after.

Heritage came up often, too, and in a way I didn’t expect. I’d assumed a building’s historic designation would be the deciding factor in its future. Instead, I heard again and again that social value (i.e., what a building means to the people who live around it) often mattered just as much as its architectural pedigree. It’s a question worth sitting with: what does a building mean to its community?

Housing was where I learned the most. The Church of England treats housing development as mission, organized around a simple idea: housing should be safe, stable, sociable, satisfying and sustainable. They’ve built a whole ecosystem to support that work ( the Church Development Agency and the Church Housing Association) and resource their property and housing teams accordingly.

There’s one detail I haven’t stopped thinking about: it’s become a universal policy across the Church of England to leave churches unlocked to the public on a daily basis, inviting passersby to step in and bear witness to our faith. I asked about the obvious worry of theft, vandalism and other reasons we tend to keep our own doors locked outside of service hours. What we learned was the opposite had happened: giving increased and risk decreased.

While there is so much more I could share, their approach to land and property strategy comes down to this: curiosity, a forward-looking posture and a willingness to ask hard questions before circumstances force the answer.

And then there was Peter

If you’ll indulge me: Peter Misiaszek is one of the best travel companions a person could ask for. He should also never again be trusted behind the wheel of a car driving on the wrong side of the road. Somewhere on a narrow road in Radlett (about 25 km outside London), his driving prompted two extremely British strangers into an extremely British argument: one informing the other that she was “thicker than two bricks,” the other replying, with devastating politeness, “thank you, have a nice day.” We laughed about it for the rest of the trip. We may laugh about it for the rest of our lives.

Between meetings, we talked theology, history and our shared, slightly embarrassing admiration for all things related to this part of the world.

Nine days of long drives, meetings, site visits, learning and intriguing discussion with fascinating folks evolved into a friendship I don’t take for granted. Peter is a gift as a colleague, and now, unmistakably, as a friend.

Coming home

I came home with a notebook full of ideas that I still haven’t finished processing, and I suspect I’ll be pulling from this trip for years to come. But if I’m honest, the thing I keep returning to isn’t a policy, or strategy or framework, it’s standing in York Minster, undone by a building I’d never set foot in before. It’s evensong at Canterbury and afternoon service at Westminster. It’s long drives deep in discussion with one of my closest friends, still laughing at the same joke by the time we reached Dover.

I ventured to the UK to study their proverbial bricks.” I came home having reinforced my understanding that the buildings only ever mattered because of what they held, and who they held it for.

Beyond the bricks, indeed.