United Church is now united churches
Three of four United Church congregations in greater Kelowna have amalgamated.
Central Okanagan United Church is a combination of First United downtown, Rutland United, and St. Paul’s United.
Signage with the new name now appears on all three churches where the long-established congregations have been worshipping.
“We are on a new journey together to discern the role of our facilities to support our mission, as well as to get to know one another in the midst of a pandemic,” Terry Welsh, cochair of the amalgamated church’s board of directors, said in a release.
Together, there are about 400 Kelowna households that were part of the three separate congregations. The amalgamated church has 14 full- and part-time staff.
All three churches remain in use for now. A church team is expected to make recommendations by this fall on a long-term facilities plan, Welsh said in an email.
Each of the three congregations had been in “some form of transition” recently, Rev. Ivy Thomas said.
St. Paul’s United Church on Lakeshore Road in the South Pandosy neighbourhood was demolished in 2014 to make way for an ill-fated arts and worship centre that was never constructed. The St. Paul’s congregation has been meeting since at a church on Springfield Road.
A discussion about the possible amalgamation of St. Paul’s, First, and Rutland began as far back as 2019, Thomas says.
“As the three congregations met to discuss how we could best serve the Central Okanagan and the wider world, we discerned that an amalgamation of our gifts, skills, and properties would provide us the opportunity for a far-reaching and long-term ministry,” she said.
The amalgamation does not include Westbank United Church. Beset with a declining number of worshippers, the congregation sold its Westbank property last year for $1.4 million and now meets in the chapel of the Hanson Arbor Funeral and Cremation Centre in Westbank.
The United Church of Canada is itself an amalgamation of three churches. It was inaugurated on June 10, 1925 with the union of the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and much of the Presbyterian Church of Canada.
Membership peaked in the early 1960s at 1.1 million, but in 2018 the church put its membership at 388,000, of whom 121,000 attended services regularly.