On Nov. 6 at 7 p.m., Anglicans have an opportunity to hear from Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson at Church of the Redeemer, Bloor St. or join a livestream online. These authors will help us understand the long and complicated backgrounds of Jews and Palestinians, showing how walls get built: by knowledge acquired as members of our families and traditions; through stories that stay alive through retelling; and the shared mortar elements of the wall – identity, trauma and victimhood. The authors, who are also friends, provide background from their Jewish and Palestinian contexts and help us understand elements also entering our North American culture – antisemitism, the Nakba, Zionism, and Palestinian resistance.

What is the answer to breaking down the wall? The authors provide no easy ones but show us real-life examples: deep listening to the other; affirming the other’s suffering as valid and each as willing to accept both; asking their communities, as well as our own, to pursue a common value – justice for all human beings. They challenge us to move toward it, not just from a wish for safety and freedom from oppression, but to a sense of freedom to create a different future. The diocese invites you to attend the event, learn more and join this important conversation.

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A recital of coronation music arranged for organ drew additional friends to the church to hear Music for a Jubilee, performed by music director Robert Dixon. It featured music by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Handel – much of it performed before the 1953 coronation service began.

The pomp and circumstance brought back other memories of St. Mary Magdalene’s royal and coronation connections. In 1953, music director Healey Willan’s homage anthem, O Lord, Our Governour, was performed at the coronation. Arriving at the church in 1921, Dr. Willan stayed until his death in 1968. He was the first non-resident English composer to be given such a commission. Subsequently, Dr. Willan received an honorary Lambeth doctorate in 1956 and Canadian honours, including the Order of Canada in 1967 and even a postage stamp. With 800 compositions, he is best known for his organ repertoire, hymn settings, motets and 14 choral mass settings still performed throughout the world. His love of plainsong also found a home in our parish; it continues as a living tradition and attracts many visitors.

St. Mary Magdalene has another connection to the Queen. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, visited the church in 1989 to attend the morning service and dedicate a plaque to Dr. Willan. Now two plaques celebrate the church’s royal connection.

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John Westerhoff’s Will Our Children Have Faith, written in the 1970s and updated in 2012, continues to ask provocative questions, as well as providing some tentative answers. He has firm theological and educational credentials, and has served in a variety of denominational ministries.

We often forget that in our Church’s long history, Sunday School is a relatively new thing, growing out of a need to provide basic literacy. As public education developed, the Church co-opted the model and soon we, too, had teachers, curricula, age-graded classes, dedicated classroom materials and supplies – and ultimately, paid professionals. We have rarely questioned this model. It’s not always a winner for the small parish or even a larger one with only six children. It has produced a fair amount of nostalgia, depression, guilt and sometimes burnt-out volunteers.

Mr. Westerhoff’s book takes us back to the basics. Any form of education is influenced by history, society, culture and denomination. There is a difference between schooling – primarily concerned with learning-about and how-to – and education, which involves not just knowledge but also attitudes, values, behaviors and sensibilities.

The parish Sunday School competes with the family, regular school, other recreational and learning programs, self-learning through books and an endless flow of media – not to mention peers. The parish church is no longer the neighborhood community centre. Schools abandoned daily prayers a long time ago. New social structures include divorced, living-together and blended families, in addition to single parents and interfaith parents – all who likely work outside the home. There is much less interchange among generations. Housing and geographic location of families change frequently. If television once competed with Evensong, we now have competition from an almost infinite offering of technology and entertainment.

To respond to these changes, Mr. Westerhoff suggests moving from schooling to a faith community model. A congregation has a rich memory of its past, the role of authority, changing ways of life and recognition of diversity and multiple gifts. It can be a place to know people and be known, where three generations meet regularly – the older with memories of the past, the middle immersed in the present, the youngest already dreaming of the future. Any true community of faith looks outward and is interested in more than its own survival, asking what God is up to and how it might get involved.

Such a community is rooted in worship rituals; helping people of all ages make sense of them is the primary task of religious education. Rituals help us develop a sense of continuity; they also address life crises when they happen. We need to understand their role in our culture here and now. We aren’t here to escape our problems, but to create a world of shalom where head and heart unite. We learn by telling and hearing our common stories, making things and taking action.

Community life means we can eliminate labels like teacher and pupil and do things like taking hikes, making things, having parties and playing games. The faith journey is both sequential and serendipitous, starting with an experience of being nurtured and affiliating with our denomination. Then as adolescents, we need to explore, experiment and question. Later we integrate the learnings of heart and mind and come to own our faith. We are all on a common journey where faith is a gift that can’t be taught – but in a community of faith, it might be caught.

