Our Good Friday Service is a quiet, reflective service that focuses us on the extent of God’s love for us in going to the cross. It ends with the Lord’s Supper.
Service starts at 1:00pm
We would love you to join us for Resurrection Sunday celebrations. On Easter Sunday we have:
Pancake Breakfast 9:00am
Worship Service 10:30am
(one service only)
Do you want to be part of a choir special for Easter? You must be able to commit to a practice after the 11:30am service April 10 and 17th as well as a run-through Easter Sunday before the service.
What do faith and cinnamon rolls have in common? Well, if ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ why can’t faith be like a plate cinnamon rolls? Am I deep or what?
We were in Jerome Arizona. Jerome is a great town up in the mountains of Arizona. From all accounts it was once a rip-snorting, rough and ready mining town in the 1800’s, but eventually it became pretty much an empty ghost town until the 1960’s. It was then that the flower children discovered it. They soon moved in or ‘squatted,’ depending on your perspective, and started living in Jerome. Of course, as soon as the town started to fill up, those who had abandoned it remembered that they owned it, and they decided it was time to start charging rent or expecting buy-outs.
Well, to make a long story short, the creativity and the optimism of the 1960’s won out as the new residents started up small business to pay the bills and tourism went through the roof. Many of those hippies still live there and Jerome is now the third largest tourist attraction in Arizona—after the Grand Canyon and Sedona. I love this story because it has the feel of frontier risk and opportunity. But, more than that, to take something lost and give it a second chance is downright Christian, is it not? Christ is all about taking that which is lost and giving it new life, but I digress.
While we were there, we had to do the most essential thing any traveller has to do—no, not that! Remember that I am from Canada and the most essential thing for Canadian travellers is that we find GOOD coffee. We went to a place that my buddy Rick knew of, but alas it was closed. I almost started to panic, but the high altitude and lack of caffeine made panicking too difficult. Thankfully, next door and down a few steps was this little shop that you could easily walk by without noticing. This harbinger of delight is called “Gisel’s Café and Bakery.”
“Can I have a do-over?” People usually ask that question because they’ve made a mistake of some sort, but sometimes God gives us do-overs because we did everything right!
There I stood in beautiful downtown Brenda AZ in the Rec Hall of the Black Rock RV Park. In front of me were two wonderful people. Rick, a preacher friend that I finally got to see in the flesh after 16 years of Internet tag and Carol, his soon to be wife. They were standing in front of me because I was about to marry them. Rick looked uncomfortable in his “monkey suit” as he called it, but even his crusty cowboy ways couldn’t hide his obvious joy. Carol looked radiant, which is a bit surprising since she had spent the better part of the week running around like a one-armed wallpaper hanger, taking care of all the necessary details to make the wedding happen.
A few minutes earlier, just as the ceremony was about to begin, Rick leaned over to me and said: “Now Grant, make sure there is some laughter in this wedding because the Christian Life is about joy and celebration.” I took that comment to be a first-class challenge, but I really didn’t have to work too hard at bringing any laughter because of Rick’s homemade processional CD.
Carol loves 50’s music, so the processional began with “Earth Angel,” which led into a recording of Rick introducing his bride as only Rick can. Next was the tympani to 20th Century Fox which lead to the bride’s marching orders: “Going to the Chapel”.
The only problem was that it was all recorded as one track so when the sound guy, half way through “Earth Angel,” accidentally started the song over again, there was nothing he could do but speed up the track. That made the remainder of “Earth Angel” sound like it was recorded by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Laughter naturally ensued.
The fact is, I don’t think we could have planned the beginning of the wedding any better. That faux pas perfectly set the tone for the rest of the ceremony. There were still some serious and solemn bits, but Rick was absolutely right, the Christian Life is a celebration.
I admit it. I am a guy and therefore I like gadgets, buttons, switches—basically anything that beeps or buzzes. Well here I sit in a Phoenix hotel room recounting the events of last night. We flew in from Buffalo via Chicago. We arrived in Phoenix and were met by our dear friends that we have never met before. Rick was one of the first people to connect with my website way back when I started it in 1996 and we have gone back and forth in the bits and bytes of the internet ever since.
I pray for him every Sunday and I know he does the same for me. When my mom had cancer, he and his church, not only prayed for her, but sent her cards. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. They are in Brenda, Arizona, USA. My mother was so delighted to know that a church she had never been to, full of people she had never met, cared enough to pray for her and send her cards. Recently, they did the same for Sheila, my wife, when she had a health scare. Those cards and the prayers they represented were pure emotional gold to her. They were a hug from God. (When was the last time you actually sent a card, a REAL card, not some virtual wannabe card? A REAL card means even more NOW because a REAL card sent in the mail is a RARE thing these days! )
Anyway, Rick and Carol are getting married and they asked me to do the wedding, I prayed about it and here we are in Phoenix on our way to Brenda in a day or so. Well after they met us at the airport, Rick gave me the keys to his Caddy. The keys, he explained, just stay in your pocket. You don’t need them to open the car door or start the car—you just need to have them on your person. Walk up to the door and it unlocks, walk away and it locks. I thought to myself, “What kind of strange magic is this?” I start to feel a slight tinge of giddiness. As I got behind the wheel of the car and pressed the button to start the car, (yes you heard right, you just have to push a button!), the steering wheel automatically came down and adjusted itself. Giddiness was now well above giddy-up mode.
We said our goodbyes to Rick and Carol and Sheila and I headed to the hotel. If we had just parked and both gone in to register, everything would have been OK, but Sheila, angel that she is, went in to register while I parked the car. What this meant was that I was left alone, in a car full of gadgets. Everywhere I looked there was something to press or pull. Initially everything was fine because I had a bunch of satellite radio stations to explore, but as I waited, I couldn’t help but think the rear-view mirror was way too dark and since there were several buttons on the mirror, including one that looked like a plus sign. I thought, ah, the plus sign must be the way to brighten the reflection in the mirror! I was so proud of myself. Who needs a manual? If I would have turned on the light, I would have noticed that the plus sign was actually a red cross sign, as in emergency, but alas, I did not turn on the light.
There is at least one thing that rural, small town and big city type people have in common-besides the obvious things like skin and kids and bills and such. Do you want to know what that one thing is? A fire! I have been part of a crowd in rural New Brunswick at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, and I have also been part of a fire-fueled crowd here in Toronto. Fires attract people-wherever they occur!
One time, Sheila and I were out for a walk and we saw some massive, inky black plumes raising into the cloudless blue sky just a block or two from where we were. We decided to put our lunch date on hold and go check out the fire.
As we started our pilgrimage to the fire, many others joined us along the way. One man suggested that it was the rubber factory that was just over on the next block. I immediately prayed that it wasn’t! What a nasty problem that would have been! Finally, we got over onto Cawthra Road. It runs along the railroad tracks, so we had an unobstructed view of the fire a few hundred yards from us, on the other side of the tracks.
Youth: Volunteering at Ontario Christian Assembly is a valuable experience. Not only does it provided need volunteer hours for your school requirements, but it is also an opportunity to change a life forever.
If you have been thinking of volunteering either as a counsellor, or as kitchen staff, you need to attend the Camp Training Seminar in order to be eligible.
Place: Westway Christian Church (The Westway and Kipling)
Date & Time: March 12, beginning at 10:00am