Worship

Various Sundays, 2026 — Connexus Community Church, Barrie

Barrie, ON

July 29, 2026 — Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate

On July 29th, I visited the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate — a place I have always longed to enter more deeply, for I have ever adored the Catholic Church, with all her tradition, beauty, and the quiet weight of centuries carried in her liturgy. There is a particular kind of reverence that the Catholic tradition holds and offers to the world: a reverence not invented but inherited, passed down through generations of prayer, art, and devotion, until the very stones of a place like this seem to remember.

To step through those doors is to step into a different measure of time. The great columns rising toward the vaulted blue ceiling, the light falling through stained glass in colours that seem almost too vivid for stone, the carved reredos above the altar with the Blessed Virgin at its summit, the Lamb of God set into the floor before the sanctuary — every detail speaks of a community that has spent lifetimes making beauty for God, and offering it back to Him in worship. And then there is the crucifix set within its arched niche — Christ's body rendered in such tender, sorrowful detail that one cannot pass it without being quietly summoned to remember what it cost.

What I love most about the Catholic Church is the way she holds mystery — not explaining it away, but letting it stand, luminous and unresolvable, until the heart learns to rest within it. Here, worship is not a thing we produce; it is a thing we enter. I left grateful — for the beauty, for the silence, for the sense that some rooms have been praying longer than any of us, and simply welcome us to join.

July 19, 2026 — Holy Cross Catholic Church

On July 19th, I worshipped at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Georgetown, in the company of my dear friends Danette and Chris. It was a beautiful service — one of those mornings in which the liturgy unfolds with a quiet, unhurried grace, and the heart is given permission to settle and simply receive.

What I appreciate most about the Catholic tradition — and what I felt so palpably here — is the reverence and honour given to the Eucharist. There is a hush that falls over the congregation at the moment of consecration, a collective leaning-in of the spirit, as though the whole room acknowledges that something sacred has truly taken place. The Eucharist is not treated as a symbol alone, but as the real presence — and the way the community carries that conviction, in gesture and silence and song, moved me deeply. To worship beside Danette and Chris, to kneel together, to receive together — it was a morning that reminded me why the Church has guarded this mystery with such tenderness for two thousand years.

July 5, 2026 — Compass Community Church

On Sunday, July 5th, I worshipped at Compass Community Church, and I absolutely loved it. From the very first moment, there was a warmth and an authenticity to this community that I found disarming — the kind of welcome that does not feel performed, but simply offered, as though you had always belonged.

The morning's teaching walked through the book of Revelation — first a vision of Christ, the First and the Last, the Living One who was dead and is alive for ever and ever, and then the letters to the seven churches, with their searching call to return to the love we had at first. It was a sober and luminous word, and I felt it settle deeply — a reminder that the risen Christ still walks among his lampstands, and that love is the measure by which all endurance is finally weighed.

And then came the moment I will carry with me long after this sabbatical ends. At the conclusion of the service, the worship band led the congregation in Revelation Song — my very favourite worship song. To stand in that room, surrounded by voices rising together — "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" — was to be caught up, for a few holy minutes, in something far larger than myself. It was worship as it was always meant to be: the whole heart lifted, the whole room undone, and the sense that heaven had drawn very near. I left full — grateful, moved, and quietly certain that I will return.

June 28, 2026 — New Hope Community Church

On Sunday, June 28th, I returned once again to New Hope Community Church— and the welcome felt as warm as the first time. There is a quiet, genuine rootedness to this community that draws me back, a sense that the gospel is not merely spoken here but lived, breathed, and embodied in the people who gather.

This Sunday, Pastor Cory Pinksen shared a message about love — and it landed with a particular gentleness and depth. He traced the call to love not as a sentiment, but as the very evidence of a life rooted in God. Drawing from 1 John 4:7 — "My loved ones, let us devote ourselves to loving one another. Love comes straight from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and truly knows God." — his teaching reminded us that love is not something we muster on our own; it flows from the source. To love is to bear witness to the One who is love.

