About Us
As a community faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ, The Church of The Messiah seeks to connect people with the transforming power of God's love. We do that by gathering to worship, serving our community, and providing educational opportunities for nurture and learning.
Our parish has a long history of powerful ministry in the city of Toronto, and we are excited about the renewal currently underway. Over the past year a great deal of attention has been paid to developing our worship to be an authentic, engaging, and spiritually rooted expression of our love for God. One of the results of this has been an innovative and unique music program, led by Matthew Tran-Adams, that covers a wide range of Eastern and Western music.
With our new pastor, the Rev'd Tay Moss, we have begun looking at how we can renew our ministries and mission to our neighbourhood. This involves both founding new church groups such as the Healing Prayer Group, the Contemplative Eucharist group, or the Mom's group, but also looking at how we use our facilities and whether they are still well suited for the ministries we wish to undertake.
This renewal also includes significant attention to how we teach our children about God. COTM is part of an initiative known as the Christ Centered Character (CCC) Initiative. This new program will seek to teach our children and youth to be better disciples of Christ by instilling character traits such as compassion, hope, and love. Currently, we are also excited about the "Jesus Jam" program by which Meghan Bold, a professional dance instructor, teaches our kids to use dance to express themselves. We continue to teach our children to express themselves in song.
These initiatives are driven by the keen desire of the parish to be a relevant expression of God's love to a community in need of the Gospel. To that end, we engaged in a series of facilitated discussions about the history, context, and mission of our church. We believe firmly that our community is poised on a tipping point of change that will lead us closer to God's will for our community.
A Blue Sky Over Messiah...
We are now in the earliest stages of developing plans for the physical renewal of our church. We have retained an Architect, Melana Janzen, to assist us in this work.
Recently she presented a series of ideas to the Parish Council to receive feedback and brainstorm about some of the needs and opportunities available to our congregation.
We call this initial stage of planning the "Blue Sky" project because we are thinking of a completely open field of possibilities. We want to imagine that anything is possible here, now. At a later stage we can
assess what is possible. For many years there has been talk about some renewal of the physical church plant. In the past committees were formed to examine modifications to the Chancel and other changes to the space. As time has gone on, chairs once new have become tattered and walls are starting to show their need for new paint. Thus, some of the ideas being proposed now are relatively minor cosmetic improvements (such as replacing the chairs and repainting the sanctuary). But the leadership of the church (clergy and Wardens) have been encouraged to look beyond that to see if there are other architectural solutions to make our place more inviting, missional, and theologically expressive of the Gospel.
So far a series of possible projects have emerged from the brainstorming:
- New Chairs
- Repaint the Sanctuary
- Replace the Carpets in the Chancel, Lounge, and Sunday School Rooms
- Update Exterior Signage and Landscaping
- Paint the Murals in the Sunday School Room (Update - the Murals are completed!)
- Renovate the Chancel
- Enhance the Entrance to the Church
- Add A Baptismal and Memorial Garden on the South Side of the Church
New Chairs
Melana, our Architect, has sourced several possible chairs to replace the 1977 Steelcase chairs we currently have. Currently, the most important features that people identify are that the chairs should be stackable, have some place to put hymnals, have some way of hooking together, and should be tough enough to take many years' abuse. One option is the relatively conventional church chairs now is use at places like SSJD, St. Augustine of Canterbury, and other parishes. They look kind of like this... 
Melana showed us some other possibilities as well, such as another chair from Steelcase that is a bit updated from what we have now. She is also fond of the Moller Church Chair.
Repainting the Sanctuary
One fairly obvious cosmetic item is the repainting of the interior of the church. Right now it's gray with a whitish accent color. Melana suggests a simplified pallet in which white would dominate. Not just any white, but a specific white that would neither be too dull nor too bright.
Replace the Carpets in the Chancel, Lounge, and Sunday School Rooms
Melana showed us some samples from Interface, which is a Canadian firm that has led the way in both Green Manufacturing and in using carpet squares laid down much like tile. One of the several advantages of the carpet squares is that if one gets badly stained you can simply pull it up and replace the the one tile. She has ideas about a more fun design for the Sunday School Room and then something more subdued for the lounge and worship spaces.
Update Exterior Signage and Landscaping
One of the more interesting projects under consideration is the exterior signs for the church. Perhaps the reason that people notice the Hare Krishna Temple across the street and not us is that they have a better sign! In response to this, Melana suggests something like the following drawings suggest.
