Welcome to Creative Ways 2025!

The City of Hamilton is situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. This land is covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, which was an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. We further acknowledge that this land is covered by the Between the Lakes Purchase, 1792, between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Today, the City of Hamilton is home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island (North America) and we recognize that we must do more to learn about the rich history of this land so that we can better understand our roles as residents, neighbours, partners and caretakers.

Indigenous Land Justice: A Spiritual Covenant with Churches proposal

In 2007 during the Six Nations struggle to stop development on their Haldimand Tract lands in Caledonia pastors came together at the Caledonia Baptist Church next door to the development to pray for justice and resolution. Mennonite Central Committee Ontario introduced their effort to educate the 26 Mennonite Churches in the land claim area. Adrian Jacobs will tell the story of the 18 year justice journey that is gaining traction in Ontario and Manitoba.

Churches are key partners in sustaining (and even creating) supportive housing that creates community and belonging, and is effective in combatting loneliness and breaking cycles of homelessness.

The Theme

Subsequent annual meetings at St. Paul's in the years leading up to 2020 recognised that their money would run out in 2022 and the congregation might face closure. When Mark Lewis was appointed Interim Moderator in 2020, he proposed that the congregation try an experiment. They would not call a Minister but instead have a congregation led by lay leaders, with an Interim Moderator who would preach on most Sundays.  The congregation also agreed to seek out community partners whose mission was consistent with their own.  Their primary partnerships have been with the Consumption and Treatment Site (CTS) and the Prescribed Alternatives Outreach Program (PAOP) of Hamilton Urban Core.  In 2023, St. Paul’s became home for the Alamal Learning Centre, an after-school program for children newly arrived from refugee camps in Syria and Afghanistan.  The CTS and PAOP were closed under provincial legislation on March 31, 2025.  St. Paul’s had planned to convert the site to a Homelessness and Addiction Reduction Treatment (HART) Hub.  However, HUC required a guarantee of three years of residency at St. Paul’s, and St. Paul’s could not offer that.  While St. Paul’s was hosting HUC, they were also negotiating with a developer to build housing and community services on the site being used by HUC.  At the time of writing, there was a reasonable possibility that development would begin on the site in less than the three years that HUC required.       

Key Insights

St. Paul’s stopped asking the questions, “How can we get more people, and how can we get more money?” and started asking, “Who needs our help that no one else is helping, and how can we use the resources we have to help people in need in our community?”  St. Paul’s was open to radical change and sharing their building with the community.  It took a lot of faith to give up the “ladies' parlour” and other precious spaces for a site where unhomed persons would inject heroin or snort cocaine.  The congregation acted with extraordinary compassion because they knew that 3.7 people were dying of drug overdoses on the streets of Hamilton every week.

The congregation has come to understand that having a massive building sit empty for most of the week is not a faithful use of God’s resources and that many charitable and community organisations are failing due to a lack of meeting space. We decided that as long as an organisation was engaged in a compassionate and caring mission, we would be glad to host it and partner with them to achieve their mission.

More details coming soon.