The Right Rev. David Giuliano

June 2007

Dear Friends,

Greetings in the name of the Spirit who was set free among us at Pentecost. I am writing to tell you about where She has been moving us since I last wrote.

This weekend the Executive of General Council met to consider a plan prepared at our request by Nora Sanders, General Secretary, and the staff at Church House. We took a significant step in the ongoing discernment and transformation of our faith community. It did not begin over the weekend, nor is it finished.

The plan is rooted in “Call to Purpose” which you discerned during GC39 in Thunder Bay. It reflects the priorities that we as your Executive refined from that “Call.” By approving this plan we have decided to focus our energies and resources over the next few years on some areas to which we believe God is directing our attention at this time. We trust this will help us to move, with faith, toward an emerging vision for The United Church of Canada.

These priorities include:

• Deepening relationships within congregations to assist them as the primary expression of the mission and our commitment to justice.
• Raising up and equipping strong leadership for this mission and ministry.
• Unleashing and embracing the ministry of youth and young adults
• Continued healing of the brokenness in our relationship with First Nations.
• Living out our commitment to becoming an Inter-Cultural Church
• Doing justice in our relationship with the earth.

Focusing our priorities, and the available resources at this time, means that there are also losses. Over the next few months about 20 positions will be ended at Church House. Beginning in 2009 grants within Canada and to Global Partners will also be reduced. This means stopping some valued work and, significantly, the end of some treasured relationships. This week in particular we hold all staff members in our prayers as they begin the work of communicating our decisions, grieving, and moving into a time of transition.

This work is painful and difficult but we trust that new life will emerge. Projects are also underway to increase the resources available to us as a church. We are hopeful that there will be room to expand, but feel that to be faithful we must work with what God has given from abundance into our care.

We, your friends on the Executive of General Council, have given our best selves to your longing for deepening in relationship with God and one another, for healing of brokenness and for justice grounded in mature spirituality, all expressed in “Call to Purpose.”

The Gospel of Mark chapter 4 has Jesus describing a farmer who plants the seeds and then sleeps and rises “while the seeds sprout and grow and he knows not how.” Like the farmer, we are doing our best to cooperate with what God is doing in and through the soil of our beloved community of faith. We await the harvest, trusting that God will take what we offer—our strength and weakness, our wisdom and our foolishness—and transform it for the Holy Dream for this creation.

I ask for your continued prayers and faithful courage as we move through this journey toward a destination unknown. We do know that God is with us, so we are not afraid or discouraged but excited by the mystery of our unfolding in that love.

Peace be with you,

• David Giuliano, Moderator
  The United Church of Canada
  3250 Bloor St. West, Suite 300
  Toronto, ON M8X 2Y4
  Tel: 416-231-5931 ext. 2012
  Toll-free: 1-800-268-3781 ext. 2012
  Fax: 416-231-3103
  E-mail: David Giuliano