Celebrating 65 Years of Gloria Dei!

Join us on Sunday, October 25 at 11:00 a.m. for our 65th Anniversary Festival Service, with Bishop Kathy Martin, Synod Bishop, as presider and preacher, and special music by our choir. If you can't join us in person, we will be livestreaming the event. You can watch here on our Youtube channel: https://youtube.com/live/a39J_eP_tzw?feature=share. 

Following worship, we’ll enjoy a catered anniversary lunch with guest speaker National Bishop Susan Johnson (retired).

Everyone is warmly welcome to join us for the Festival Service. The anniversary lunch is a ticketed event and, as we have now reached capacity, we are unable to accommodate walk-ins.

Come celebrate 65 years of faith, worship, and community with us!

On-site Flu/COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic

We are pleased to offer our on-site Flu and COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic again this year!

Following last year's clinic, we will once again be hosting a vaccination clinic at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Sunday, November 1, immediately following worship.

The clinic will take place in the Conference Room.

No registration is required! Simply stop by after the service if you would like to receive your vaccination.

Please see the attached poster for more details.

We hope you'll take advantage of this convenient opportunity to stay healthy and protected this season!

Our North Shore Neighborhood in 1961 

Some of us may think that atmospheric rivers and damaging rainfalls are a 21st century phenomena.  But on Octboer 10, 1961 The Vancouver Sun reported:  "A Five-hour rainstrom dumped three inches of rain on North shore mountains, Monday, flooding homes and causing havoc with traffic and power lines.

Creeks overflowed, culverts were blocked and tons of sand, gravel and surface debris were washed onto the road.

The gust of winds up up to 40mph fell trees which fell against power lines and snapped the wires. . . . Some houses built over old creek beds were "floating" on a sea of mud surrounded by sand and gravel. Many North Shore gardens were completely washed away by the swirling waters.  . . " 

Also in 1961,  the overpass connecting the North and South Malls of Park Royal was opened.

Notable community citizens were members at Gloria Dei. 

• Dave Skrien was hired as Head Coach of the BC Lions. Coming from Minnesota, he soon became a member of a newly forming Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (NB: two years later, the Lions played in their first Grey Cup and became Grey Cup champions in 1964).
• West Vancouver and North Vancouver were one electoral district. The district’s MP was William Payne, Conservative, for Coast-Capilano. The district’s two MLAs were Liberals Gordon Gibson and Ray Perrault.

Gloria Dei's Early Days 

• Men wore suits, white shirts, and ties to church. Women wore dresses or skirts to church (there were no pant suits for women until a few years later).
• A Declaration of Intention to form a new Lutheran congregation was signed by 37 individuals or families (e.g. “Mr. and Mrs. Skrien”). The congregation was developed by the Board of American Missions of the Canadian Lutheran Council of the Augustana Lutheran Church; Mission Developer was Rev. Donald Sjoberg.

• Boundaries for the newly forming congregation were to be “On the East, Lonsdale; on the West, Capilano River; on the North, Grouse Mountain; on the South, Burrard Inlet”. The new congregation would also serve West Vancouver “until there is a Lutheran Church there.”
• February 1, Pastor Dean Berg began his ministry in the organizing congregation.
• A parish newspaper “The Gloria Dei Lutheran Visitor” was first published in April 1961.
• Gloria Dei’s first worship service was held on May 14, at Highlands Elementary School. Weekly services continued at Highlands Elementary until a new building was ready in 1962. A Building Committee of six “interested” men had been formed, had its first meeting on May 25, and met five times in 1961.
• Gloria Dei congregation was formally organized October 1, 1961, with 47 confirmed and 88 baptized members. Its Charter Roll closed on December 31, 1961.

• Gloria Dei’s Annual Report for the period ending December 31, 1961, indicated that Site Costs for a physical location were $23,500, Survey & Legal Costs were $24,088; Budget for a new building was $35,000.
• In his report to the 1^st Annual General Meeting (held January 30, 1962), Pastor Dean Berg reported that during 1961 average attendance at worship was 57; Communion was held monthly, with an average of 24 communing; church school for all ages was held at 9.45 a.m. before the services, with an enrolment of 54 children and adults; the first stewardship program had raised $6,000; and an elected Board of Administration (i.e. Congregational Council) of 11 men and 2 women had been meeting monthly.

