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Church and Main is a podcast at the intersection of faith and modern life. Join Pastor Dennis Sanders as he shares the stories of faith interacting with the ever-changing world of the 21st century.
Music.
Hello and welcome to Church and Main, the podcast at the intersection of faith
and modern life. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host.
Church in Maine is a podcast that looks for God in the midst of issues affecting
the church and the larger society.
You can learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes,
and donate by checking us out
at churchinmainealloneword .org or churchinmainealloneword .substack .com.
Consider subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and leave a
review. That helps others find this podcast.
On this episode, I talk to Graham Bocot about the reopening of an Anglican parish
that had been closed a few years ago.
It's a tale of miracle, hope, and faith.
In 2019, the National Trust for Canada noted that the nation was slated to lose
some 9 ,000 1 ,000 churches and other faith -owned buildings over 10 years.
In the United States, churches are closing as well, especially in the wake of COVID.
So why does this matter? Well, on a practical matter, church buildings are neighborhood
centers, and the loss of such places affects more than just the congregation.
Non -profits and families who don't go to church are also impacted when a church shutters its doors.
In 2008, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Port Franks, Ontario closed due to lack of donations.
But in 2013, the church reopened with the support of an Anglican priest, Graham Bocot.
He notes that with basically no money, in two years the fledgling congregation
went from six very miserable Anglicans who had experienced the scarcity model
of the church into a congregation of 55 who were there on a regularity.
So today I talked to Grayhame Bowcott about the story of St. Anne's.
Grayhame is currently the rector of St. George's Anglican parish of the Blue Mountains, Ontario.
Grayhame is also cross-appointed in the position of program director for the licentiate
of theology program and lifelong learning at Huron University.
This program combines his research interest in studying the trends of church
membership in his native Canada,
but it also allows and enables vocational leaders in a local church to access
theological education, especially in remote areas.
In this episode, we're going to talk about his time at St.
Anne's, why the future of mainline churches in North America doesn't It doesn't
have to be about just closing churches, but can be about evangelism,
mission, and church planning.
So here's Graham Bokai.
Music.
Great. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today.
So I think where I wanted to start before we kind of go into the story,
and we were kind of talking before the podcast, just kind of the background,
which was very helpful, thank you,
is tell me a little bit about the Diocese of Huron.
Where is it located in Ontario, kind of to set the scene?
Sure, happy to do so. The Diocese of Ontario in the Anglican Church of Canada
is the second largest diocese in our country.
It makes up about 120 to 30 congregations that stretch from Windsor,
Ontario, all the way up to the northernmost point, which is where I'm located, the Blue Mountains,
and Tobermores in northernmost tip.
Southernmost point is Pelee Island, a good wine country, and the easternmost
corner of that goes Kitchener, Cambridge, Waterloo, and Brantford,
and the border is where you see Hamilton is in a different diocese.
So we're largely rural, but we have urban centers in Kitchener,
Waterloo, Cambridge, London, Ontario, and Windsor. Okay, and I'm familiar with
winter because I grew up in Michigan, in southeastern Michigan.
So I was basically an hour from Michigan, from Windsor, an hour from Sarnia.
So Transcribed by https://otter .ai.
And we have all sorts of mainly similar parishioners that cross the border,
and all of them are from the Michigan, Grosvenor, Farms area,
that sort of thing. Yeah, it's great. Oh, okay. Okay.
So tell me a little bit about the story of St.
Anne's, because this is an interesting, and the reason I wanted to talk to you,
because it's such an interesting story of a church that closed,
and as you in Anglican language say, deconsecrated.
But that wasn't the end of the story.
So what is the background of St. Anne's, and what went on?
So to set up the St. Anne's story, just to say a word about deconsecration,
with today's trends of declining membership that all denominations are experiencing,
very much in Canada, in the same way as it is in the States,
when a congregation gets to the point where the membership is no longer sustainable.
The congregation, back in the years of the St.
Anne story, which we're talking about around 2010, the wider entity of the church
could decide that a congregation couldn't afford to stay open, couldn't pay the bills.
And then the membership was often encouraged to find another Anglican congregation
down the road or out of town while the building was closed.
And after the building was closed and the congregation relocated,
then the building has its status of being a consecrated space removed.
So it's returned back to secular use.
St. Anne's story was of a church that had been removed from its sacred status,
the building was empty, the congregation was no longer existent.
