RECONFIGURATION OF SPACE

If you are a member of St. Paul's parish, you need to be aware of potential changes:
The Cathedral’s Facility and Ministry Committee has spent the last five years exploring our shared ministry at St. Paul's, as well opportunities for our facility. The mandate has been to look at:
• what our ministry is,
• how our ministry is supported or hindered by the present facility,
• what the future might hold for our Cathedral Parish in terms of our long range plans.

Last year presentations were made to the community which outlined three options to consider for our future life together. These options were:
• to stay as we are,
• consider rebuilding,
• renovate.

A survey was taken in the spring of 2010 with the results showing a high engagement in this process, but no clear decision as a community at this time. The survey results were shared in small group discussions with the community and from this came helpful input offering direction to the Facility and Ministry Committee for their future work.

The process of the Committee’s work continues, and will involve a number of monthly after church conversations looking at our ministry together now and into the future. You will receive more information about this before our first conversation in March.

The Worship Reflection Group, a sub-committee of the Facility and Ministry Committee, has been meeting for the last two years. This group has been evaluating our present worship space, exploring other models and researching designs and liturgical concepts and needs that can be supported by the physical structure of the worship space. They have worked with resources written by Richard Giles: “Creating Uncommon Worship”, and “Re-Pitching the Tent”. From this work and that of the Facility and Ministry Group, in addition to input from the parish conversations and input from the surveys, it has been discerned that it is time that we as a community together begin to explore and experience our worship space in a new way for a limited time period.

A trial reconfiguration of the present space will assist us as a community to consider possible changes, and provide the opportunity to reflect with actual experience in the context of our worship in the Cathedral building.
Reconfiguring the liturgical space of our worship will provide several opportunities:
• education – a chance to learn more about what we do in worship and why we do what we do
• experience – a new perspective that might reveal to us differently the challenges and blessings of the space we presently share as it is now
• open us to a new understanding – of our worship as Christian Anglicans nourished by Word, Baptism and Eucharist

The Cathedral worship space (the Narthex, Nave and Sanctuary) will be reconfigured for the Liturgical Season of Lent in 2011. From the period of March 13 – April 17, we will experience different seating and liturgical furniture arrangement in the Cathedral. A detailed plan of this reconfiguration will be shared with the community in mid February, along with tools to assist us in our evaluation of the experience. The proposal is to change the entrance way, place the holy table at the east end of the building and arrange the pews differently.

The committees working on this, in partnership with the Cathedral Committee, Rector and Wardens wanted to inform the Cathedral community well in advance so that we are all able to enter into these changes prepared. We know that change is challenging, and that changes of worship space will provoke numerous responses. We want to emphasize that this is not being proposed or done in a cavalier fashion, but with the intention of providing opportunities for engaged community education, reflection, and conversation about what we do when we worship and how the space in which we do this can best support our worship of God and our growth as the community of Christ's body in this place.

There will be more information about this coming to you over the next month.