Part of her concept is a large vertical banner to take advantage of the already-existing horizontal pole sticking out from the bell tower. At one time, a giant rainbow flag hung from there--but it has been in disuse for sometime
In this one you can see Melana's concept of having some kind of horizontal sign to complement the vertical banner. It would have some kind of permanent element (our name, perhaps) and then some kind of LED element that would replace the function of our current acrylic letters. The cross would remain, and the three elements would be designed to work together like this...
In terms of landscaping, here is a version of the site-plan with Melana's idea drawn over it. The original design is "ghosted" underneath. In this drawing, Avenue Road runs along the left edge and Dupont is along the bottom edge. The original plans from the 1976 Renovation indicate that much of the steps on the left side of this drawing (the east end of the church) were supposed to be removed, but that was never done. Melana proposes taking out some of those steps and basically cleaning up the lines of the planter beds. This plan would also replace the rotting railroad ties with more attractive stone (probably matching or complimenting the church). Plants going into the bed would be low-maintenance varieties.
Paint the Murals in the Sunday School Room
UPDATE - This part of the renewal plans for COTM has been completed. Look at this page for photos of the completed mural.
Early in Father Tay's Incumbency, sprucing up the room used for Christian Education was an identified need. He solicited the help of Susan Bleasby to develop a marvelous concept for two huge murals on either end of the room.
It's the Kingdom of Heaven on one end and God's Kingdom on Earth on the other end. We would also, of course, replace the florescent tubes in the ceiling with more attractive hanging lights of some kind and replace the carpet.
Renovate the Chancel
Chancel renovation is a complex challenge. From this drawing you can see where Melana has gotten so far based on her conversations with Tay and others...
So here the the current raised portion of the chancel has been removed and replaced with an oval-shaped platform on which the altar sits. This platform would have a rail for people to kneel for communion. It would be movable (perhaps on locking casters of some kind). So it could be brought out of the corner and into the center of the church, for instance, or simply centered under the stained glass window.
In the drawing Melana also proposed a second platform for the ministers to sit and to hold the Ambo. This is still a work in progress, but it shows how we are trying to make the space more flexible and resolve some of the issues of the current chancel (which is too far into the corner and too angular--the priest ends up facing an unpopulated corner of the room rather than the congregation).
Another important element Melana is thinking about has to do with the two curving walls in the corner behind the altar. She thinks we should creat a subtle light effect by painting the back side of one of the pannels. Light coming in from an existing window would then bounce off the paint and create a color wash on the front side of the other curved wall. It's a great idea.
Removing the two curved walls would mean abandoning the radial orientation of the church to that corner entirely, which would require redoing the ceiling and a host of other problems. But this chancel idea is definitely worth working on some more...
Enhance the Entrance to the Church
In this plan you see the main entry to the church as it is now, with Melana's proposal superimposed. People enter through the bottom doors, dog leg to the left, then swing around a 90 degree corner to the left and then again to the right (where it gets really narrow). Chief among the problems in that the proper entrance to the church is not clear from the outside of the building. Melana thinks that a nice canopy of some kind would make the entrance unambiguous. (Cf. Rosedale United Church's new glass canopy designed--I believe--by Ian McGillivray). The pink block shows where the canopy could go.
Melana also aligned the two doors and enlarged the area where you make the left into the church. On this drawing the green shows the amount of space currently there for making the turn left, while the aquamarine color shows how her proposed changes would enlarge the space and make for a more proper vestibule.
Add A Baptismal and Memorial Garden on the South Side of the Church
As Melana dreamed about possibilities, she noted an unused portion of land on the south side of the church. She then remembered how Tay felt a strong need to do something to architecturally emphasize baptism more than the current font allows. What she came up with was a garden in that space with a baptismal pool large and deep enough for adult full-immersion baptism and also a memorial wall with niches for the interment of ashes. Thus baptism and burial are linked (as they properly ought to be) and also baptism is located at the intersection of the church and the world (as it ought to be). The Garden would be screened off from the street, but large enough to have a serene, uncrowded feeling.
The challenge was then connecting that garden to the church interior. There needs to be sufficient continuity to link the baptismal pool outside with the font inside. There also needs to be a sense that the sanctuary space continues into the outdoor space. So she proposes a set of three door under the already existing three windows on the south side of the church. They would be glass--acoustically and thermally opaque yet visually transparent. She imagines them pivoting on a point a few inches from the inside edge.
The design elegantly enhances the feel of the church by utilizing un-used green sprace. It may not be financially feesible for the church to build such a structure now, but imagining it is a useful exercise.
Next Steps
These initial ideas are a good place to begin discussions. Next, a small Renovation Committee will form to help draft a more specific proposal to go to the Corporation for approval. Check back with this page for updates to the propsals!
