Holding hope for the North End

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This article was published 20/08/2016 (3664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An award-winning city musician and a community worker want to fill a pulpit near you.

Singer-songwriter Steve Bell and Kyle Mason of the North End Family Centre are booking Sunday morning music-and-speaking gigs in Manitoba churches in an attempt to raise awareness — and a bit of cash — for the Winnipeg ministry.

“The summer is a difficult time to raise funds,” says Mason, executive director and founder of the family centre located at 1344 Main St.

“Steve does the music part and I do the speaking part and the church staff can take the Sunday off.”

The tour was also prompted by the recent decision of World Vision Canada to cut all its Canadian programs as of Sept. 30, resulting in a significant loss to the family centre’s $300,000 annual budget that pays for its three paid staff, programs and facility costs, says Mason.

The non-profit, Christian relief and development organization released a statement to the Free Press about the cuts, saying it plans to focus on helping vulnerable children in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and South Sudan.

The World Vision Canada statement says the organization helped 69,000 children through 100 Canadian churches and agencies in the past 11 years, including Winnipeg.

Mason argues the North End Family Centre also serves a vulnerable population in the city’s North End, and its sustainability should be important to all Winnipeggers.

“We are all connected, whether you look at it through a Christian lens that we are created by God or an indigenous mindset that we are all relations,” says Mason, a direct descendent of Chief Peguis, and now the keeper of the English Bible once used by Peguis, who converted to Christianity and was baptized as an Anglican in 1840.

“Also, if you call yourself a person of faith, you care about the things God cares about: the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the forgotten, the overlooked.”

The centre provides a safe place for adults and families, and provides basic services such as free computer use, laundry facilities, community kitchen and telephones to area residents.

“We work in the North End with families in our neighbourhood,” Mason says of the core mission of the Christian-based organization.

“We let it (our faith) come out in relationships, we let it come out in times. We’re not in a rush.”

After a half-dozen summer Sundays of filling pulpits in Winnipeg, Roseisle and Lac du Bonnet, Mason and Bell have raised about $6,000 for the family centre, which attracts 1,400 visits a month, mostly from people who live only a few blocks away.

The pair leads the 10:30 a.m. worship service Sunday at Sterling Mennonite Church, 1008 Dakota St., and will continue into the fall in order to keep up the visibility of the centre established in 2009, says Bell, a member of the centre’s board.

“In a world of superstores and super-ministries, I value that humble connection,” the Juno Award winner says of the personal connections he has made by regularly volunteering at the centre.

“They let relationships grow, so if someone wants a deeper relationship, it arises naturally.”

Initially hesitant to let strangers take over his pulpit at Bethel Community Church, Rev. Ed Grant says the early July worship service with Bell and Mason opened up awareness in his non-denominational evangelical Christian congregation for issues facing vulnerable people in Winnipeg.

“We’re probably as far from the North End as most churches are,” says Grant of his southeast Winnipeg church of 400. “Our church is not just about our community here (in Island Lakes). It’s about the whole city.”

That’s exactly the message Mason hopes to keep spreading: all Winnipeggers are in it together.

“What’s good for the North End is good for everyone. If you love Winnipeg, you love the North End.”

brenda@suderman.com

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