And God then put God's foot in the door when we found out in a move to sell
that asset that the land that the church was built on did not actually belong
to the Anglican Church or the Diocese of Huron.
It belonged to local municipality with an agreement that as long as there was
a worshiping community on that location that the Anglican Church could use it.
But if it ceased to be, then the municipality would assume use of that location,
for whatever they'd want and the building would likely be torn down.
For me, I used to live in a town called Grand Bend and I couldn't afford to
live in the town, it was too expensive. So I lived a little bit out of the countryside.
And when I was driving into work to Grand Bend, I would pass two churches that
had been closed and deconsecrated. And I always wondered, well,
what about the people in the neighborhood?
What about those who are still living there? They don't have a church.
And so the St. Anne's story really began with me asking my bishop for permission to try something new,
realizing that there weren't people, there weren't financial resources,
and anything that was going to happen was going to happen because God was in
the details and the community would have to respond.
And so, the story of St. Anne's is the story of a church plant in a location
where many people were pretty angry that the church had been closed years prior.
And it started with a simple sign that was put up at the side of the road saying, open house.
What would it take to reimagine this church being open again?
And then a date and a time, free coffee and donuts.
And so, the beautiful thing about St. Anne's was it started with a lot of anger.
That first open house wasn't a pleasant experience. People from town showed
up basically to yell at me. I was a new priest.
And they were mad that the church had closed.
And so, they were there, they were angry, but they were interested.
And if they were interested, had I just walked away because they were frustrated
and angry, that would have been the end of the chapter.
Someone needed to hear that frustration and pain and ask the question, what if?
What if God could do something with us in the space again?
And then it started with six people willing to do what if with me.
And with those six people, we based
our community relationships around discipleship, around regular prayer.
I had a full -time job. That was the one I was driving to on Sunday morning.
So the only thing that I could do was say that, here on Tuesday mornings,
I'll show up every Tuesday, we'll open up this space, we'll have coffee,
and we'll dream about what we can do in this place.
And if you're early risers, on my way to the other church service,
I will do an 8 o 'clock service for 50 minutes every Sunday,
but the rest is up to you." And so,
with the bishop's permission and six people,
we got a chance to do what most churches never get to do, try again.
And that led into a real adventure of growth and community -building relationships.
KTW So, you talk about the fact that there were kind of these six people who,
I think you even used the word somewhere, of six very kind of grouchy Anglicans,
and that that was the beginning of this.
How were they able to kind of move beyond that sense of anger to really seeing
a sense that this was kind of, this grace was being given to start over,
that God had given them this new,
this chance to be a faith community again?
I think it was all about fostering new trust.
Every Sunday or Tuesday that I showed up for that group was the trust that I
wasn't giving up on them, and that God wasn't giving up on them.
So to create the excuse to just show up and be present in building relationships,
they didn't think someone would stick around to do that.
Their trust had been broken in the church.
Their church had been forcibly closed without their say.
They had run out of resources, and they actually had $16 ,000 of debt that they
had on from the prior congregation.
Of those six people, only one of those six people had been a member of the previous congregation.
The other five lived in the neighborhood, but they were new.
So they brought a new spirit, but they were very suspicious.
So each week we built trust, and we would say, let's do one thing together,
but let's make it about relationships.
The first thing that they were asked to do, And so I said, well,
you know, I'm getting up really early in the morning to come here on Sunday.
If there's six of you, that's great. I'll still do it.
But wouldn't it be great if there were 12?
And that was the invitation that I extended at the open house.
And then we proposed a day where we'd have our first Sunday service.
Well, the very first Sunday service, we had 14 people, because each of the six
brought a significant other, someone else.
So within two weeks, they doubled their congregation, and everyone's still curious.
They were also astonished that six had turned into 14 so quickly.
There was a joy in seeing that relational growth that I think they had just forgotten.
It had been a long time since they'd experienced that joy.
And then we were going to stop there, so if we have 14 people,
how did they do their worship?
We didn't have to have it by the book. they could do whatever they wanted because
officially this wasn't under the institution of the diocese,
this was trying something new.
And so each of those 14 individuals, they came up with their own contributions to worship.
Some like to cook, others enjoyed singing.
We had people that liked to really decorate the church. Now,
they had their own taste in decorations, but they did it every Sunday.
So, it was building in the meaning of what Christian community together was.
