August 2021
Welcome to a new month and a new Deacons Corner.
We trust you are enjoying your summer in whatever way brings you rest, relaxation, enjoyment and fun! Whether that means a staycation tackling projects around the home, time away with family and friends at a cottage or camping, participating in a hobby or sport or simply being still, we pray that you have a wonderful summer!
May you feel God’s presence in whatever you do.
“I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Psalm 16:8-11
Stay tuned for our next Deacons Corner on September 5
Refugee Family
We continue to give thanks to God for His faithfulness in partnering Mountainview with the Tooe family.
We are so thankful for the generosity of our members in their donations. We have already had the opportunity to load one trailer full of furniture into the home and hope to coordinate a second trailer in the near future. Stay tuned if you haven’t been contacted yet for furniture and other items that have been brought forward.
In the meantime, many members have been asking about the ages and sizes of the children in order to donate clothing and other items to make them feel at home.
Sizing is unknown, however, we can advise that the family has a mother who is 46, three daughters who are 21, 19 and 10, and four sons who are 18, 15, 13 and 7.
At this time, we are waiting until we have a date for the family’s arrival before finalizing our household needs, but note we do have need for the following yet:
Bed pillows
Large baking dishes
Sandwich plates
Drinking glasses
Two single mattresses
If you have any of the above items to donate, please set them aside and advise us by contacting deacons@mountainviewcrc.org, jendejonge@hotmail.com, or your neighbourhood deacon to make arrangements for these donations. Thank you again for your generosity!!
GBF - Back To School Program
Thank you for partnering with us as we support the Grimsby Benevolent FUnd’s Back to School Program.
Spotlight on Social Justice - Land Acknowledgment
We continue to mourn with our Indigenous neighbours as the realizations surrounding the Residential Schools come to the forefront. We grieve with the community over the lives lost, the hearts broken, and the generational damage done as a result of our complicity in the injustice toward Indigenous Peoples.
We want to learn, acknowledge and grow. One of the ways we as a church have started this process is by opening our service with a land acknowledgment.
An article in Faith Today (July/August 2021 edition) does a wonderful job of explaining how a land acknowledgment helps reject heresy and choose reconciliation. The following explanation has been paraphrased from this article.
It’s important to start with some of the history. The Doctrine of Discovery created political and legal justification for European colonists to seize the land of Indigenous Peoples and paved the way for them to be abused. Christian nations in 1454 were granted dominion over the lands they “discovered” (remembering these lands were already discovered by Indigenous Peoples) and were encouraged to enslave non-Christian peoples. “It was the Church that created the Doctrine of Discovery, the heretical teaching that non-white, non-Christian people are less than fully human so that their land could be taken, their children could be taken and the people themselves could be enslaved, raped and abused because they were merely property”. The CRCNA Synod rejected the Doctrine of Discovery as heresy in 2016. Here is a link with more detail.
Churches were part of the creation of this problem and it is important that we become part of the solution. We are called to actively love one another.
A land acknowledgment is a way for our congregation to say we categorically reject the Doctrine of Discovery, acknowledging that the land we live, work and worship on is on the traditional territory of Anishinaabeg, Ojibway/Chippewa, and Haudenosaunee peoples, a territory covered by the Upper Canada Treaties.