The Rev. Deborah Stanbury has served as minister at Tolmie Presbyterian Church in Port
Elgin (Saugeen Shores) and Knox Presbyterian Church in Burgoyne since November, 2022.
Here is part of a recent conversation with retired minister, Rev. Bob Johnston about Stanbury’s work in human-trafficking through the ARISE program on the streets of Toronto and her views on the meaning of church today.
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Rev. Bob: Ministers typically move to lead churches in a variety of communities over the course of their careers. But you have made quite an unusual shift in direction. Tell me about your last place of ministry before coming to Bruce County.
Rev. Deb: For nine years, starting in 2013, I served as Director of ARISE Ministry in Toronto. Our goal was to help women in the sex trade to reclaim their lives, to work with survivors of human trafficking and with those at risk of sexual exploitation.
Rev. Bob: So, actually, your “church” was really the streets of downtown Toronto and your “congregation” was women and girls involved in the sex trade?
Rev. Deb: Yes, women and girls but also individuals with all gender identities. At the beginning, I was the only staff member and even that was part-time. But we grew to add other staff and frontline volunteers.
Rev. Bob: And how did you make connections with those individuals on the streets?
Rev. Deb: We usually set out on foot from around 11 pm until about 2 or 3 am. Our initial point of contact was through our outreach bags. They contained useful and practical items such as hand sanitizer, wipes, Kleenex, gum, water, chocolate, tampons and in winter, hand-warmers and mitts. These got to be known by the women as “pretty bags” because volunteers had handcrafted them to look attractive.
After a while, we could personalize the supplies according to a woman’s specific needs and preferences and we got to be recognized and known as “the back-pack people.”
Rev. Bob: How was your work financially supported?
Rev. Deb: ARISE Ministry is a mission of the Presbytery of East Toronto and financially supported by the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Rev. Bob: So where did religion or faith fit into your downtown outreach?
Rev. Deb: Faith can be part of someone’s journey but it’s up to them. We certainly have prayed with people, done “Home Blessings” on request, gone to church with them. One of my best memories was our agape-style “church lunch,” a shared meal of soup, bread and grapes or other fruit, held at Armour Heights Presbyterian Church.
Rev. Bob: Tell me about some of the other ways ARISE offered support, once a connection and trust were built.
Rev. Deb: The clients set their own goals. Once they trusted us enough to visit our office, we would plan how they might exit the sex trade. While they remained, we helped them to cope better and be safer on the street. With younger, vulnerable girls, we helped them to avoid becoming trafficked into sex work. Some specific goals might include anger management, setting boundaries, securing housing, finding and maintaining healthy relationships, dealing with childhood trauma.
It is important to stress that the sex trade is not just a Toronto or big city problem. It is concentrated in places like Toronto because that’s where the population centres and support services are. But these women and girls come from across Canada. So Canada, not just its large urban areas, owns the problem.
Rev. Bob: You obviously speak passionately about your ministry with ARISE. Yet, you eventually must have felt a calling to a more traditional church ministry.
Rev. Deb: Yes, while working at ARISE, I also served for a time as co-interim moderator (minister) at Rosedale Presbyterian Church in Toronto, while they searched for a new pastor. For me, this experience of congregational work differed from ARISE street ministry and offered new opportunities. While I had been a guest preacher at various churches, I now was able to plan the whole service, working with music leadership and creating sermons. I would meet regularly with the Session (church board) to guide the work of the church. At Rosedale, it was so different having an ongoing and consistent relationship with the same group of people. And the church had a deep commitment to outreach and caring for the wider community. All this led to a discernment and interest in serving as a congregational minister.
Rev. Bob: Tell me about your formal training for ordained ministry.
Rev. Deb: I’ll start by mentioning that as a young person, I had the privilege of being mentored by my own wonderful minister in Richmond Hill, Ontario. A strong believer in inter-generational worship, he involved the church youth group in services, I preached my very first sermon at 14.
After graduating from Laurier in 2005, and then working at the Yonge Street Mission, I moved West to get my Master of Divinity from Vancouver School of Theology in 2008. I was ordained in 2010 and later, in 2016, obtained my Master of Theology degree from Knox College in Toronto.
Rev. Bob: After nine years as Executive Director of ARISE, you were invited in 2022 to meet with the Sessions of Knox and Tolmie and then to “preach for the call,” (as we say in church talk.) Before all this, had you ever been to Bruce County?
Rev. Deb: As a child, I had a family friend whose cottage was in Southampton. Our family would also visit a cousin’s cottage near Bayfield, so I got to know and love Lake Huron. We had relatives who lived on a farm so I had a bit of experience with rural life.