What stayed with me most was the simple, radiant truth at the heart of it all: What's love got to do with it? Everything. In a world that so often reduces love to feeling or transaction, Pastor Cory lifted it back to its rightful place — the highest commandment, the fulfilling of the law, the very signature of God upon a human life. I left the sanctuary quietly full, grateful again for this church and its faithful, ordinary, beautiful witness.

June 21, 2026 — Nobleton United Church, Final Service

On Sunday, June 21st — Father's Day — I attended the final worship service of Nobleton United Church. This church holds a particular and poignant meaning for me, for I too am a United Church minister, and it has always grieved my heart to see a congregation close its doors. But this one touched a deeper place still.

For three years I had the privilege of supervising this pastoral charge — walking with the congregation through a seasons-long search for a new minister, accompanying them through the uncertainty and quiet transitions that come in the life of any community of faith. To move from that season of journeying together into a service of closure was a tender and weighty thing. I have walked with these people through change, and now, together, we close.

It was a grace to see so many others who filled the church until it was nearly overflowing, including my dear friend Dan Kolb. There was something achingly beautiful about that sacred space, so full of love and remembrance, every pew alive with faces gathered to honour what had been. And yet, as I looked out at that full sanctuary, a quiet sorrow kept visiting me: if only they could have filled it with this love and commitment for Jesus each and every Sunday. A church is not its building; it is its people. And yet, oh, how the people matter.

Methodist Church, 1886. The cornerstone endures. May the faith it stood for endure just as long.

June 7, 2026 — New Hope Community Church

On Sunday, June 7th, I attended worship at New Hope Community Church, which marked my very first time attending a Salvation Army service. During my years at Tyndale Seminary, I had the privilege of counting many Salvation Army classmates among my friends — men and women of deep conviction and quiet, relentless compassion — and this morning felt like a gentle, long-delayed homecoming into the broader family of that faith.

I had the grace of connecting with Pastor Pam during my visit, and her message left me profoundly inspired. Her teaching on Imago Dei — the image of God — was both clarifying and beautifully bold. Most of all, one statement has stayed with me and continues to sit quietly in my heart: "We don't need to worship idols or images of God, because we are all made in His image." What a liberating and deeply humane truth that is — that the divine is not held captive in stone or paint, but carried within every human face we encounter.

I truly enjoyed this church — its warmth, its authenticity, its rootedness in the gospel lived out in real lives — and I earnestly hope to attend again.

May 24, 2026 — The Mother Church, Boston

On Sunday, May 24th, we attended a guided tour of The First Church of Christ, Scientist — known simply as The Mother Church — and attended a Sunday service within its magnificent walls. Boston holds a remarkable place in the story of American Christianity, for it was here that Christian Science was born. It is a fascinating chapter in the larger story of faith taking root in the New World: many of the world's great Christian movements were founded on American soil. Jehovah's Witnesses trace their origins to Pittsburgh; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) to upstate New York; and Christian Science to Boston, through the visionary ministry of Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).

The Extension — the great domed sanctuary completed in 1906 — is breathtaking in its scale and serenity. Its Roman classical architecture, soaring coffered ceilings, and warm stained-glass windows create a space of profound stillness. Seating more than 3,000 worshippers, it is one of the largest church auditoriums in the world.

The organ is equally extraordinary. The Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, with its 13,395 pipes, is among the largest and finest pipe organs in the world — a magnificent instrument whose sound fills every corner of the dome with extraordinary power and clarity. The organist played a piece for us privately during our tour, and the experience was simply unforgettable. Sound became prayer.

Inscribed on the wall were words by Mary Baker Eddy that have stayed with me: "The best sermon is the practice of Truth and its demonstration through the destruction of sin, sickness, and death." Whether or not one shares all the theological convictions of Christian Science, this much is undeniably true: the world is changed not by words alone, but by lives faithfully lived.

A Reflection · Mary Baker EddyMary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) was a New England woman of remarkable intellectual and spiritual courage. After years of ill health and personal suffering, she experienced what she described as a sudden healing while reading the New Testament — and from that moment, she devoted her life to understanding and sharing what she had discovered. Her foundational text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, became the cornerstone of Christian Science practice and remains in print today.