But then they faced some big challenges. We were starting in the fall,
and the building that we were in had not been cared for for years.
It was filled with mold. The insulation was rotten.
It wasn't a safe place to worship, and they didn't have a functioning furnace.
Now, Canadian winters are brutal.
If you don't have a functioning furnace, you don't have a church.
And so, our first months together, we celebrated Thanksgiving,
and I remember at Thanksgiving, giving it growing to more than 20 people.
And at Thanksgiving, we said, Canadian Thanksgiving, which is in October,
we said, this is it folks.
We just won't be warm next Sunday if we go forward.
So I don't know what to do. Let's pray about it. And maybe we just do coffee
on a Tuesday. And I remember when the furnace showed up with an anonymous donation
on the front doorstep of the church.
We don't know who gave it. We don't know who asked for it, but God provided.
And so it was a great call. Yeah. So literally a furnace showed up on the front
doorstep. A box with a furnace.
Oh my goodness. Showed up on the front doorstep.
Oh wow. Uh, and this, this was the beginning of realizing that everything that
we needed in the community already existed.
That it would exist within the relationships of the people that lived in that neighborhood.
Port Franks, where St. Anne's is located, is a small coastal community that
has all sorts of people in the summertime, but in the wintertime not too many
people stick around. And those that stick around...
Through the fence was a miracle. It really was a miracle, but it is one that
they were able to celebrate as the work of their own hands, their own offering.
So, and that was just, it snowballed from there. If you have a furnace,
you need insulation to keep the heat in.
So they pulled out all that rotten insulation and they insulated.
I have pictures of all different generations from that neighborhood coming out,
little kids, grandparents, everyone helped to put the insulation in the drywall and the painting.
And then they had a big turkey pot pie dinner afterwards, right?
It's a small group of people, but they were able to accomplish so much so much
so that within the weeks that turned into months, suddenly they were passing the collection plate.
And they had resources, financial resources.
And with the financial resources that no one was telling them what to do.
So my role as a pastor was to say, okay, well, now we have something.
What do we, how do we give back?
And this is important. For a congregation that started with six people,
only one of them who were part of that previous congregation,
all the other ones had disbanded and gone to another community.
The new members of the church decided that 50 cents of every dollar on the plate,
they would give back to the diocese of Huron, our wider institution,
as the thank offering for having the chance to have the church open again.
And over two years, that thank offering ended up paying off without the diocese ever asking for it.
$16 ,000 of debt that had belonged to the previous congregation in this community
wanted to express that they were appreciative for getting a second chance.
And once they'd done that, then they started giving it away to other local communities in need.
The school meal program, other churches that were running low on funds.
It was a pay -it -forward approach to ministry.
And they never stopped. They kept growing. They kept, in my time there,
we saw the 26 people then had doubled to 55 on a Sunday.
Where the church had been absent in the community for many years,
now whole families were coming forward to be baptized.
It was great to see, you know, mom and dad and children, but then the grandparents
saying, I was baptized in this church years ago, I get to be the sponsor,
and you brought me back into a church again.
It was, to see the spirit alive and well there was remarkable.
School. But they didn't have tons of money.
And when you look at an operating church budget, if they paid for all the bills,
and it costs $26 ,000 a year, that was great.
They covered everything that was needed.
And so it was very, I was very proud of them.
Because again, remember, they only had me Tuesday for coffees,
and for an early church service on Sunday, and they did everything else themselves.
BD So, you know, one of the things that you stress is the importance of relationships,
especially within the community.
What did that look like for the members of the church? How did they kind of
create those web of relationships?
CB It all boils down to, do you really know your neighbors? And some of the
original founders of church again, the original six, they'd lived in the community for a long time.
So they had their ear to the ground as to where the church could help out.
In the small community, there was a town community centre, and then there was this church.
Those were the only public buildings, really, in the community.
There were all sorts of different groups of people that wanted space,
needed to connect with space, and previously the church was only open on Sundays.
They locked it the rest of the week. So we decided to have people available
in the church to open it up to any group that ever wanted to use it for free.
There's no rental charges.
It was to say, if you've got a group and you belong to this community,
this is God's church given to the community.
It's not the Anglican church.
It's however God feels we need to use this.
And so the first group of new relationships was a ladies walking group.
And, you know, when you live along Lake Huron, you want to be out walking,
enjoying the beauty all year round. So they'd go out walking.
But when they were done, there wasn't really a place for them all to collect.
