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What is Minister Wellness?

Minister Wellness is a program designed to encourage and support the health, joy and excellence of ministry personnel in Canadian Shield Regional Council.

Ministry is a challenging profession and calling:

Minister Wellness connects

Our Minister Wellness progam provides opportunities for clergy to be with one another, to share experiences of ministry, to share challenges and opportunities, and to talk about what it means to be a minister in the United Church of Canada.

Minister Wellness nourishes

Sometimes what we need is time away from our responsibilities as church leaders. Our Minister Wellness program provides time and space to retreat, to engage in personal reflection, to be ministered to as ministers, and to have fun with colleagues.

Minister Wellness enhances

Minister Wellness provides programs and events to help ministers continue their life-long learning. Through conferences, webinars, special courses and other learning opportunities, Minister Wellness connects ministers with people and resources who help build the skills and knowledge that ministers need to inspire and lead in their ministry, and to respond to the constantly emerging needs of their congregations, communities and the wider world.

Developing Competencies for Collaborative Ministry

Ministry personnel from across Canadian Shield Regional Council gathered in-person for our retreat before our regional meeting at Willowgrove United Church in Sault Ste. Marie in May 2024. “Developing Competencies for Collaborative Ministry” was the theme with our facilitator the Rev. Dr. Andrew Richardson. 

Embracing the Next Normal: Forging a New Path

Ministry personnel from Shining Waters and Canadian Shield Regional Councils were invited to gather in-person for an overnight retreat at Fern Resort in October 2023. They joined the Intentional Ministry Network Annual Connference online for their guest speaker, Rebekah Simon-Peter, who discussed her recent book, Embracing the Next Normal: Forging a New Path – Moving the church forward in a post-pandemic world and participated in a live Q/A with the speaker and other conference participants online.

Rebekah Simon-Peter’s Forging a New Path is a groundbreaking guidebook for the post-pandemic church. When the pandemic broke out, it badly disrupted church life, already hindered by declining membership, forcing pastors and church members alike to ask once more, “Can this church live?”

Rebekah Simon-Peter wrote Forging a New Path in response to conversations and questions that people in churches across the country are having. The author focuses on three persistent questions:

When do things go back to normal?
How do we get people (back) to church?
How do we do more with less?

Simon-Peter leaves no stone unturned, looking at pandemics past to see how medieval Christians dealt with these same issues. Their answers were surprising. The author writes this is the perfect time for Christians to envision and forge a new path forward with God. In this book, the author shares what we can learn from our past to help reshape our future. She writes that our future won’t come from superficial or technical changes but from profound changes in the way we live out being the church.

Resources from our Ministers Retreat

Please find below some of the resources that we used at the retreat.

Opening Worship November 8, 2023 (PDF – 5 pages)
Worship November 9, 2023 (PDF – 10 pages)
Rebekah Simon-Peter Session Notes (PDF – 5 pages)

Medical Assistance in Dying: Following Our Call to Care

With Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) now legal in Canada, people participating in United Church of Canada communities of faith are faced with their loved ones choosing such assistance in dying, or considering this option themselves.

The Church concludes: “The choice of assisted death must be a free and informed decision by an individual who, with the support and accompaniment of others, sees this as one option among many in determining their future, and not as the only option that must be taken due to a lack of choice when facing terminal illness. Our communities of faith need to be safe places for discerning, thoughtful conversations about these options.”

“Those facing the end of their lives, and their families and friends, must feel that they will not be abandoned by the church at any point. This is an imperative for a church that, in the words of A New Creed, trusts in God and proclaims that in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone.”

MAiD Resources

MAiD Presentation by the Rev. Dan Hayward from the January 31, 2023 Minister Zoom Gathering  – PowerPoint – PDF of slides
A liturgy “Anointing at the Time of Death” written by the Rev. Alan Hall – June 4, 2020 (with permission for you to use)
A link to the liturgical resources on the UCC website: https://united-church.ca/worship-theme/death-and-dying
A link to the United Church’s revised statement on MAiD (2020): https://united-church.ca/news/revised-statement-medical-assistance-dying

Staff Support