ANNUAL REPORT 2022

BIBLICAL TEACHING AND PASTORAL CARE

Throughout our brief history at St Jax, we have embraced a team approach to our Sunday teaching. We value the richness that hearing different voices brings to the community. That continued in 2022, and, as we move forward post-pandemic, we are anticipating reactivating the Teaching Team, and welcoming new members which reflect the diversity of St Jax. 

With the return to in-person services from March of 2022, we have so enjoyed being together again! This has allowed us to shift back to seeing and meeting people face to face, even though pastoring on the phone or Zoom continued consistently throughout the pandemic.

welcome and hospitality

At St Jax, we have always valued a warm hospitable welcome on Sundays which is evidenced by our coffee and bagel time each week. It was such a joy to return to that this past year! A big thanks to our Iranian members who have stepped in to help carry this ministry! We have had to rebuild our welcome and hospitality teams as they were not active during the pandemic when services were online. It’s encouraging to see an influx of new young members to welcome people as they come to Sunday services. 

ALPHA

Alpha 2022 was particularly fruitful. We ran several courses including an online Farsi course and our annual fall session which featured a return to in-person Alpha at the church as well as an online discussion group. For our Holy Spirit weekend we joined with the Alpha groups of St. Ignatius of Loyola with whom we enjoyed a beautiful fellowship and weekend. Our courses saw beautiful prayer for one another as we progressed to the end of the program. 

KIDS

“Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” Matt 18:14

At St. Jax we love children!  This year the children’s team welcomed Leigh who is loving our littlest ones in the nursery.  Leigh also led the children during our “summer light” with lessons prepared by Jen.  Tori, Jen, Molly-Claire, Olivia & myself, Kathy, continue to gather with the children weekly.  We have learned about God, His ways and about His Kingdom through various bible stories and passages.  We have practised hearing Him through pictures and words. We have prayed, worshipped, played, partied (Easter!) and crafted several models expressing Kingdom truths.  The children were particularly impacted by the outbreak of war in Ukraine and lingering impacts of the pandemic… these we took to the Lord in prayer, asking Him for peace, healing, protection, and blessing.  God bless the children!  

YOUTH

We started off the year being on zoom again. We started a really cool series in February. The series is called “Life On Purpose”. Life On Purpose is a 4 week long series. The video’s are shorter than the Youth Alpha videos so this is why I thought It would be perfect to do this during Zoom Church. Our first Sunday started off with 9 youth on Zoom! So encouraging! Life On Purpose is designed to serve teens by helping them make the connection between meaning, belonging, impact, and the joy of having their friends come to know Jesus. The content is full of stories that are relatable to youth. I pray that the youth will see and continue to see Jesus as the loving Father he is and know that he is always there for them no matter what.

Once we were back in person we started a bible study on the book of Colossians. The length of this study was about 8 weeks. The focus of this study was focusing on answering the most important question of all time: Who is Jesus? Throughout the weeks of this bible study, we covered different sections: Jesus is always with us, Jesus is our guide, Jesus is the perfect example, Jesus will deliver us, Jesus paid it all for us and Jesus gives us significance. 

We started back to school season with a prayer course called Origins by 24/7 prayer. This prayer course has 8 sessions. 

Session 1 - Why Pray 

Session 2 - Who do we pray to? 

Session 3 - P - Pause 

Session 4 - R - Rejoice 

Session 5 - A - Ask

Session 6 - Y - Yes

Session 7 - E - Endure

Session 8 - R - Repeat 

William and Reuben, our two oldest youth at St Jax stepped into their roles as leaders this past year.

CENTRE ST JAX

The Centre St Jax is how we publicly refer to our property and its general operations. It is also an administrative division within the structure of the Corporation which is responsible for facilities & property management.

In 2022, we experienced another record-breaking year for the Centre’s revenues from our tenants, short-term rentals, and other sources. We expect another record-breaking year in 2023.

The relationship with our primary building-user, Cirque le Monastère, is stronger than ever and is bringing new benefits to our community. These included the installation of an air conditioning system in the Sanctuary, a $300,000 project that was entirely paid for by a Heritage Canada grant which they obtained. The system is sufficiently powerful that it could one day be extended to the Hall. Their next project (currently in progress) is a full replacement of the Sanctuary bathrooms. Le Monastère is actively working on various funding opportunities for other structural renovations.

We were pleased to welcome two new regular building users in 2022. First, the Medicine Bear Drum Circle, an Indigenous men’s support group which meets here weekly during the cold months. Second is Innovation-Assistance, a project by Innovation Youth which works in the area of food security. One of their activities is the bi-weekly Solidarity Market, which is helping hundreds of people in the neighbourhood to save money on their groceries.

We were saddened to say farewell to our Alcoholics Anonymous meetings which have been with us since the 1980s. The meetings were cancelled for two years during the pandemic, and when they started up again, attendance never recovered. The organisers finally decided to throw in the towel last summer. We would dearly like to continue offering this service and have been in contact with several other 12-step groups about the possibility of moving here.

A major challenge for the Centre in 2022 was the maintenance of our gardens, which are currently in a terrible state. This was due to a multitude of factors, some within our control and some without. Although we will take some measures to mitigate the ugliness, we will not be able to return the gardens to their former glory in 2023 due to reasons which are connected to our building’s masonry.

Our building’s masonry is deteriorating at an exponential pace. As we search for a solution to this problem, we have been obligated to conduct yearly inspections of that masonry which usually cost about $75,000 each. In 2022 we made an agreement with Le Monastère to split that cost, which reduced our spending in this regard. In 2023, due to the exponential pace of the deterioration, we will be obligated to conduct two inspections instead of one, at an anticipated cost of $150,000.

First, with regards to the condition of the garden, the use of heavy machinery for these inspections destroys our lawn every year, forcing us to replant it. The replanting in 2022 was unsuccessful due to the subsequent damage caused by Le Monastère’s use of our garden for its summer programming. Without that summer programming, we’d forgo them paying for half of the masonry inspection, as well as the $30,000 they pay to use the garden. This year, we’ll push back the start of the summer programming a bit to give the grass more time to grow, which should make some difference.

With regards to the new, higher cost of inspections, we are pinning our hopes on selling the garden to the City of Montreal, who’d turn it into a public park. We have an agreement in principle to sell it for $3.5 million and are currently working out details related to access, servitude rights, development rights, etc.. Once the sale goes through (following special approval by the Corporation) we will have the funds necessary to finance the immediate masonry inspection needs, and to begin work on actually repairing the more urgent masonry issues.

FINANCIAL REPORT