So what they started doing is they'd go walk, and then they'd come in to the St.
Anne's Parish Hall, which was in very poor shape. It was just plywood everywhere,
holes in the ceiling, it was in rough shape.
But they opened it up, they warmed up the space, and they offered free coffee and baked goods.
And instead just offering them and saying they're yours, the members of the
church, the new members, would sit and they would host and they would talk and they would laugh.
And soon, you know, a quarter of the members of this walking group started spilling
into our Sunday worship because they were making friendships.
They were realizing that the spirit of that place was one of hospitality and
they wanted to be part of it.
And then, because these new members were hosting, they were like,
well, this hall looks awful. We need to start working on it.
And so, again, a community effort, they stripped out all the old plywood and
they put in new plywood and drywall, and they painted it bright and cheery colors.
And then they looked at the kitchen and it was all, they stripped everything out of the kitchen.
Within a matter of months, they had completely renovated the parish hall space
with their own resources for
the purpose of making it available to whoever wanted it in the community.
And then after the ladies walking group, the card groups came in,
the yoga group, and everyone realized they could use it. And they would always
ask, okay, so what's the deal?
How much are you charging for this? And the response from the church was,
we don't charge anyone, but if you want to make a donation to the ministry that
we're doing in the community, we will reinvest it in the community.
And what we found was there was always far more in donations than we would ever
dream of charging in rent.
And then that was more money that had been given to God to give back to the
community. And so it snowballed and snowballed. It was wonderful.
I remember the day they put in a wheelchair -accessible ramp.
It was hilarious because, you know, there's a lot of structural detail and permissions
that you need to do to do this ramp.
And eventually we had to rebuild the ramp that they built.
The spirit was right. They said, well, there's one person that we know in the
community that can't get in the church. We're building ramp.
And all hands on deck, they got there and in one day built this beautiful ramp.
No, eventually we had to redo it because it wasn't to code and all that sort of stuff.
But the spirit of, well, we don't want this to be a barrier to one person and
everyone having their hands in that project. It was beautiful.
Again, small budgets, not a lot of money to go around. They made it happen.
You know, one of the things that's interesting in hearing about this is how
often we kind of talk about churches needing resources, needing money,
needing all sorts of things for a church just to get off the ground.
And basically, St. Anne's restarted with none of that.
And so, So, what is the difference, and what is the lesson that can be learned
for other congregations or churches that are thinking about this or listening to this?
1 of the things that I always marvel at is when people, Christians,
from other denominations,
usually some of the smaller denominations that have very few resources,
when they walk into an Anglican church, and they look around,
and a lot of our Anglican churches are blessed.
They have big buildings, and they have parking spots, and see someone else's
perspective, they're like, wow, and you can see their mind saying,
I can imagine all of the things that we would do, that God would do through
us, if we had resources like this, right?
Where the Anglicans often, we aren't doing anything with them.
There are too many churches where they're only open two days a week,
right, and the rest of the time it just sits there.
I think it is a gift when congregations that have resources.
When they have the courage to invite others in,
to reimagine how they would use the resources for helping the neighborhood and
helping the community and helping Christian ministry in ways that might not
just be Anglican, but maybe new or refreshed.
Sometimes that's inviting another congregation into your space,
but sometimes that's saying, you know what, at the end of our year,
we actually have $5 ,000.
What if we gave $5 ,000 to a church that's barely able to stay open,
and we gave it as a gift with no strings attached and said, use this $5 ,000
to build some relationships in your neighborhood, whatever you do you do.
When you have that pay it forward mentality, that gift, beautiful things happen,
but unfortunately, we're living in a day of scarcity, where if someone has $5
,000, they'll say, well, we'll hold on this, we might need it next year, right?
I think if we truly believe that God is the source of all of our blessings,
then God will provide the things that we need.
We have a responsibility to make sure that the things that are given to us are
invested in relationships,
not just squandered in some of the many other things that churches do that we
spend money on, that at the end of the day don't result in one new relationship. And that's a problem.
Brian So this experience that you were a part of, led you actually to asking,
basically, if this was happening here, is it happening in other places?
And that kind of led to a doctoral thesis. And we'd be curious if you could
kind of share a little bit about what did you learn as you did that thesis?
In the same way that the St. Anne's mission story proved that God was up to
new things, even in communities where there isn't much in the way of resources,
I had a hunch that this was happening in all sorts of places,
but we needed someone to pay attention to that and to tell those good news stories.
