Growing Strong through the Seventies

1978-1999

By the time Pastor Phil Jorgensen resigned as pastor of St. Ansgar to serve as Director of Congregational Life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada (King Cong, as some wag called him) in the summer of 1978, the congregation had recovered from the difficult years of declining membership and financial stress in the early seventies. The place was humming. In 1978 thirty adults were on the Sunday School staff for about 75 children; each summer there was a Vacation Church School day camp; the "Sunday College", a learning opportunity for adults, offered six different classes each week; worship attendance was above 200 more often than not; Don Hooseinny had attended a two-week training program for the Bethel Bible Series and eight teacher-trainees were meeting with him weekly; every February there was a Winter Carnival with fun in the snow for children and adults; a Monday evening basketball free-for-all gathered in a local school gym; a Christmas program was prepared by the Sunday School for what was then called the Crippled Children's Centre; and a strong Youth Group was developing led by the Randy Schramm family. This busy schedule of activities generated a need for additional help - a part time parish worker for a time, and then the services of the Ottos, Pastor Siegfried Otto as a pastoral assistant and Barbel Otto as choir director. At the time, Pastor Otto was the chaplain at the Seaman's Mission, a program that was discontinued a few years later as Toronto's port facilities declined.

Financially, the congregation was strong again, not only paying its operating costs, but paying down the mortgage for the 1961 building project and the promissory notes owed to members of the congregation who loaned money during the lean years. In addition the congregation completed some badly needed repairs to the building during its 50th Anniversary Year, 1976, and even raised funds for a special project - a stained glass window honoring St. Ansgar, which was installed early in 1979.

Pastor Glen Nelson inherited this happy state of affairs when he arrived on the scene from the United States in August of 1978, and for the most part, this program continued.

The "Drop-in Centre for Visiting Academics"
St. Ansgar had often been a church home for clergy in Toronto for special studies, but in the eighties and nineties it became, as one of them put it, a drop-in centre for visiting academics. The first of these was Pastor Jim Nestingen, who with his wife Carolyn and two boys, began attending St. Ansgar in the fall of 1978, and were active for the next two years. When Pastor and Mrs. Otto resigned to take a position in Montreal, the congregation asked Pastor Nestingen to take some of Pastor Otto's responsibilities. In 1980, Pastor Paul Rorem, a scholar in liturgy, made St. Ansgar his church home for a year while he did some post-doctoral work at the University. He was followed by Norman Lund from the U.S., Gordon Jensen from Alberta, Cam Harder from Saskatchewan, Tim Hegedus from B.C., and Hank Langknecht from the U.S. Both Gordon and Cam received the Governor General's award when they achieved their PhD. Each of these scholars brought new and unique riches to the congregation - both through their expertise and the active involvement of their families. To take advantage of these riches, one of the initiatives during these years was the St. Ansgar Lenten Lecture Series.

A Growing Youth Program
The Youth Group, which had been gathering momentum in the mid-seventies, became a vital program in the eighties, with about 20 young people meeting weekly on Friday evenings and often at other times as well. There were regular retreats, picnics, Tuesday evening volleyball games in the parking lot, skating parties, sports at the RCMP gym (courtesy of soon-to-be Assistant Commissioner Randy Schramm) and other activities, some of which, no doubt, no adult was ever aware!

The youth focus took a new direction with the development of a ministry for students at the University of Toronto. For a number of years, Lutheran students had been agitating for a campus chaplain, but funds were unavailable. A group of students and interested adults, based at St. Ansgar, formed a committee to develop this ministry. It was finally decided not to wait for synod funding, but to rent a house in the University neighborhood where Lutheran students might live and initiate activities for other students. So "Kate's Place" was born, a beautiful large home in which 7 students lived and invited others to programs of Bible Study, discussion and informal fun. This was the beginning of Lutheran Campus Ministry at the University, leading to the call of Pastor Bob Shantz to be the full time Lutheran chaplain in 1984. The relationship with campus ministry has continued, with an annual banquet being held in the St. Ansgar parish hall.

A sign of the congregation's health at this time was the burning of the mortgage in 1982, twenty years after the completion of the new building. By 1983, the congregation's financial position allowed it to lend $5,000 to its sister congregation, Meadowvale Lutheran Church in Mississauga, a mission congregation struggling to maintain itself in the face of reduced funding. Several years later, this loan was forgiven.

Turning Outward to Social Ministry
The robust health of the congregation enabled it to turn more outward in the 1980's. A refugee project for the "boat people" of Viet Nam was initiated late in 1979 and the congregation sponsored a family, renting an apartment for several months, furnishing it, and providing them with appropriate clothing and other needed items. Happily, this energetic family became self sufficient in a short time. The congregation continued the sponsorship of refugees several times later in the decade, both on its own and in cooperation with other congregations. In 1981 a Service Committee was added to the Church Council and this committee helped organize a Sunday College course on world development needs which resulted in the financing of a grinding mill project in the Cameroon through Canadian Lutheran World Relief. A food pantry was started in 1982 in response to the growing number of people coming to the church office for assistance. This service soon grew from a few visitors a week to as many as a hundred a month. A large freezer was installed to hold frozen goods and members made regular trips to the Daily Bread Food Bank to supply the shelves of our food pantry. The volume of clients led to the formation of an inter-agency organization in North York and participation in a Provincial government initiative to meet the needs of families. Hundred of dollars of Provincial funds were used to purchase food vouchers from local grocery chains so that families in need could buy fresh foods as well as use the canned goods supplied by the pantry. By 1989 the volume of visitors to the food bank was demanding too much time from our limited staff, and the decision was made to terminate the program. Together with three other congregations, St. Ansgar helped to develop a local organization of tenants in the Lawrence Heights social housing development, the Lawrence Heights Area Alliance, an organization intended to help the residents of Lawrence Heights to define and address their own problems in their own way.