In a time of deep polarization, how can Christians move beyond slogans and engage in the realities of Palestine and Israel with humility, compassion, and courage? Gloria Dei has partnered together with Lynn Valley United Church to explore this question. Come and take part in an eye-opening panel conversation exploring the complex intersection of faith, politics, history, justice, and peace. The event takes place on November 14 at 3:00pm, at Lynn Valley United Church, 3201 Mountain Highway North Vancouver. 

Doors open at 2:45pm and the event begins at 3:00pm. Click the button below to register today!

Come and join our panelists, Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, Shadia Qubti, and Ron Dart for a thoughtful afternoon of listening and learning through honest conversation.

Learn more about the featured speakers below:

Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, Ph.D. is Dean of the ALEPH Ordination Program, the Jewish Renewal Seminary. She currently teaches courses on the histories of Israel and Palestine, deep ecumenism, leadership, and modern Jewish environmental thought. Previously, she was Director of Inter-Religious Studies and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, where her teaching and community work brought Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Indigenous perspectives into conversation. An award-winning teacher of philosophy and religion, Rabbi Laura has written four books on philosophical reflection, spiritual practice, mysticism, and biblical ecology, including the recent Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals. She has also brought scholars together to create seven collaborative books, including Encountering the Other, Spirit of Reconciliation, Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace, and Multi-Religious Reflections on Friendship. A dual citizen of the US and Canada, Rabbi Laura lives in Vancouver with her husband, Charles, a musician and retired psychologist.

Shadia Qubti is a Palestinian-Christian born and raised in Nazareth who has worked in faith-based peacebuilding and advocacy initiatives through local and international organizations in Israel and Palestine for fifteen years. Her academic and public speaking interests focus on theological conversations between Palestinian Christian and North American Indigenous understandings of land, explored in her Masters thesis at Vancouver School of Theology. She seeks to develop a contextual decolonial approach through Palestinian land-based readings of biblical narratives, including recent work on the Nativity story and an upcoming exploration of Jesus at Gethsemane. As a Palestinian-Christian and member of a faith community, she grapples with theological responses amid genocide. She is particularly dedicated to amplifying the voices and perspectives of women and other marginalized communities, which led to the co-founding of the Women Behind the Wall podcast. She is currently working as the Community Engagement Animator at Trinity Grace United Church in Vancouver and serves as a Commissioner to the 45th General Council of the United Church of Canada.

Ron Dart taught in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of Fraser Valley (British Columbia) for 33 years. Before joining UCFV, he was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s where he was the pointperson for a variety of states in the Middle East that were known as violators (in various ways and means) of elementary and fundamental human rights. He has published and edited more than forty books, including Canadian Christian Zionism: a Tangled Tale, and is a regular contributor to Clarion: Journal for Religion, Peace and Justice. Ron also teaches Classical Studies at a graduate level at St. Stephen’s University, and just finished instructing a 4-month class on Homer’s Odyssey. In his spare time, he is an avid mountaineer. 

I was viewing the exhibit from our newly created church archive (which is on display on tables across from the church office), and my eye was drawn to an issue of "Day by Dei," the church newsletter, dated Jan. 4, 1996. There I found an entry written by Pat. Shaw.  She had just returned from a Worship Conference in which she had particpated in a workshop titled "The Drama of Liturgy." Her reflections and obeservations illustrate that spiritual truth does not have an expirty date.  Her words still ring as true today as they did 30 years ago. 

"All too often we sing or recite as though there is little meaning in it for us. It is something we have done hundereds of times. It is a series of memorized owrds. It is routine. 

We should approach our pariticpation in worship with conviction. It's a new day. What happened fifty times before doesn't matter. Let's be spirited! Let's be alive!"

She then ends with a quote from Robert Shaw, the legendary choral conductor who is widely considered the most influential figure in modern American choral history.  

Worship should be mind stretching, soul searing, gut wernching -- and a generally exhaustice experience. 

He also firmly believed that sacred music and religious worship should engage a person's highest intellectual and emotional faculties rather than acting as passive entertainment or simplified pop music. He frequently argued that minimizing the rigor of the arts within religious settings ultimately causes churches to "wither and drift into irrelevance."