The St. Albert Alliance Church is skipping its regular services tomorrow morning. Instead, it will be hosting a series of four community engagement brunch and festival events under the title of what it calls The Church has Left the Building.
Pastor Matt Garvin explained that the church has always been committed to the community so it makes sense that they undertake this kind of outreach program to the parks of the city.
“The church has been wrestling with ‘how do we better serve the community?’ We actually cancel the church service to go out and serve the community.”
“This is the first time that we’ve intentionally tried to secure out a space where we’re just engaging and creating a gift to the community, fun mini-festivals with free coffee and juice for the kids. It’s an experiment but hopefully it’ll work!” he laughed. “It’s all just a gift to the community.”
The neighbourhood events take place at Alpine Park, Grosvenor Park, Larose Park and Erin Ridge Park. From 10 a.m. to noon, organizers will serve pancakes, coffee and juice and offer a range of fun, “high energy” family activities.
Those activities include offering balloon sculptures and face painting, plus there will be a craft area where kids can learn how to make some simple juggling balls. There’s also nail painting, woodworking and street hockey. Three of the four locations will also have jumping castles.
Garvin has been helping to run and promote these mini fests in churches around the world starting with his native Australia. He said that they can do much to promote good relationships with the city but, more importantly, they foster good relationships between people.
“They’re designed to be much more in line with what the city is trying to do with block parties. It’s much more about what happens between people than putting on a big budget entertainment spectacular. We’re just wanting to create a nice, safe place where everybody is welcome and there is a nice sense of community. What happens between the people is more important than the big budget activities and performers and all that.”
He hopes to get a few hundred people out to each location. “I’d love not to get 3,000,” he admitted. “We’ll see what happens.”
For more information, people can email [email protected] or call 780-458-5335.
