EDGE was honoured to have the Rev. Barbara Cairns take some time out recently to chat with Zoe Chaytors about
Bedeque United Church, located in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island, and its unique community ministry!
Bedeque United Church is a small, rural community of faith with an active Sunday School. Fifty people attend regularly. Bedeque United Church has been using an Embracing the Spirit Grant to set up pop-up programing as a form of community outreach—simple but innovative initiatives with an element of faith formation (but no preaching) designed to provide people with places to connect, such as:
- Providing hospitality at a local café, where people can meet the minister and each other.
- Offering small group Bible studies in a church or other community space
- Running family skate times at the local arena
- Running a Vacation Bible School where children from families who didn’t attend church participated.
- Creating opportunities for children and families to plant seeds and bulbs and participate in other gardening activities.
As well, a local farmer donated pumpkins and sunflowers to the church. The Sunday School class was grateful for the chance to decorate the pumpkins for Thanksgiving, and the congregation enjoyed the beautiful sunflowers. The donations received went to the Ukraine Fund.
Bedeque United is especially excited by events that create opportunities for intergenerational contact, such as opportunities for youth and elderly people to work together. The model it’s developed is similar in way to that of the
Messy Church movement, but Rev. Barbara’s work in this area was inspired when she visited a popup art sale in Toronto.
“It got me thinking about church…” the Rev. Barbara told Zoe. "…the idea is, get some help for a short piece of project and then let it go.”
The appeal of the pop-up ministry lies in this idea. Pop-ups are:
- Time-limited: Pop-ups are short-term in duration and don’t involve much planning or follow-up.
- A good way to get volunteers involved with ministry and outreach: Pop-ups are perfect for those that don’t want to or don’t have a lot of extra time or don’t want to/can’t make a long-term commitment to church service, but still want to volunteer.
- Effective outreach on a low budget: Short-term projects run by volunteers, with opportunities to lower costs through working with partners, make pop-ups ideal for lower-cost community engagement.
The Rev. Barbara had been working on building relationships with businesses and services in the community. This process has evolved over time as trust is built.
The Rev. Barbara also likes the idea of the pop-up as a tool to navigate the realities of a post-COVID world, speaking of how it helps to address a collective grief surrounding how we’re still not able (or not able on the scale that we were) to do things that we used to do. The pop-up is helping people get back to doing what they love and giving to community while doing so.
There’s such lovely joy in this story of simple ideas making a big difference. Watch the Rev. Barbara Cairns
full EDGEy conversation with Zoe Chaytors.
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