Church pews nearly empty at St. Hilda’s Sunday service Breakaway members draw record crowds at new location
By Tina Depko
News
May 24, 2008
The most recent court decision regarding who gets to use St. Hilda’s Anglican Church has resulted in close to 100 breakaway members moving offsite, with new Sunday services held at the church drawing about three people.I wonder if that includes Brian and his wife?
Superior Court Justice Jane Milanetti ruled in early May that the dissident members of the parish who voted unanimously to join the Anglican Network in Canada must share the use of the property with the Anglican Diocese of Niagara.
Milanetti went on to award the coveted Sunday morning time slot of 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. to the Diocese for services, which left members of the Anglican Network in Canada with no choice but to hold their services in another location, according to Paula Valentine.
“We have our services at 8 and 10 and have for many years, and the Diocese has taken our building from 7 to 10, so they totally disrupted our times and we wanted to keep our times the same,” said Valentine, a congregation member of St. Hilda’s for 29 years. “There were lots of other reasons we couldn’t share and that’s why we left the Diocese in the first place, because we couldn’t go along with what they were doing.”
The breakaway members say they are upset their church is empty on Sundays, while they hold their 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. services at Oakville Christian School. Valentine said attendance is up.
“It has been quite incredible, everyone is behind it and we’ve had better attendance than we’ve had in a long time,” Valentine said. “It is a little awkward because we have to set up and take down every time, but the atmosphere is great and we’re having a great time. Last week we had 112 people, and it has usually been around the 100 mark.”
Reverend Brian Ruttan will be officiating the third 8:30 a.m. service at St. Hilda’s this Sunday since the ruling. He said he isn’t sure how many people will come.
“We’ve averaged three per service, but I don’t think anyone knows about it yet,” he said. “I have no idea what will happen. Personally, I continue on as I normally would. I don’t prepare any differently for three people than I do for 500.” He doesn’t think anyone knows about it yet? Just where exactly does Mr. Ruttan think people are going to come from? It’s not as if there is any lack of worship space in the Diocese of Niagara on Sunday mornings, after all.
Despite the rift between the two groups, Ruttan said he is optimistic that future conversations might encourage the members to return to the Anglican Church of Canada. Oh yes, more conversation. We all know how fruitful that has been.The two groups are currently sharing space, administration and management at St. Hilda’s during the week. I have a question, powers that be in the Diocese of Niagara. Just what exactly have you given to Mr. Ruttan to manage?
The lawyer for the breakaway members will be putting forward a motion to appeal the court’s decision in June.
“We’re upset because it is obviously not that they are having a service there, but it is to just disrupt our service and that is the whole intention of it,” Valentine said.
“There’s no reason why they can’t leave us alone until the property settlement is decided. They may win in the end, but in the meantime, they don’t need to be there,” she said.
St. Hilda’s is not the only church that was affected by the recent ruling. St. George’s in Lowville and Good Shepherd in St. Catharines were also given the same stipulations.
Final determination of the ownership of these properties by the courts is not expected for several years.
Oakville Beaver Article
May 24th, 2008 by Kate
20 Responses to “Oakville Beaver Article”
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Fr Brian Ruttan has been the topic of discussion on the Blog a number of times, often discussed in unflattering terms.
After having spent some time on his web site, I took a chance and wrote him some questions. He very graciously gave me detailed responses to both my initial questions and my follow-up questions.
This is a thoughtful priest with whom we happen to disagree on a narrow range of issues -one of the few who is prepared to have genuine discussions.
As much as Fr Ruttan may be approachable the Bishop still tugs at the collar. I doubt that it was his decision to be there and I also don’t expect he stood up and said ‘choose me’ when they assigned an administrator. And Brian collects all the flack for his boss’s decisions, but it was also his decision to remain in the Diocese and accept the position.
2 Steve L
I am certainly not as charitable with the bishop. Remember, this is the guy who secretely instigated the legal proceedings over the christmas holidays by putting what amounts to a lein on the three church properties -at a time when he was cooing “Why can’t we get along”. However, as we expect not to be turned into charactures, neither should we treat others that way.
Peace,
Jim
Well, he does keep saying things that are eminently parodyable (is that a word?). With the amount of headline space that the Oakville Beaver has given St. Hilda’s, it really is laughable to say that “nobody knows about it yet”. Lots of people know, they Just Aren’t Interested. He also could have said no to the parish administrator job, could he not?