In times of public worship, we might think of our congregation as a family. Some other good times are hanging out, going places and learning together. Congregational life is really about life – births, deaths, celebrations, seasons, eating and drinking, growing up and growing old. Mr. Westerhoff’s book provides much food for thought.

Norah Bolton is a member of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto.

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These are good questions and probably resonate with any rector or churchwarden who has had to fill out statistical and financial reports. What do the numbers mean and how are they used? Some people in the pews may not realize that such records are obligatory and have to be reported each year. Those who do send them in and perhaps never think about them again until the statistics come back years later when their parish is looking for a new rector.

Sometimes statistics are sobering, but not always. I was glad to read in my church bulletin that our Christmas attendance went from 253 in 2013 to 400 in 2014. That’s something to celebrate.

How well do we keep records about the families and individuals in our churches? For many years, those statistics were probably kept in people’s heads. If we were progressive, the records graduated to a spreadsheet. In such a format, a surname was followed by a first name and sometimes a second one. Other family members were listed by first name only. This was better than nothing, but it made it hard to have an accurate count, and if the second person on the list had a different surname, we create mailing labels that read Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith Brown.

As a former small business person, I experienced similar problems and eventually discovered a type of software called contact management. Such software is now customized for church use, and there are many options, varying in sophistication and price. Putting better information in the program means getting better information coming out – not only for reports to be sent to the Diocesan Centre, but also for the parishes themselves. The programs are well worth exploring and using.

These are some of the factors that parishes should look at when producing statistics:

• Does your record systems count individuals by full name as well as grouping households or families? (Members living in the same household may have two or more different surnames. A mother and her children joining us on Sunday may have different last names and we don’t even know it.)
• Do you keep track of detailed information, more than just where people live? Can you classify people by age? (If 50 per cent of our parishioners are over 80, this points to the needs of a particular group. If we have over 40 children but no staff addressing their needs, that tells us something, too.)
• Can we communicate meaningfully with people, especially in sub-groups? (If a beloved parishioner has died and we need to assemble servers and a choir quickly for a funeral, is it possible to do so from within the system? If we need help on short notice for any reason, can we get it?)

We are surrounded by businesses and institutions that rely on collecting information and using it – not always to our advantage. Any tool must be used wisely and intentionally. At their best, good parish databases that are well structured and consistently used give us realistic and useful information to learn more about ourselves.

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If you were to attend a church on a Sunday as a visitor, what would you be prepared to put on the collection plate from your wallet? What might you need to hold back as cash for that day or the next? Would you need to keep money in your wallet for lunch? Subway tickets? The kids’ pizza day at school?

I thought about this when our parish treasurer received a bill for $500 to reprint our pew envelopes. As the churchwarden, I had to sign the cheque. I calculated that it will take 25 donations of $20 just to recover the cost. We will then have to issue (on paper) a thank you card and a printed receipt. They will be put inside an envelope, with a $1 stamp on it. So let’s make that about 27 donations of $20, at least. That doesn’t include the time of our volunteer counters.

In other words, we are using a system designed for another century. So maybe it’s time to reframe the conversation: How do people pay for things now, including making on-site donations?

I’ll use myself as an example. All my banking is done online. I pay for utilities, groceries, residential fees and taxes, car payments and monthly contributions to the parish via direct debit from my current account – and make two transfers a month to pay my credit card balances in full. Nearly all other purchases are paid for with credit cards – some as monthly deductions, such as my contribution to Our Faith-Our Hope, and others when I buy online. (The points I earn on one card add up to a free flight a year; on the other, it brings me occasional cash deductions). I still have a small business account that receives the odd bit of income from an online order site. I have a line of credit to cover emergencies and a savings account to hold occasional surpluses. I make withdrawals of cash – usually to buy subway tokens – of $60, always in twenty dollar bills. Sometimes the cash sits in my wallet for most of the month. I visited another church recently and didn’t really want to donate $20, but it was all I had in bills and I wasn’t keen to drop a bunch of change. So I gave it.

I donate to my college and TVO via their websites. I contribute to another churchwarden’s charity walk online, too, and get the tax receipts right away. I read my bank statements on my laptop, tablet or phone.

I’m a senior. Am I typical of my own demographic? How about a younger demographic? My guess is that the laptop is the least used device for the 20 to 50-year-old crowd. I look at the passengers on the subway, and it’s all about smartphones.

So here is the challenge:  How are we going to encourage visitors to make one-time donations when they visit a church on a Sunday in a way that works for them, not us? The method has to maintain confidentiality, be secure, and allow us to obtain their basic information in order to issue a tax receipt and have enough information to thank the donor appropriately.

I think it’s time that churches begin this conversation. How about you?

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