Bermuda-Nova Scotia Regional Council Weekly Announcements – March 19, 2025

NEWS AND UPDATES FROM BERMUDA-NOVA SCOTIA REGIONAL COUNCIL

Submission Request for Weekly Announcements

www.ucceast.ca 

Staff Directory      

It’s Your Call – Podcast

News from the Pews Newsletter

To view upcoming programs at the Tatamagouche Centre please click here. To view upcoming events at the Atlantic School of Theology please click here. To view Continuing Education opportunities at the Atlantic School of Theology please click here. To view upcoming events at the the Centre for Christian Studies please click here. Bermuda-Nova Scotia Regional Council Committee Volunteer form.

Condolences: Rev. Carolyn Vera (Fraser) MacLeod

Our condolences are extended to the family of Rev. Carolyn Vera (Fraser) MacLeod, who passed away on March 17, 2025. The obituary can be viewed here.

Condolences: Diane Hamilton

Our condolences are extended to the family of Rev. David Hamilton, on the passing of his wife, Diane Hamilton, on March 07, 2025. The funeral was on March 11. The obituary can be viewed here.

Condolences: Cavell Robina Burke

Our condolences are extended to the family of Rev. Kym Burkes, whose mother, Cavell Robina Burke, passed away on March 11, 2025.  The obituary can be viewed here.

Condolences: Rev. Kendall Harrison

Our condolences are extended to the family of Rev. Kendall Harrison, Regional Minister of Fundy St. Lawrence Dawning Waters Regional Council, who passed away on March 10, 2025. The obituary can now be viewed here.

Annual Meeting Sunday Worship Service, June 1

If you are in need of worship suggestions for Annual Meeting Sunday, June 1, the Worship Team has put together the full service with reflection and options for music, as well as the bulletin version. These are posted on the Shared Annual Meeting webpage under the “Sunday Worship Service” header.

REMINDER: Annual Pastoral Charge Information Form 2025

To improve the speed and accuracy of communication between BNS Regional staff, committees and our pastoral charges we are asking each pastoral charge to complete and submit the Annual Pastoral Charge Information Form (click here) as soon as possible after your 2025 annual meeting. This updates the Region with the names and contact information of your current leadership and regional council representatives.
The form is fillable online but can be printed and mailed or faxed if the individual designated to complete the form does not have internet access. Any paper copies may be mailed to the Regional Office at 21 Wright Street, Sackville, NB E4L 4P8 or faxed to 506-536-2900. Any questions you may have about the form can be directed to Seyi Adeyemo, Communications and Office Administrator, at sadeyemo@united-church.ca or 1-506-306-0494.

Communities of Faith Annual Reports

It’s that time of year again where we request your Annual Reports.  Please email when they are available (electronic files are preferred) to your Regional Council using the following email:

Fundy St. Lawrence Dawning Waters Regional Council: Info4RC15@united-church.ca

If you are unable to submit by email please mail one copy of your report to:
Fundy St. Lawrence Dawning Waters Regional Council
21 Wright Street
Sackville, NB  E4L 4P8

Bermuda-Nova Scotia Pastoral Relations News – March 2025

 Approved the revision of Supply Appointment of Dana Feltmate, retired, with Glace Bay United Church, full time, until March 31, 2025.
• Approved the Renewal of Appointment of Glenn MacLean, retired, with Onslow Belmont Pastoral Charge, 30 hours/week, July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
• Approved the increase to full time for the Supply Appointment of Jeff Chant with Fort Massey United Church, until June 30, 2025.
• Approved the Profile and position description for St. John’s United Church, Middleton, and authorize Search for half-time ministry personnel. Brenda McKay, Liaison.
• Approved the Request for Change in Pastoral Relations for the purposes of retirement from Paul Jennings of Digby Ecumenical Shared Ministry, effective July 1, 2025. Janet Sollows, Liaison.
• Approved the position description for Supply Ministry at Milford Lantz Gays River, to cover the sabbatical leave of Gerry Kerr, and authorize Search. David Hewitt, Liaison.
• Approved the Profile and 20 hours/week position description for the collaborative ministry of Greenwood United (Baddeck) and Middle River United. Roberta Phillips, Liaison.
• Approved the Profile and 20 hours/week position description for St. Ann’s Bay Pastoral Charge. Barbara Blois MacNaughton, Liaison.
• Approved to invite Greenwood, Middle River and St. Ann’s Bay to consider a collaborative ministry agreement for a shared full-time ministry position.
• Approved the position description for a half-time Supply position in LaHave New Dublin Pastoral Charge to cover the sabbatical absence of Neil McEwen, September to December 2025.
• Next meeting: Friday, April 11, 2025.