I agree with #4
But then the Bishop could have fired him I really am starting to wonder just how much Authority the Primate has over the Bishops at this point I would have to say the Primate is just a Figure Head he does what the Bishops tell to do.!!!!!
4 Kate
I’m not looking to belabour the point, but Fr Brian’s actions are consitent with a priest who is loyal to his bishop and his church. My post was just to indicate that. in my opinion, he remains there through a careful assessment of the current theological issues. Of course he could have said no, but why should he have -according to his lights -not ours?
All Blessings on your vacation.
Jim
Ps. If you need advice on your deteriorating labour relations, I know just the union guy you can talk to. LOL
“I wonder if that includes Brian and his wife?”
Yes; and the lady who sets up the altar makes 3.
#1 Jim,
I don’t believe the range of disagreement with Brian is narrow – unless you consider the chasm that divides orthodoxy and heresy narrow.
The personal conversation I had with him went well as long as it was confined to the merits of his guitar; once we got to beliefs, it didn’t.
Jim:
I would like to think that your assessment of Brian Ruttan is correct, however, the arrogance that he showed with his rendition of “Welcome to the City” on that first ‘go-a-round’ at St. Hilda’s leads me to feel that he showed no respect for the Parish that existed at St. Hilda’s, no respect for Rev. Charbonneau and his flock.
SIDENOTE:
Tomorrow, Sunday the 25th of May at 10:30 AM Newfoundland Time, the first Service of the new ANiC Parish of “St. Stephen the Martyr” will be held in St. John’s, Nfld. at the Adventist Church, 20 aldershot Street.
The new Rector is Reverend Howard Hynes (formerly of St. John The Evangelist, Topsail, Nfld. ACoC) and Bishop Don Harvey will be present to conduct the service and licence Reverend Hynes under ANiC. Hallelujah!
7. David
Granted that I did not have the advantage of spontaneous dialogue, but if you read his papers and sermons (and take them at face value) there’s some pretty solid stuff there.
Without divulging personal email, he put out a paper on Wrestling with Scripture that I took to be at odds with his paper A Theological Justification for Blessing Same Gender Relationships.
See what you think.
Peace,
Jim
Rev. Ruttan may well be a principled priest who is loyal to his bishop and to the ACC, however, his use of “Welcome to the City” merely aggravated the perception that St. Hilda’s members had towards the diocese, and was not a pastoral response. I think that he should take responsibility for driving St. Hilda’s members from the church building entirely, even as people on this blog should recognise that they may be caricaturing him.
This whole episode is fairly ridiculous as I am told that there are other Anglican churches near St. Hilda’s that Rev. Ruttan, his wife, and the altar guild lady can attend without being to much of a burden to the ‘welcoming’ (see above) congregation. It is uncharitable and unpractical to expel St. Hilda’s real parishioners to serve Ruttan and his associates when they might just as well be elsewhere. It would be far better to wait till the courts resolve this issue of ownership.
You want to know what Rev. Ruttan thinks about the people of St. Hilda’s? His rendition of Welcome to the City with his own, made up verse of “Bi and Straight welcome to the city, gay and trans welcome to the city, lovers all welcome to the city” should be enough to give you a picture of his motives.
One of the saddest things that I’ve seen in recent memory was an older and dear member of the congregation coming into a conversation some of us were having about Brian’s service with his rent-a-crowd group. When she finally understood what Rev Ruttan had done in our sanctuary her face just crumpled and she stepped back as if someone had punched her in the chest.
So here is the poor, put-upon Rev. Ruttan serving himself and two others each Sunday while over a hundred people (who built and maintained the St. Hilda’s church building and who continue to serve the community through it) are disrupted and forced out of their building.
Hmm… I wonder why some people are a little put out by this gentleman.
11 Stephen H
Maybe I’m looking at this wrong.
Let me summarize: a scholarly priest does an in depth assessment of the SSB issue with particular reference to scriptural principles (whether you agree with the analysis or not) and determines that inclusiveness and SSB is consistent with his read of the threads of scripture.
Explain to me, then, why he shouldn’t pick music that meets his belief set. To do otherwise would be hypocritical. (I am not familiar with the Hymn in question, but it seems to be quite popular on the gospel web sites.)