So at a time where many people are studying the decline of the Church,
And I had to do a little bit of that to study the statistics of membership decline
in our diocese and in the neighboring diocese in Toronto.
My doctoral work was asking, well, where are the congregations that are bucking the trend?
What are they doing? But even more importantly than what are they doing?
What are the characteristics that cause them to do what they do?
What's their motivation?
How are they forming new relationships and why are they motivated to form new relationships?
And what that ended up having me do, working with two bishops in two different
dioceses, I was given a beautiful year,
basically, where in that year, I got to know 12 numerically growing congregations
very, very well, and ended up being roughly about a thousand Anglicans in the
membership of those churches.
Some of them were larger, some of them were rural, small churches.
Interesting within the Anglican tradition. They had different cultural breakups.
Some of them were very Anglo -Baptist.
There was one that was an Anglican and Lutheran congregation working together.
Some were very high church, so very Anglo -Catholic.
And then I would say half of them were right in the middle, right?
Where they're liturgical, but it's not always perfect at the end of the worship day.
So all sorts of differences in how churches are being church,
but they all had a commonality.
They wanted to grow in relationships.
They believed that their response to the gospel was to go out and grow in relationships,
and they spent as much time beyond the doors of the church as they did within their church.
That is one of the characteristics that is hopeful because it's a positive energy
that spins off to create other activities, missional expressions of ministry,
and it creates a sense of inclusive welcome and you're being invited into something
good that God is doing. You want to be part of that.
So what I ended up coming to as a conclusion with my doctoral work is there
is place where there's numeric growth within the church.
And it's not just about having bums and seats and dollars in the bank.
It's where congregations can foster new relationships in the neighborhood.
And there's hope, there's all sorts of science things springing up.
But it helped to solidify a central thesis that I have, which is my worry for
the Anglican Church in many denominations going forward.
It's that many of us are losing our ability to form new relationships.
If you look at congregations, and you see as they age, and you ask the members,
okay, when do you spend time with new people?
And they say, well, all my friends are in this room right now.
Well, that's beautiful. That's good.
But we are called, all Christians are called, to talk about their faith,
to spread their faith, and to serve beyond the borders of the church.
So how can old relationships that are very set and comfortable,
how can they go out and reach new generations, new people.
And so the congregations that are growing, what they do is they're constantly
finding excuses. That's all it is, excuses to go meet new people.
And it's great. And it might be partnering with the local school or having a
great partnership with the community service clubs in the organization.
Sharing the church with other Christian denominations or even in some cases,
other faith communities.
It's any excuse to better the neighborhood with the premise that why we're doing
this is because we believe that God cares for all people. Therefore,
we're caring for the neighborhood.
And we tell people that story. We do it because God cares for all of us.
And we hope that you experience that through the ways that we reach out and
form new relationships in the neighborhood. So that's something that we get
too bogged down with worrying about our survival.
We get bogged down with our institutional structures.
We forget that Jesus did his best work with no money, no building,
and a group of people that needed him.
And I don't think that's ever going to change. That's where the Church shines.
That's when we're at our best.
KBS Yeah, I think I was reading something in the Anglican Journal that talked
about that the mentality for a lot of churches in the Anglican Church,
and I think that's the same case here in the States, was that it was a kind
of a, if you build it, they will come,
kind of theology.
And that's a type of, really just doesn't work anymore.
It was something that It did work 50, 60 years ago, but it doesn't.
Well, I've coined a term that is being used in some places, at least in Canada,
and the term was the contemporary Anglican lament.
And we've all heard it before. It's not just an Anglican thing,
but it's when whenever our response to anxiety or fear in the church causes us to say,
we're too old, we're too few, it's never worked in the past,
there's nothing that we can do, and it won't get better, right?
This cyclical anxiety, this depression that our churches get into, because it's not true.
That is not founded on the gospel message.
Nowhere does Jesus say, oh, you're old, oh dear, we can't do anything with you.
He renews the church, he renews our spirit, and he causes us to find the places that are boxing us in,
and to step across the threshold, because on the other side is people that need
to hear what we have to share with them.
They need to hear that gospel message because it serves them. It loves them.
So I don't buy into the Anglican lament.
And in living out my ministries, I have not seen any case where a congregation,
if it focused all of its attention on the forming of new relationships, that it didn't thrive.
