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by Rev. Michael Gladish, Originally printed in the Calgary Newsletter November 2003

On Thursday, October 23rd, the Lipskis and the Gladishes flew to Denver, Colorado, to settle in for a weekend full of inspiration and learning about how to share the teachings and the benefits of the New Church with new people here in Calgary.

After registration and a warm welcome on Friday morning we began the program with a worship service led by the Rev. Grant Schnarr, director of the GC office of evangelization. Grant spoke fervently about the importance of evangelization, and listed a range of reasons for it. His top two were "because the Lord says we must do it," and because the more people there are in the church, as in heaven, the happier everyone can be (Arcana Coelestia 549).

Through the course of the next two days we were treated to four keynote sessions touching on leadership, the history of outreach in the General Church, how the church can be a centre for healing for the world, and compelling reasons why we do need to "market" the church. The GC's bishop-elect, the Rev. Tom Kline, gave a particularly poignant presentation on how the church has helped specific groups.

1 other workshops and 9 actual outreach activities supplemented the program, and since many of these were held concurrently our "team" split up and attended as many different ones as we could. We learned about writing ads and press releases, "the power of one" as well as teamwork, evaluating the needs of others so that we can offer the right sort of help, "servant leadership" and the right sort of attitude for outreach work. "New Church 101" was a quick course on how to answer questions about our faith, and in "Pluralism, our strong side" we learned about "the church planting environment in the 21st century." Activities included everything from handing out New Church literature (with balloons!) in downtown Boulder to singing for the elderly in a nearby senior's centre.

Dinners together and free time gave us plenty of opportunities to get to know others and to compare notes on what is being done in outreach around the church. Worship services, including a lovely vespers holy supper in the beautiful, new chapel of the Boulder New Church were uplifting and inspiring - especially with the enthusiastic support of the church choir and musicians.

Sunday morning, after the seminar was over, many stayed to enjoy a "typical" service at the Boulder New Church and were treated to a delightful experience, from the greeters and the new visitor information to the music, from the children's talk to the sermon, in short, from the welcome announcements to the benediction. We left with feelings of hope and encouragement, and look forward to sharing some of what we learned with the Project committee when it meets on November 9th.

Altogether 135 people attended the seminar, including 28 ministers, 20 college students from Bryn Athyn, and at least 13 Convention Church members (4 of whom were ministers). It was a particular pleasure for all of us to be able to share with others of such broad and diverse backgrounds, all of whom want to help and see the New Church grow. And it sure was encouraging to see how the Boulder church itself has grown in ten years from just a dozen or two to the congregation of nearly 100 (many young people) that it is now.