Join MILC for its Annual General Meeting with guest speaker:

The Right Rev. Dr. Kimberly Heath, Moderator of the United Church of Canada.

November 12th, 2025 @ 7pm via Zoom

This event is designed to encourage participants to be bold in their discipleship when faced with the challenges of our times including declining numbers, closing buildings, aging populations, and an awareness of the enormous challenges in our society to which the church is called to respond.

The presentation will be followed by the Annual General Meeting of MILC.

Manitou Intentional Learning Community presents 2 workshops

Exploring Then Let Us Sing    

Friday Sept. 26, 2025   7:30-9:00 p.m.  at St. Peter’s United Church, 203 York St., Sudbury

• Sing through selected music of the 165 new songs in our new hymn resource
• For people who have the book, or for those discerning what to buy [we’ll have borrowing copies for participants to use]
• Practical suggestions for your worship context; resources for further support

All who love to sing are invited: enthusiastic congregational singers, church musicians, choir folks, ministers, worship committees, lay leaders and curious instrumentalists with their instruments.   Please bring your own water bottle and RSVP to ensure sufficient music copies.

Your donation will help MILC continue its work:  www.manitoulearningcommunity.com

What Do I Do with My Left Hand?

(for keyboard players)

Friday Sept. 26, 2025, 6:15-7:15 p.m.  at St. Peter’s United Church, 203 York St., Sudbury      

A number of the songs, contemporary and international in origin, supply only a melody with chord symbols.  Using some songs you know and some from TLUS, this workshop will offer practical strategies to give you confidence when only a lead sheet is offered. RSVP as above.

Facilitators: Jane Best + Faye Moffatt

Jane has been a church musician in various capacities on Manitoulin Island since the early 90s. She directs the Manitoulin Community Choir and enjoys writing songs and hymns, some of which have been published.  

Faye regularly leads music at Trinity United Church in Capreol and is pleased to offer musical support at various church gatherings in the Sudbury area and other places within Canadian Shield Regional Council.

Both Jane and Faye are members of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.

It’s been 10 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its Final Report and Calls to Action. Since then, we have also received the Final Report and Calls to Justice on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2S People, and the Final Report and Sacred Obligations on unmarked burial sites and missing/disappeared Indigenous children. Within the United Church, we’ve committed to becoming an actively anti-racist church; passed Remit One, making room for an autonomous Indigenous organization within the United Church of Canada; and begun a conversation about reparations for wrongful harms. What do all these things mean for our path of reconciliation? How will we move forward in a meaningful and constructive way? Join UCC Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice Animator Sara Stratton for a brief information session and longer strategic conversation. 

Sara Stratton serves the United Church of Canada as Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice Animator, and is active in the church’s commitment to becoming an anti-racist denomination.  She is a Newfoundlander, raised in Corner Brook and shaped by her family’s almost 300-year history in Northwestern Bonavista Bay, part of the traditional territory of the Beothuk.  She holds a PhD in history from York University, is an avid cook and birdwatcher, and is married to Kelly. 

Monday, September 8, 2025 @ 7 p.m. via Zoom

The Manitou Intentional Learning Community invites you to a Zoom workshop

Exploring Medical Assistance in Dying

Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom. 

Workshop presenter: Rev. Kathy Dahmer

The goal of this workshop is to facilitate helpful conversations and provide resources. This workshop offers:

1) Education about MAID- (in institutions and in the community) and the importance of spiritual care for spiritual patients, facilitating MAID and responding to last wishes.

2) Unique issues that can surface regarding death and/or grief for patients and family members.  

3) Resources for those charged with pastoral care within their communities of faith with tools to best serve patients and families. 

More about Rev. Kathy Dahmer: Through her work as a former chaplain at Health Sciences North, Rev Kathy Dahmer, a registered psychotherapist, has extensive experience working with patients and families as they navigate MAID. Kathy suggests that often the questions from our heads are coming from a need within our heart, and listens deeply for the language of the heart. She is passionate about mentoring and modelling pastoral care as a non-anxious presence, able to journey into the deepest valleys unafraid.

“Si no somos parte de la solución, somos parte del problema” = “If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem”

This is the motto of the Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue-Cuba (Centro Cristiano de Reflexión y Dialogo) in Cardenas, Cuba. The “reflection and dialogue” in and with the community always precedes CCRD’s outreach action. The United Church of Canada, through Mission and Service, has been in partnership with CCRD-Cuba for over 25 years. We have a lovely opportunity for learning: Juan and Yenia, leaders at CCRD, will be in Sudbury in late April and are excited to share their work and advocacy. Among other areas, the outreach of CCRD includes medical services and training, ecoagriculture initiatives, food delivery to seniors and other vulnerable people, life-skills training, pastoral gatherings, arts workshops, and work with children and youth. A small team from Lively (PIP, Pilgrims in Partnership) visited CCRD last year and you’ll also hear some of their enthusiastic response to CCRD’s work. Donations will be gratefully received towards specific medical supplies that are difficult to resource in Cuba. The modern face of “mission” involves our willingness to listen to and learn from those with whom we partner, so come with your curiosity.