Revised Ministry and Personnel Committee Handbooks Now Available

We are pleased to announce that the revised Ministry and Personnel Committee handbooks are now available on both the Handbooks page and the M&P Committee page. This marks the culmination of a long process, and we are extremely grateful to the working group team for their input, suggestions, and dedication in reviewing drafts. Special thanks to Dan, Kendall, Lynne, Micol, Rey, Tracy, and Victoria, as well as Angelica from HR and Nicole from Legal for their invaluable contributions.

Key Highlights of the Revision:

• The core Ministry and Personnel Committees: Policy, Procedures, Practices has been updated to include new guidelines for how the M&P Committee will operate. A significant change is that any hiring or termination of lay employees has been moved to a separate resource.

• 1.  Annual Performance Reviews, offers guidance on conducting annual performance reviews and the processes of giving and receiving feedback.
  2. Developing and Maintaining Healthy Teams, provides advice on forming and maintaining healthy ministry teams, including both ministry personnel and lay employees.
  3. Beginnings and Endings include guidance on recruiting and selecting lay employees, differentiating between employees and independent contractors, addressing employment issues during community of faith transitions (such as disbanding or amalgamations), handling staffing relationship terminations (retirement, resignation, death, or termination), and conducting exit interviews.

The Communications and Ministries in French team is handling the French translation.

This announcement is offered by The Reverend Adam Hanley (he/him), General Council Program Coordinator for Ministry Personnel Vitality. If you have questions, please contact Regional Minister David Hewitt dhewitt@united-church.ca.

March Ecumenical Clergy Gathering

Clergy in the Halifax area are invited to come to the Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica glebe house at 11am on Thursday 27 March for coffee ad conversation.

Drive in at 5221 Spring Garden Road and park between the church and the red brick house. Come to the door under the canopy.

This year as we mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will meet in Turkiye at the site of the council. And this year as Eastern and Western churches celebrate Easter on the same date the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth is looking forward to connect with clergy of the Eastern churches in the Easter season.

PAX
Father Brian MacMillan
Ecumenical Officer for the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth
bmacmillan@halifaxyarmouth.org

HRM Regional Youth Event

The Cole Harbour Woodside United Church Youth Group would like to invite other local youths and youth groups to join us for a craft & game night on Friday, March 28th from 7pm to 8:30pm. This will be held in our hall at 15 Bissett Road, Cole Harbour, NS. We welcome all youths between the grades 6 and 12.
Please forward this information to any youths or youth group leaders who might be interested.
Registration is required. Please click here to register.
We encourage participants to bring their own snacks and water bottle. We will have water available.
We will have several tables or “stations” set up with various crafts and games such as handmade cards, origami, water colour gift tags and bookmarks, and several choices for board games.

A great chance to see friends from Rendezvous or Youth@Region!
Please contact Nathalie Poirier with any questions (lallie11@yahoo.com)

Camino Nova Scotia

Since 2014, as part of the educational outreach of the Atlantic School of Theology, Camino Nova Scotia has “made pilgrimage local.” Pilgrimage is spiritual travel for transformation. Camino Nova Scotia offers guided group walking pilgrimages in—you guessed it—Nova Scotia!

This summer we are offering Caminos along the South Shore of Nova Scotia and on the Western shore of Cape Breton Island, both of which highlight the seaside beauty of our beautiful province. Join us on pilgrimage and discover more about yourself in community, as you also discover the Gaelic, Mi’kmaq, and Acadian histories of the Land under your feet.

Visit www.caminonovascotia.ca for more information.

Daring Justice in Tyrannical Times: A Transgender Soldier’s Plea to the Church

Please note the Newport United Church is being sold.

There will be a decommissioning Service at the church in Brooklyn, north from exit 5 101 on Hwy 14 to Brooklyn.

Service will take place on Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 2 pm.

Please come and help us celebrate our past and applaud our future.
Blessing,
Rev. Brenda McKay

Earth Week Activities for Communities of Faith

Earth Week is around the corner. Churches can play an impactful role in celebrating Earth Week from April 20-27, 2025, by focusing on creation care, environmental stewardship, and the interconnection of faith and nature. What are your plans as a Community of Faith. Why can’t you try this?