The Growth of Parish Staff
As the activities of the past were joined by this movement outward, it was obvious that the congregation needed more staff assistance. First to be added was an intern, Bill Benninghoff, in 1980 after Pastor Nestingen had left. Then, in 1982, a half-time secretary was added, Norma McKeown, who graced the office until 1994. In 1983 the congregation approved the addition of a full-time deaconess, but when an appropriate candidate could not be found, the congregation found a happy solution in one of its own members, Inger Allard, who served in the position of Lay Assistant with energy and commitment for sixteen years. Besides overseeing many practical details of the operation, Inger provided the impetus needed to keep the youth program going when it began to flag, and the healthy ministry to seniors through the Young at Heart. It was she who, during the almost two-year interim after Pastor Nelson retired, provided the cohesion to keep the congregation together.

Music at St. Ansgar was provided by a gifted musician (as well as several other gifted volunteers), Elsie Bondo Larson, who achieved the distinction of serving as organist (without pay) for a remarkable 64 years, from the time her family came to Toronto and her father became St. Ansgar's pastor, until her "retirement" in 1998. Subsequently, the congregation was fortunate to find another gifted musician in Bill Weldon, who was then hired as the congregation's organist. Choir leaders during these years were Barbel Otto, David Johnson, Tony Ciconne, Glen Nelson and, at the latter's retirement in 1998, Andrew Warren.

A Period of Transition
Like other mainline Christian churches, St. Ansgar experiences the mysterious ebbs and flows of cultural change. In the mid-eighties, many congregations found their membership shrinking and their worship attendance falling. Over about a decade, St. Ansgar's membership went from a high of over 400 baptized members to less than 300. The Sunday School shrank from 75 to around 25. Church attendance, which had hit a year-round high of over 180 was reduced to about 115. This decline coincided with a general downturn in the country's economy, so that the congregation confronted the necessity for cutbacks. The Lay Assistant's position was cut from full time to four days a week for ten months of the year, and a few hours a month was pared from the secretary's position. After years of rapidly expanding support of the National and Synodical Church, this "benevolence" part of the budget was reduced and remained stagnant.

Another example of changing times was the decision to dissolve the historic women's auxiliary, then called Lutheran Church Women. Most of its members were now elderly. The organization experienced reduced attendance and had difficulty finding people willing to take on leadership roles. Most younger women now worked outside the home and there was, among some, a question about the need for a separate women's organization. At the time the women's auxiliary was formed, generations before, only men held positions of leadership in the congregation, but now women were as likely to sit on Church Council as men. After much discussion, and some grief for many because the women's organization had had such a remarkable history of vital support of the church, a vote was taken and the organization was dissolved in November 1984.

When an organization experiences loss, it is natural to turn inward, asking what could be wrong and what can be done to change matters. St. Ansgar established a Future Directions Committee in 1986 (as a 60th anniversary project) to ask such questions and recommend some action. The result was a proposal for a new way to organize the congregation. Instead of relying on elected officers to initiate and supervise programs, the congregation would establish five interest groups (called "families") to give all members an opportunity to join with those who shared their special concern and organize programs accordingly. This proposal was adopted in 1988. The families had some initial participation and success, but the lack of organizational structure and stability made this creative proposal vulnerable to the changing interests and priorities of individuals within each group, so this experiment gradually faded within a few years.

An Unexpected New Direction
St. Ansgar happens to share a neighborhood in which many Jews live and work and worship. Nearby Bathurst Street is lined with large and small synagogues holding congregations that are Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, Hasidic with their many variations. Led by Pastor Nelson's special interest in the subject of Christian Jewish relations, the congregation organized dialogues with members of a neighboring synagogue. It began to participate in the annual Holocaust Education Week by hosting a program each fall. Pastor Nelson became a member of the governing board of Christian/Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, representing the Eastern Synod.

Some New Stirrings
A shepherding program was initiated in 1992 to provide informal occasions for members of the congregation to become better acquainted. A few years later, a new photo directory helped everyone to put a name to faces.

After a period of inactivity, the youth program took on new life, sparked by the energy of the Lay Assistant, Inger Allard. Youth began to meet regularly and the group's life was enriched by trips to the biennial national youth event - in such places as Winnipeg, Camrose, and Halifax -and the synodical youth events on alternate years. The two-year confirmation ministry was revitalized by attendance each year at a week-long confirmation camp at Edgewood, a time for teachers and students to get to know each other well and develop a healthy relationship.

Worship received a new spirit with the introduction of more lay participation, including lay meditations on the seven last words of Jesus from the cross on Good Friday, by including children in the Sacrament of Holy Communion and providing a special "time for the children" during each service, by the addition of extraordinarily colorful banners unfurled for the first time on Easter Sunday in 1996 (thanks to hundreds of hours of work by over 20 women, men and children), and by a new contemporary hymnbook.

Finally, in 1997, the congregation decided to take a step into the future with a building improvement program, "Access For All", which included a long-awaited elevator, new offices, an enlarged narthex and choir loft, as well as increased space for day care. A successful fund-raising drive was held in late 1997, and construction began the following fall, with completion of the project in the Spring of 1999.

With the retirement of Pastor Nelson in 1998, the congregation faced an extensive interim while searching for a replacement. Fortunately, there were gifted interim pastors available, Pastor Tim Hegedus, who then left to begin teaching at Waterloo Seminary, and Pastor Hank Langknecht, a visiting scholar from the U.S. who returned to begin teaching at Capitol Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. At just the right time, Pastor Ray Niebergall and family were ready to return to Canada from the mission field in Argentina. The congregation celebrated his installation in November 1999, and is now developing a new vision for the future of St. Ansgar in the new millennium.