What struck me most in the museum's exhibition on her life and thought was her insistence on a scientific approach to the Bible — not science in the narrow empirical sense, but the rigorous, repeatable application of spiritual principle to human need. She asked: how can we reliably apply the ideas of the Bible to our lives? And she spent her life answering that question.

One display showed her beloved Psalm 91 — which she felt "captures the essence of pathological and theological Christian Science," writing that "this Psalm contains more pathological and theological truth than any other collection of the same number of words in human language." As someone who has found Psalm 91 to be a source of profound personal shelter and faith, I found this deeply moving. The Christian Science Pastor, it turns out, is not a person at all — it is the Bible and Science and Health together, consulted directly by each member in prayer and study.

A Reflection · The Mapparium

Within the Mary Baker Eddy Library — housed in the publishing house adjacent to the church extension — stands one of Boston's most extraordinary hidden wonders: the Mapparium. Completed in 1935, it is a walk-in stained glass globe thirty feet in diameter, composed of 608 hand-painted glass panels set in a bronze framework. You enter through a glass bridge at the equator and find yourself standing at the very centre of the world, surrounded by the nations of the earth glowing in jewel-toned light. The map reflects the world as it was in 1935 — a poignant and instructive snapshot of a world that no longer exists: colonial borders, lost nations, names erased by history.

But what was most extraordinary was the acoustics. Because the curved glass surface reflects sound rather than absorbing it, the Mapparium creates a phenomenon unlike anything I have ever experienced: a perfect whispering gallery in three dimensions. A voice spoken softly from one end of the bridge travels around the entire sphere and arrives at the other end with startling, uncanny clarity — as though the words were being spoken directly inside your mind. It felt less like hearing and more like receiving. Sound became intimacy. I stood in the centre of the world and felt, quietly and unmistakably, that this is something like what prayer is — a voice that travels farther than physics should allow, and arrives exactly where it is needed.

Mary Baker Eddy · The Museum Exhibition

May 17, 2026 — Avon Church, Stratford

On the seventeenth of May, I had the joy of worshipping at Avon Church in the beautiful city of Stratford. It was a truly excellent service — one of those mornings where the presence of God was palpable from the very first moment. Avon Church is a warm and welcoming community that gathers Sundays at 10:00am in the Small Gym at Stratford Intermediate School. They are a congregation intentionally creating space for people with questions, where belonging is felt deeply, God's presence is encountered, and spiritual growth is nurtured. Their current teaching series, Reading Through Scripture, invites the community to reflect on what the Holy Spirit is revealing through a shared reading plan — a beautiful expression of their commitment to the Word.

The time of worship was particularly moving. My heart soared with delight when the worship band led the congregation in one of my all-time favourite Michael W. Smith songs — "Agnus Dei". It was a sacred and soul-stirring moment — a reminder of how music can carry us directly into the throne room of grace.

May 3, 2026 — Hope Church, Orangeville Campus

Hope Church is a vibrant, welcoming community of faith dedicated to sharing the love of Jesus. The Orangeville campus offers dynamic worship services, engaging teaching, and meaningful connection in a warm, modern environment. It's a place where people from all walks of life gather to grow spiritually, serve others, and build lasting relationships rooted in hope and purpose.

Mother's Day 2026 — Connexus Community Church

Brent & I attended Connexus Community Church to witness the Baptism of our friend Geoff. The entire service was so moving and filled our hearts with encouragement that The Holy Spirit is alive and well, moving throughout the church, and in the members of Athletic Kulture. I was honoured that Geoff credited me for paving the way to Jesus for him. This experience reminds me that I should continue to show up authentically with others and allow God to do the work of transforming hearts. Geoff is the personal trainer for Bryce and I, and he has been an inspiration to us as well. Take a moment to watch the video above — Geoff's story is a powerful testament to the transforming work of God in a person's life. We encourage you to listen with an open heart.