Please click here to view the earth week activities for Communities of Faith.

Greetings Growth Seekers from Growth Animator Sharon

Feedback please! When we try new things, test something out, pilot it, we rely on feedback. When we consider a new purchase, we read reviews. After we try a new thing, we often share our experiences with those we know. How might you strengthen invitation and build relationships applying these ideas in your community of faith? How might feedback cards strengthen your relationships and learning? Create a two-sided feedback and contact form. Consider questions on one side asking something like: What was the best thing about your experience? What did you enjoy?
What could be improved? How can we do better? On the other side create a contact form perhaps with a brief sentence of thank you, inviting people to share contact information. You might think of a couple of check box questions relevant in your context.

Who outside your community of faith will you give feedback to as a way of strengthening invitation? How will you expand the feedback idea for yourself by talking about your experiences for events you have been part of, or perhaps are planning. You can provide your personal feedback experiences to engage people you want to invite to events. You might share your growing excitement as an event gets closer and connect with them by saying something like “you know how I have been telling you about the upcoming “x” event, would you like to come with me?”
Keep building relationships and making connections. Let’s get growth animated together. Call Sharon at 506-306-0500 or by email at sballantyne@united-church.ca as together, we keep being bold, deep and daring!

Property Inventory Update

The BNS property inventory list has been updated, this inventory lists property (buildings, cemeteries, lands) currently registered to your pastoral charge.  All forms and amendments received up to March 17, 2025 are included.  Pastoral charges who do not hold property will not appear on the list.  Please take a moment to review and ensure your pastoral charge details are correct, you can review by A-Z property name or by postal code using the link below and submit a form if there are any additions or amendments.

Property Inventory

Faithful Footprint Atlantic Roadshow

The Ecology Action Centre is inviting you to the first stop of the Faithful Footprint Atlantic Roadshow, in Cape Breton this Saturday March 22nd at Carman United, 1 Clyde Avenue, Sydney Mines Cape Breton from 2pm to 4pm. All are invited to attend and hear stories directly from the congregation on how they proceeded with their energy retrofit as well as learn more about the Faithful Footprint program, take a building tour, and ask any questions that you have about the grant and energy retrofits. Light snacks, coffee and tea will be served.

The Ecology Action Centre is doing a Roadshow across the Maritimes in the next 2 months to celebrate the many Atlantic churches who took part in the Faithful Footprint program and encourage other United Churches to apply for the grant. We will be in Sackville NS on April 4th, Montague PEI on April 12th, Charlottetown on April 13th, Lunenburg on April 27th, Dartmouth May 11th. The Faithful Footprint program is a grant program by the United Church to encourage United Churches to retrofit their buildings and help them to be more energy efficient and get off oil.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Shreetee at shreetee.appadu@ecologyaction.ca or 902-429-2202 ext 152

NAVIGATING HOPE AND DESPAIR: A NATURE WRITER’S JOURNEY

A Special Invitation to the ASTE2025 Levy Lecture
NAVIGATING HOPE AND DESPAIR: A NATURE WRITER’S JOURNEY
with Harry Thurston
Tuesday May 12
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Tatamagouch Centre

Harry Thurston was born in 1950, at the very beginning of the Anthropocene, that era in which humans became a geological force shaping the planet’s biosphere. As a nature writer and poet, his challenge has been to navigate the rough moral and artistic terrain between despair and hope. He will trace that journey and the responsibility that comes with it through an examination and sharing of his work in both prose and poetry.

Born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Harry Thurston is the author of thirty books of poetry, natural history, and memoir. His first prose book, Tidal Life, A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy, revealed the life-giving powers of the Fundy tides and argued against damming them for electrical generation, and is now considered a classic in the natural history genre. His eco-memoir, A Place Between the Tides, A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Saltmarsh won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award in the U.S., and The Atlantic Coast, A Natural History, received the Lane Anderson Award for the best science writing in Canada. His latest poetry collection, Ultramarine, was a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. He lives in Tidnish Bridge, Cumberland County, and is a Mentor in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Learn more about Harry at his web site. http://harrythurston.ca

The Levy Lecture is an integral part of ASTE. The lecture is open to the public at no charge. In particular we are always glad to welcome ASTE alumni to the lecture.

More information about ASTE2025.