But oh my goodness, things can get in the way.
Not once do you hear Jesus say, you know what, I want you to build a church
and spend all of your time doing bake sales, yard sales, rummage sales,
whatever it can just to pay for that building to stand up.
He doesn't say it once. Not once.
Instead, he says, look after the relationships that are in the community.
And I think that that's what we still do really well, and that will be where
the future strength of all Christian expressions of faith will thrive,
going forward in the future.
What is the story of St.
Anne's today? I know that you had to move on from St.
Anne's, but where are they now? How are they doing?
So from a mission project, St.
Anne's, after it was consecrated a second time, that was a remarkable turning
point in the history of the Anglican Church, because once we closed the church, we never went back.
And St. Anne's was the first time where we did. So they had a full service where
they consecrated the church a second time.
So everything that had been removed from the sacred was recommitted to God's
use and God's care in that neighborhood.
So they reconsecrated the church.
Things that had gone missing for many years started coming back,
like organ music, regular meals and events in that community.
The church grew, but it also realized that as a small church in a rural area,
it was going to be stronger if it could be in fellowship with other Anglicans.
And so St. Anne's ended up growing into, by merit of me having a full -time job at another church.
It grew into an excuse to say, well, wait a second, what if three neighboring
churches in three communities could work together to share the gifts that we have?
Kind of like a potluck dinner, where one church had the gift of able -bodied
parishioners that could help, another church had the gift of music and people who love to sing.
And I always said with St. Anne's, made a mean turkey pie. So if they had a
problem in the world, they would solve it by turkey pies.
Feeding people, we're raising funds that way. And the three congregations came
together in what was a new regional expression ministry.
And they were each unique in the sense that they had their autonomy,
but they chose to work together to share the best of what they had with each other.
And members of the creation would travel up to 45 minutes in the distances between communities.
To go and worship in the different spaces, which was beautiful.
And we grew so much that we had to bring on a full -time assistant curate.
It was a wonderful experience to have a student see how the new possibilities
could happen, and then he could go on in his ministry and replicate that somewhere else.
Now today, St. Anne's continues to be an open church, a church that I'm proud to say,
once their status as being a mission church, which they had held for a number
of years, once that was lifted, and they were turned into just an ordinary church,
they never lost their missional mentality.
And so they're self -sustaining. And when they have a surplus or extra to give,
they reinvest that back into the community.
So they're still in partnership together, they still have their priest that shares ministry there.
And there's still a going concern. What I hear from them is the next new project that they're doing.
They haven't lost that enthusiasm and the spirit, so.
It's good news. In a day where a lot of mission church plants last about two
or three years, this was all happening in 2000.
Well, I've been here for 10 years and they've been growing strong,
so well over a decade and they're still thriving.
So if people want to kind of know a little bit more or follow you on the internet,
is there any place that they can go?
Yeah, thank you. I'm on Facebook. So that's where a lot of connections about
mission and ministry often tend to happen, I find.
My name is Graham, spelt a little different, G -R -A -M -H -A -M -E,
and my middle name is Robert, Graham Robert Volcott.
I am the one and only on Facebook.
So it's one way.
I serve full time as a priest in the Parish of the Blue Mountains,
Ontario, beautiful God's country up in Apple country. so this is where I do
a lot of my relational work.
And then one day a week, I work as the program director of the Licentiate in
Theology program here at University College.
And that's a program that enables other people, mainly in rural communities,
to access theological education to do the type of work that we've talked about today.
So, if you want to track me down, I'm pretty easy to find. All right.
Well, Graham, thank you so much. I think it's a hopeful story,
and Lord knows we need more hopeful stories these days. So thank you for taking the time.
Thank you for the invitation, Dennis, and exciting to hear the things that are
happening in your own congregation.
So God bless you in those courageous decisions that cause you to sometimes think
beyond the doors of church. It goes a long way.
So thanks for being part of this day. Thank you.
Music.
Thanks for taking the time to listen. As usual, there are links of interest
related to this episode with Graham Bocott.
Check out all the links and learn more about the story of St.
Anne's and also evangelism within the Anglican Church of Canada.
So that's it for this episode of Church in Maine.
Remember to rate and review this episode on your favorite podcast app so that
others can find the podcast and consider donating so that we can continue to
produce more episodes. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host.
Again, thanks so much for listening. Take care, Godspeed, and I will see you very soon.
Music.