Collaboration is a Spiritual Understanding

CCS student Angela Glasel is preparing for a pastoral care field placement next year. She will be developing her practical ministry skills with two Saskatoon congregations: Grace-Westminster and St. Martin’s. “I’m really hoping to have the opportunity to be with people in their grief and difficulties,” she says. “And to seeing what that looks like in two different faith communities.”

It’s not unheard of for a student to divide a practicum between two sites. What makes the St. Martin’s/Grace-Westminster placement special is that those two congregations have entered into an intentional collaboration, or a “spiritual understanding” as they call it.

“Angela won’t be working 50% with one congregation and 50% with the other,” says Brenda Curtis, who has been minister at Grace-Westminster since 2023. “Rather we’ll be asking, between these two congregations where will Angela get the experiences she needs for her learning.”

The idea of greater collaboration between the two Saskatoon congregations began a year ago as they jointly planned a worship service celebrating the United Church of Canada’s hundredth anniversary. “I noticed that some of the silos that might have previously existed weren’t there anymore,” says Keith Hall, minister at St. Martin’s where he has been in one form of leadership or another for more than 26 years.

Congregations can be places of belonging. For many churchgoers, their congregation or community of faith is their spiritual home. It is where they worship, learn, serve, and grow. It can become a part of their identity, a lifegiving sense of “we.”

The danger, of course, can be isolation.

Following the centenary service, Brenda and Keith both felt an increased openness to working together in their congregations. A willingness to expand the “we.” After some consultation, discussion, and visioning with their congregations, they drew up a “Letter of Spiritual Understanding” to formalize the commitment of the two churches to explore more intentional collaboration.

“We’re not talking about amalgamation,” Keith stresses. Each congregation brings its own history and identity and gifts, and those gifts complement each other. But by sharing resources – for worship, for programming, for governance – there is the potential for both congregations to benefit.

The two congregations worship together once a month. They have plans to share resources and work together on projects in their churches and in the community. They’ve jointly hired a fulltime caretaker to serve both churches (and get fulltime benefits as a result). Their office administrators are collaborating and consulting, taking advantage of their different skills. Committees from one congregation are being encouraged to consult with their counterparts in the other congregation.

Grace-Westminster was at the early stages of the Affirming process, educating themselves and thinking through the implications of being intentionally and explicitly welcoming of all people including 2SLGBTQ+ people. St. Martin’s had been an Affirming congregation for 12 years. St. Martin’s experience and commitment inspired Grace-Westminster to continue in its process. But Grace-Westminster’s engagement inspired St. Martin’s too, to not be complacent and to renew its commitment to inclusion. The two congregations are co-mentoring each other.

Brenda and Keith provided a lot of the initial impetus for collaboration, but they know it needs to be owned by the congregation. A joint steering committee was formed to talk about how to work together and build relationship, and Keith and Brenda are letting the committee do its work. Nevertheless, you can hear their enthusiasm for the project when you talk to them. 

“I always wanted to be in team ministry!” says Brenda, who previously served as the United Church Minister in Humboldt, SK. Keith was in team ministry for much of his career, but he is particularly enjoying the opportunity to work closely with another Diaconal Minister. (Both Keith and Brenda are graduates of the Centre for Christian Studies and have been mentors for other CCS students.) “There are shared values and understandings.”

Both Keith and Brenda note that collaboration seems to be baked into the diaconal ethos.

“Not saying that other ministers can’t be collaborative, but there’s something about the diaconal way of being that encourages it.” It may have something to do with their ministry formation, with an emphasis on co-learning, group work, shared planning, open feedback, and community reflection. “I think about the action-reflection Spiral all the time,” says Brenda. In the collaborative efforts between Grace-Westminster and St. Martin’s, she feels that “we are living out the Spiral.”

Keith feels that the diaconal focus on social justice and the awareness of who’s on the margins and who’s being left out is playing a role in how he helps his congregation navigate this new relationship. “It’s not the same as marginalization per se, but thinking about who’s on the edges helps me be attentive to those who aren’t on board with the collaboration yet, those who are resisting.” He thinks a lot about how to understand their apprehensions and how to help them to feel part of what the faith communities are doing together.

Although they are clear that a merger is not the goal of this collaborative partnership, Brenda and Keith acknowledge that there may come a time down the road when amalgamation does become a conversation. Saskatoon currently has nine United Church congregations, and it is hard to imagine a future where that number can be sustained. If at some point in the future amalgamation was necessary, they note, the spiritual understanding between the congregations would put them in a good position to come together as long-time friends with shared history.

“This collaboration is not just about practical survival or fear,” says Brenda. “This is about a spiritual relationship. We are siblings in the Body of Christ.” As letter of understanding between the two congregations says: “When the Spirit says move, we should pay attention. And move.”