Calvary in the 1990s

July 1988 was a distressing time at Calvary. Both of Calvary’s ministers had left under unhappy circumstances, and who could predict what the church of the future would be like.

How fortunate Calvary was that the Reverend Doug Chapman, a trained Intentional Interim Minister, and the Reverend Bob Johnson, an Interim Consultant, were both available at this crucial time of transition to minister to the congregation.

Doug believed all members of the church needed to be treated with care and respect and he offered that care by being an excellent listener. From the beginning he made contact with as many folks as he could, chatting individually with many and spending time with the congregation’s various groups and organizations. He recognized that the congregation had been shaken by the unexpected events of the past year; nevertheless, by the time of the annual meeting in February 1989 he reported that he found members were eager to maintain unity and to work for the common good. Finally, by the end of his year with us, Calvary could feel reassured that the interim year had been a time of renewal and a time for thanksgiving.

By the way, did you know that every week Doug left his home in London where his wife was also a United Church minister and travelled to Kitchener to provide ministry for the Calvary congregation. During his days here he lived in the very large, very empty manse, sleeping on a futon on the floor. How happy he must have been to go home each week!

In the meantime, the Official Board worked with the Reverend Bob Johnson to establish a path for the future. He recommended establishing Cottage Groups and they proved to be exceptionally successful in helping us recognize our shared values, and in developing a new statement of purpose and an updated constitution.

Calvary’s Planning Process began by creating seven groups, each consisting of a cross-section of the congregation. These groups met six times in members’ homes over the fall and winter of 1988-89. Bob provided thoughtful topics for discussion that led the participants to talk about their faith and to focus on what they believed should be the core values for Calvary in the future.

At the same time a Search Committee was being formed to call a new minister to Calvary. The first meetings of the Cottage Groups provided feedback to the search committee about the qualities folks considered most important to have in a minister –- besides the proverbial “someone 30 years old with 40 years of pastoral experience!”

The Search Committee was eager to begin its work and was hopeful that the right person could be found. There was excitement at one meeting when members from the Search Committee who had visited a church in Chatham came back eager to tell the rest of the committee about a poster that hung in this minister’s study. It read, “A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” The poster’s caption which first caught the committee’s attention led to further interviews with the Reverend Karl Sievert who became Calvary’s next minister.

Karl was born in Germany in 1931 which meant that his early life was in many dramatic ways very different from most of ours. He studied agriculture in Germany and found work on a farm in Saskatchewan when he arrived in Canada as a young man. He was anxious to learn English but where could he go to hear English spoken on a Sunday, his one day a week off? To church, of course. Although he had been baptised as an infant, attending church was another brand-new experience for him. Possibly it was being asked to teach Sunday School that started him on a journey that eventually led to his being ordained as a minister of the United Church of Canada.

In September 1989 when the Planning Process was nearly complete, Karl was present to lead the final Cottage Group meetings. In the end all seven cottage groups had produced very similar lists of qualities they wanted to describe Calvary’s purpose. One Saturday morning a small group met to weave these key words into the new Statement of Purpose. For the next 20 years this purpose was used as an important guide for making decisions at Calvary.

If Calvary was to be a ship at sea rather than one safe in a harbour it had to be prepared to accept challenges and to do things that hadn’t been done before. In 1992 Calvary was given one such opportunity when Tracie Klaehn, a qualified therapist, approached the Official Board with a truly unique idea. She would like to set up a counselling practice at Calvary in exchange for her providing free or low-cost counselling to people who couldn’t afford to pay. The arrangement lasted over 25 years and in that time she donated hundreds of hours of counselling. Sadly, Tracie died of cancer in 2018.

Also in 1992 Calvary responded to a provincial government offer to give up to $50,000 in dollar-for-dollar matching funds to organizations that would use it to make their building more accessible to seniors and disabled persons. With application deadline quickly approaching, plans were drawn up for renovations to include an elevator that would make the church’s three levels accessible. Some people were opposed to such an expensive project, but a large majority saw its value and when their application was accepted the church launched the Accessibility Project.

The congregation was urged to think of all the kinds of barriers that could prevent a disabled person from experiencing life at church as fully as they should. This included making many little changes from providing large print Bibles and bulletins, to installing improved speakers and hearing devices, to removing and rearranging pews so people in wheelchairs would not have their view blocked when the people in front of them stood up. The final draft proposal included plans to enlarge the Gruhn Street foyer, to move the minister’s office upstairs, to renovate the kitchen, and to provide accessible washrooms on all three floors.

Two committees oversaw this project. The Development Committee was responsible for everything to do with the physical construction from working with the architect and contractor to coordinating the volunteers who would help with demolition, painting, and cleanup. It was estimated that 4,000 hours of volunteer labour was given by members of the congregation. This committee alone met formally 34 time during the construction stage and many more informal times.

The other committee was the Fundraising Committee whose daunting job was to raise $350,000 to pay for the renovations. Their job didn’t end with the last nail being hammered in but by 1994 $289,000 had been given or pledged and another $83,300 was raised in other ways over the course of the campaign which lasted five years.

During construction there were plenty of stories told, usually with good humour, by people who had to deal with holes in the floor and dust all around. At the end there was a Service of Thanksgiving and a celebration banquet attended by 250 people. It felt very good indeed to have met the challenge.

Calvary was always a singing church that loved its music and had enjoyed excellent leadership under the direction of Don Gingerich for 42 years before he retired in 1991. Don was honoured with a luncheon and special program for the joy he provided Sunday after Sunday for so many years.

A music committee was established to consider how the church’s music could provide variety that would include music that appealed to our younger members. Laurie Rowbotham, a high school music teacher, was hired to fill Don’s very large shoes. In fact Calvary was blessed with several highly trained musicians and eventually, four of them, Laurie Rowbotham, Lori Kaj, and Barb and Kirby Julian created a rotating schedule to share music leadership in worship.

At about the same time the United Church was compiling a new hymnary and Calvary was asked to be a test congregation for the new book. Voices United was purchased in 1995, providing the congregation with a mixture of the old and the new. When More Voices was published as a supplement to Voices United, even more choice became available.

Throughout the 90s the Outreach Committee seemed especially busy with both ongoing and new events.

The World Council of Churches declared the decade from 1988 to 1999 to be “A Decade of the Church in Solidarity with Women”, and the Outreach Committee provided articles and promoted events that focussed on the ways women were marginalized around the world. For two years Karl prepared special Lenten series centred on women in the Bible and encouraged the congregation to be aware of women who made up such a large portion of the world’s poor.

Three new programs, Sharing from Our Closets and Our Hearts, a Week of Guided Prayer, and Community Ministry had their beginnings in the late 1990s and all became major programs in Calvary’s church life until everything was disrupted in 2020 by the pandemic.

The 70^th and 75^th anniversaries were marked by joyful special events and by the publication of Windows which celebrated Calvary’s first 75 years. In 1992 special guests at the 70^th anniversary banquet were visitors from East Germany who shared with us first-hand stories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. And in 1997 the former United Church Moderator, the Very Reverend Stan McKay spoke about indigenous issues at both a public forum at Waterloo University on Saturday night and at our Anniversary service and banquet the next day.

Month by month in 1997 we joyfully celebrated “the full life” at Calvary and Karl Sievert, who liked to avoid the word “retirement”, asked to have his “career change” delayed to so he could be part of the anniversary events. He declared 1997 to be “a banner year”. He might well have added “…in a banner decade!”

Next month we’ll enter the millennium and find that there was life after Y2K!