A local church is inviting Castlegar residents to explore their spirituality at a family-friendly, multigenerational gathering.
The Castlegar United Church will hold its new monthly program, Un-Church, on the fourth Wednesday of the month from 5 to 7 p.m., with the first one scheduled for this week.
“We’re encouraging people to think differently from normal church, and so that’s why we’re calling it Un-Church,” says Rev. Greg Powell, minister at Castlegar United.
The evening will include supper, crafts, games and a celebration. “Sing some songs together, tell some stories, that kind of thing,” explains Powell.
The gathering will also attempt to create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable to question faith claims and the role of faith.
“It’s kind of the ethos of the United Church is inviting questioning and inviting dissension, and so we take the stories of the Bible seriously, and we also don’t take them as literally as some strains of Christianity do,” says Powell. “So when we’re looking at Un-Church, we’ll be telling the stories that we might find in the Bible, and we’ll tell them in a way that invites questioning and dialogue and discussion, and invite people to discuss why this might be significant in our own lives.”
Castlegar United will run Un-Church as a one-year pilot program, with gatherings scheduled January to May, and September to November, but not during the summer months or December. Funding for the initiative is being provided through a B.C. Conference of the United Church of Canada grant.
The idea was inspired by the Church of England’s Messy Church initiative, “which is very similar to what we’re doing,” says Powell. “So they have lots of materials, and we’ve taken what they’ve done and we’ve kind of adapted it to our own context and our own setting, and doing things our own way.”
Asked why Castlegar United decided to start the Un-Church initiative, Powell said, “Sunday morning church doesn’t work for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But people are still looking for a way to either do their spiritual practice or ask questions of a deeper nature than we normally get into in conversations, and often that’s with families, and so families are looking for a way to have conversations either in their own families or with other families. So we wanted something that was family-friendly, invites that discussion and dialogue, but was at a time that is not on Sunday mornings.”
Castlegar United tested the idea for Un-Church with a focus group of people who were not members of the church that included 11 adults and eight children. “We just talked about things from ‘How do you define God?’ all the way down to the nitty-gritty of ‘Does this particular time of day work for your family?’” explains Powell. “We have some intentions about how it will unfold, but the intention is to be adaptable with it. So if we find after the first gathering that it’s a format that needs some tweaking, then we’ll certainly tweak it.”
For more information about the Castlegar United Church, visit castlegarunited.ca.