St. John’s Shaughnessy has been costing the diocese of New Westminster $20,000 per month to stay afloat. It’s so empty that it resembles a mausoleum. As a parish, it is a failure; what more fitting setting for a stifling Kafkaesque bureaucracy than the tomb of the interloper that deliberately displaced a once thriving congregation.
The only thing that concerns me is: will there still be room for all the same-sex couples?
From here:
The new Diocesan Office will accommodate existing Synod staff requirements with room for growth and change. There will be meeting rooms available to welcome the various committees and structures of the diocese large and small and these venues will also be appropriate for study
and research. A large classroom/training facility will also serve as a meeting room occupying the former gymnasium. The existing Trendell Lounge will be shared with the Parish for its fellowship time and receptions. Community user groups will be sought for the unused lower floor and the third floor with this income contributing to offsetting costs to the diocese.
The Business Administrator for the Diocese of New Westminster, Rob Dickson had this to say regarding the key components of the renovation project:
“This project is a good use of Diocesan resources now and for the future as the special synod imagined. it will benefit the diocese as a whole, the archives and the Parish by employing an asset of the Parish and the diocese.”
So I wonder what will be done with the Lending Library that I made there.
I note that they are removing the wide staircase that goes from the lounge down to the ground-level classrooms. We built that to accommodate the 100 children that raced from church to Sunday School every Sunday morning. Maybe they have fewer children now ?
Well , I guess they had to do something, its clear that the present few in the congregation could not afford to cover the costs of the church where it is and so the diocese would be left on the hook to cover the costs ,so it makes sense to move diocesan office into the near empty building.
The once-flourishing parish used all the space, believe me. I was there. It was perhaps a bit of a preaching-station, but we did use all the space.
Yes it was flourishing ,I had many friends who belonged to that church.Now it will become an office building with a little chapel that will be more then enough to meet the need of that congregation.
Happens every time you demolish a Pulpit and desecrate the Altar!
There’s an early Christian tradition that when Judas threw the silver back at the Temple Priests and left, that they didn”t know what to do with it. So they built new outhouses for the Temple staff.
I wonder how the plumbing is at Shaughnessy?
There is another story + I Samuel 3:1-21,
whereby Priestly overseers (Primates and Archbishops) fail to say and do what The LORD says in His Holy WORD by affirming,
+ “Speak, LORD; for for Thy servant heareth.”;
and, instead, lead their fellow Priests and their flocks into
“the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.”
Thereby any ‘Shaugnessy’ can become a Shiloh.
Stolen goods never prosper.
“Community user groups will be sought for the unused lower floor and the third floor with this income contributing to offsetting costs to the diocese.”
So even with moving in the Diocesan office there shall still be lots of empty space. And what due diligence was performed to support the plan to rent out the still empty space? Or was this just an idea someone came up with and is nothing more than wishful thinking?
Furthermore, what is to happen to the previous location of the Diocesan office? Is it to be sold?
Lastly:
“…with room for growth…”
Decades of declining membership that is showing no signs of slowing. In fact with the current demographic (that being mostly older empty nesters and almost nothing in terms of young families) the outlook is even bleaker and the prospect for growth virtually non-existent. What, if any, support is there for even the slightest notion that there will be any growth at all????
The Anglican Archives Library from UBC is also being moved in there too.
There is an article about it in the Anglican Newspaper for the Diocese of New Westminister about the Iona Building being sold that housed it.
Since that has happened, the Archives Library will move to the Trendell Lounge at St John’s (Shaughnessy).
The Synod Office is moving there as we know but with the Anglican Archives Library moving there too helps costs.
I think they’ll have to close some smaller Churches.
I think of Wilson Heights United Church on E49th & Victoria how they closed both Fraserview & Collingwood United Churches moved into Wilson Heights.
St Faith’s at W57th & Arbutus, St Chad’s in Quilchena and St Philip’s in Dunbar might go.
The Diocese of New Westminster and the ACoC have already closed churches. That was done when they evicted orthodox believers from the buildings which in some cases were paid for totally by the congregations with NO contribution from the diocese. Until the ACoC and the Diocese of New Westminster repent and turn to the Gospel they cannot possibly grow, In fact, in the true sense they have made genuine churches into buildings. You cannot be a Christian church and denounce the Gospel.
Maybe also St. Anselm’s out near UBC?
I don’t think my friend the late Rev. Dr. Harry Robinson would worry about the building now. His former congregation lives on.
I’m sorry to say that this blog has become almost impossible to read. Perhaps it is WordPress, but whilst it has always taken a long time to load, today, it took about five minutes. After the text and content had loaded, my browser would not let me smoothly scroll through the information until all it had loaded the widgets, android apps, etc. that the blog uses.
Jason, what browser are you using and what is the speed of your ISP connection?
Hi David,
I’m using Google Chrome and I’m on an 8 mbps cable connection to the net.
Thanks Jason, I’m not sure why the site is slow, then; it should load in about 8 seconds. I’ll play around with a VPN proxy in Australia and see what the response is like.
Update Tried going via Australia and it’s still reasonably fast for me – so I’m not sure what’s wrong.
I have no connection with St. John’s, having only driven past it once whilst visiting Vancouver, but I can think of several uses for the ’empty spaces’: housing for the homeless (perhaps not feasible in such a posh neighbourhood?), space for self help groups like AA, NA, OA etc, Housing for unmarried mothers. The list could go on and on, I think, if only the Diocese exercised its imagination!