Those of you who have read my posts know that I strongly oppose SSB as being a gross violation of scriptural prohibitions. I am strongly of the opinion that this route takes the ACoC into apostacy. Most of you don’t know that I went through this same fight twenty years ago in the UCC -so I am wounded twice! However, we need to recognize that there are many still in the ACoC that are well intentioned but wrong. Without dialogue, we are violating our responsibility to evangeliize. We need to continue to reach out to all those who will listen and stop demonizing our opponents.
Peace,
Jim
“However, we need to recognize that there are many still in the ACoC that are well intentioned but wrong. ”
I don’t mean to be snarky, Jim, but there is that old adage about a certain road being paved with good intentions — and you know where that road leads. . .
# 12 Jim,
From my reading of Brian’s article, the case he appears to be making is that Scripture would be against SSB but ‘experience’ tells us otherwise; he then goes on to try and legitimise the trumping of Scripture by experience through other precedents he finds in Scripture itself. He doesn’t argue that Scripture would in any way permit SSB. This seems to me be the usual theologically liberal approach: view Scripture through the lens of present culture – the conservative attempts to do the reverse.
The song he chose is a gospel standard, but the words he added aren’t. This reminds me of a similar incident many years ago: I was leading worship at a servers’ festival. We sang a song called ‘God is our Father’. In the break Michael Patterson came up to me and told me that a number of people had been offended by the song. After I stared blankly at him for a while, he clarified that referring to God as ‘Father’ was the problem; it was up to me, but in his opinion, it might be better if I did not use that kind of song again. Being the pastorally sensitive fellow that I am, (ahem) I didn’t. In Brian’s case, I think it would have been pretty obvious to him that adding the words he did would be a poke in the eye to the regular St. Hilda’s parishioners.
He is a scholarly priest, but he is a scholarly priest with an agenda – one that is not motivated by the gospel imho.
15 David
Spot on. Although his earlier piece was a folksy endorsement of a straightforward acceptance of scripture, my read is that he used “experience” as a back door trump card to bi-pass the scripture he wasn’t “comfortable” with. Additionally, the experience being cited is not the two-thousand years of church teaching, but the dozens of years of I’m OK you’re Ok.
The reason that I found Fr Brian’s arguements interesting is because there was a sophisticated attempt to justify SSB through scripture.
At any rate I’m way farther down the road on this one than I had planned to be.
Peace,
Jim
I think that scholarly sophistication is a part of what got us into this mess in the first place. You don’t need scholarly sophistication to understand the plain teachings of scripture.
While I do not like Brian Ruttan I do have to defend him as far as the take-over at St Hilda’s. It is the diocese that has orchestrated the invasion and, while he obviously agreed to be part of it, he is just a pawn in all this. As far as his integrity is concerned, I have seen him in action and have spoken to him and find that he can be very “nice” as long as he is not challenged. As soon as you disagree then the other side of his personality shows. There is also the doubt as to his, and the bishop’s, “concern” for the future of St Hilda’s. The church is prime real estate and the biggest concern is how quickly it can be closed, bulldozed and the land sold. With many other near-empty Anglican churches in the area (some within walking distance) the argument of starting up a ministry there is not viable. The sad part is the lack of concern for the ministry that is active and viable that is currently part of the community and the amazing outreach from the current congregation. The diocese has no conscience about the fact that this could be jeopardized or regard for the many people who are being helped by these outreach programs.
“While I do not like Brian Ruttan I do have to defend him as far as the take-over at St Hilda’s. It is the diocese that has orchestrated the invasion and, while he obviously agreed to be part of it, he is just a pawn in all this.”
So Ruttan’s defense is “I am just following orders”? Where have we heard that excuse before?
“As far as his integrity is concerned, I have seen him in action and have spoken to him and find that he can be very “nice” as long as he is not challenged. As soon as you disagree then the other side of his personality shows.”
I believe the technical term for such a person is “bully”.
you are exactly right Ellie.
The number of cars at the Anglican Church of Canada service held on Sunday at Church of The Good Shepherd in St. Catharines in Ontario was 4. Looks like their numbers are going down.
Meanwhile, we, Church of the Good Shepherd Anglican Network in Canada, had two full services at 9 am and 10:30 am our alternate location, Beacon Christian High School, 300 Scott St., St. Catharines.