The Presbyterian Church in Canada and Evangel Hall Mission are pleased to announce an exciting collaboration. Executive Director of Evangel Hall Mission, Ainsley Chapman, has been engaged as a resource to the Presbyterian Church in Canada to support congregations as they consider the future use of their land and buildings. This work may also contribute to a vision to address …
Reimagining Church Properties
By Karen Plater, Stewardship, and Betty Kupeian, Presbyterian Church Building Corporation. Originally published in The Presbyterian Connection Fall 2023. For two days at the end of April 2023, Betty Kupeian, Chief Operating Officer of the Presbyterian Church Building Corporation (PCBC); Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, Evangel Hall; Karen Plater, Associate Secretary, Stewardship, The Presbyterian Church in Canada; and the Rev. Dr. …
Faith Based Housing and Redevelopment at the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association Provincial Conference
Every year in October, the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association (ONPHA) hosts a provincial conference that brings together people to learn and share about everything from building, growing, to managing housing. Two major themes came out this year – the first looked at the struggles of small housing providers, and the second was at the challenges that faith-based communities face when …
More Than Just Housing, We Need to Build Community
By Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, Evangel Hall Mission As more and more church properties are being sold to developers and private owners for housing or businesses, churches across the country in big cities and in small rural communities and of all denominations, have started important conversations about the future of their church land and buildings. One of those conversations is …
When Grief Prevents Imagining a New Future
It is bound to come up quickly in the conversation at any gathering of church folk, whether in a formal setting of a Session or presbytery meeting, or maybe just a coffee shop: how ill-equipped we feel to find a new role for the church in the rapidly changing environment of our world. We face declining numbers of people coming …
What Does It Mean to be Stewards of Our Land?
By the Rev. Rebecca Jess, Armour Heights Presbyterian Church in Toronto Ont., and Vice President, Evangel Hall Mission Board of Directors Land is important in the Bible. We hear a lot about it in the earliest books: promises from God around land, Israelites seeking land, the releasing of land at Jubilee, to name a few. Land is important. Land sustains, …