April 27, 2025

Grace United Church, 1520 Bancroft Drive, Sudbury

Doors open 6 p.m. presentation 6:30 p.m.

Light refreshments will be servied.

During Lent this year many communities of faith in the Canadian Shield Region are participating in a study of Something Sacred.

This resource examines the power that what we sing together has to change us and explores how the power of music can deepen our connection to God and form us as disciples of Christ. For many, music is a ubiquitous presence in our lives. The study also asks What music do you hope will be sung in churches generations from now? What music helps you become the follower of Christ you hope to be?

Alydia Smith has agreed to lead a discussion on these topics on via Zoom. This session is open to everyone – it is not necessary for you to be participating in a study or to be familiar with the resource.

Monday, March 31st, at 6:30 p.m.

Rev. Dr. Miriam Spies and Rev. Dr. Laurie Stevenson will share their recent doctoral research. Miriam Spies is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada. She is a crip and queer theologian who finds conversations between theology and disability and/or crip studies rich. Miriam defended her PhD thesis, “A Crip Incarnational Model of Ministry” at Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology and is graduating in Spring 2025.

As an ordained United Church minister with over 25 years of experience in congregational ministry and as a mother to a child with complex mental illness, Laurie Stevenson’s Doctor of Ministry research explores the intersection of mental illness, stigma and faith within United Church congregations.   Drawing from personal and professional perspectives, her study seeks to uncover the experiences shaping the faith of family members with loved ones with mental illness and recommend strategies for enhancing church environments to foster better listening and support. She successfully defended her thesis in September of this year at Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology and is graduating in Spring 2025.

Please join MILC to hear these two wonderful speakers.

Monday, March 3rd @ 6:30pm via Zoom.

Ready to change how we talk about church finances?Join us for a webinar that will transform your congregation’s approach to financial storytelling and stewardship at your next AGM.

Date: Monday, January 27, 2025 

Time: 6:30 pm

What You’ll Gain:

• Purposeful Storytelling: Learn the art of linking your congregation’s finances directly to its mission—turn numbers into narratives that resonate.
• Effective Tools: Dive into narrative budgets, a key method for demystifying financial data and aligning it with your church’s vision and values.
• Boost Stewardship: Learn to highlight the real-world impact of contributions, boosting commitment and generosity across your community of faith.
• Practical Takeaways: Expect hands-on examples, lively discussions, and engaging visuals to help bring your financial stories to life.

Who Should Join:

• Church leaders, treasurers, and anyone involved in AGM preparation
• Individuals keen on advancing their church’s stewardship practices

Presenter: Melody Duncanson-Hales, United Church of Canada stewardship support staff for Canadian Shield and Shining Waters Regional Councils.

What are you longing for? Join us for a three-week Advent Small Group Study about how we can use Longing as a spiritual gift and bring Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love to the world in practical ways.

The Canadian Shield Regional Council is offering the opportunity for individuals to access an Advent Small Group Study created by the Prayer Bench entitled Advent Longing. The Manitou Intentional Learning Community is delighted to announce that Rev. Dr. Shawn Redden has agreed to facilitate this three-session study online via Zoom.

From the Prayer Bench publisher website:

“This Advent Small Group Study invites participants to nurture longing as a powerful spiritual gift through an imaginative pilgrimage in an old-growth forest. It encourages us to notice longing in our ordinary days, recognize its gifts during times of desolation and reclamation, and welcome “thin spaces”—those moments of connection, support, and hope. In the context of a planetary crisis, we explore how to activate Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love in the world God loves.” 

*** Please note that this event has unfortunately been cancelled.

Please join MILC for the Annual General Meeting followed a presentation by guest speaker Rev. Dr. Shawn Redden. Reimagining Our Baptismal Promises in a Post-Pandemic Church

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kindom of God belongs…. Receive the kindom of God like one of these… And Jesus took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” (Mark 10:13-16)

In the presentation, Reimagining Our Baptismal Promises in a Post-Pandemic Church, Rev. Dr. Shawn Redden discusses how at Baptism, our congregations make a promise to provide spiritual nurture and faith formation for children and all persons welcomed into the Community of Faith. In this talk, Rev. Redden will help us investigate how we honour our baptismal promise in a post-pandemic church when fewer of us can offer traditional Sunday School. We will consider what innovations in faith formation and spiritual nurture we are being called to imagine into reality. Perhaps there is an opportunity in this new era of being Church for us to nurture the ‘child’ in each of us.

Join us Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 @ 6:30pm

St. Peter’s United Church or online via Zoom