Rev. Bob: First impressions of Port Elgin and Burgoyne after being so long in Toronto?
Rev. Deb: Of course. Knox is a beautiful, friendly little country church, 162 years old, on County Road 3, serving in part a rural population. Tolmie is an active and welcoming small-town church in a friendly community. Living in Toronto, I quickly noted the lack of huge high rises here. Even before moving here, I remember walking one day down Green Street and was impressed with how many folks offered a greeting to me as a stranger.
Rev. Bob: Tell me about those famous butter tarts.
Rev. Deb: Selling home-made butter tarts was a combined outreach from both churches. Tolmie is on Goderich, our main street and situated right next to the Market which is on Wednesdays over the summer. We decided to reach out and connect with pedestrians in this busy part of town. Selling butter tarts was a successful fund raiser, but more importantly, gave us a chance to introduce ourselves to lots of folks who were passing by.
Speaking of food and fundraisers, every November, Knox Church organizes a large group of church volunteers, their extended families and friends to complete the making of as many as 900 homemade apple pies in just one day. People come from all over the County to buy these treats. Both churches also organize other events, such as take-home or eat-in turkey and fish dinners, a Christmas bazaar at Tolmie and a relaxing summer strawberry and then peaches and cream socials at Tolmie. That congregation also host well-attended musical events for the community.
Rev. Bob: Are there other ways the two congregations come together?
Rev. Deb: We host a community lunch on the third Tuesday of every month, we have book studies and some combined services, for example, at Christmas and Easter. There are joint planning meetings.
Rev. Bob: Getting back to your fundraisers, you have emphasized that they are about more than simply raising money to support the churches, as important as that purpose is.
Rev. Deb: Yes, as we found out with this summer’s butter tarts, there were lots of folks who knew little or nothing about our two churches. They were interested in meeting me as the minister and our members who were helping with baking and sales. We live in a post—Christendom society where many people have never been inside a church building and only a small percentage of Canada’s population regularly attends a religious service. So being visible in the community is important to make ourselves known. But even beyond those goals, providing our two communities with meals, music and friendly conversation can be a valuable demonstration of caring and service in itself.
Rather than setting goals on the basis of traditional presumed needs, we must connect with our communities to find out actual needs and respond to that. Within the church, we strive to build what I call “brave space,” where we can wrestle openly, even sometimes struggle, with our old assumptions and change as needed.
Rev. Bob: tell me more about this reality of leading a church in a post-Christian society.
Rev. Deb: Even though the world has changed around us, Canadian churches are at times still doing church the same way it was in the 1950s, when pews and Sunday Schools were filled. Unlike then, we cannot just open our doors and expect people to flock in just because we’re here. Ways that worked for churches then may not do so now. The question is not what my vision may be, but what is God’s vision for the church today? And how we can be part of that movement.
One way to begin is by shift from “doing church” to “being the church.” That means thinking beyond that one hour of worship Sunday mornings. Churches are to be “the sent people of God” to reach out to the poor, the lonely, the needy, to welcome the stranger, to care for the vulnerable. We should want to participate in God’s mission in His world, in this time in history, where God has placed us. For the church, perhaps it will be in a different form of service than now.
Rev. Bob: Does that suggest our current style of Sunday morning church must change? Is there still a place for the old hymns or sermons?
Rev. Deb: As far as music is concerned, I don’t think the issue is whether we sing traditional hymns with organ accompaniment or move toward “livelier” choruses with drums and a praise band. For me, the key is whether the worship style is authentic. I recently attended “Audacious Hope,” a large gathering of 450 Presbyterian and United Church young people from across Canada. They responded in worship to several styles of music from Taize chants to ukulele bands or hand-clapping choruses. The key to music ministry is to involve the congregation, not create a performance where the congregation are just spectators. And people throughout the ages have always loved to hear a story. Styles of sermons may have to change from long lectures about the Bible. I try to weave an interesting and relevant-to-life story into every sermon I preach.
Rev. Bob: As I said in the beginning of our long conversation, you have made quite a shift from the streets of downtown Toronto to your two local congregations here in Port Elgin and Burgoyne. But do you find there are still similarities in your ministry?
Rev. Deb: I think that every person has basic needs, no matter where they live. Everyone has a need to belong, to be accepted, to be loved and cared for, to be part of a community and to find meaning in life. Church should offer that hope, not just from the minister, but from each member of the congregation. And I would like to think more about how to bring the strengths of an ARISE drop-in ministry to congregational settings. That would require quite a team effort. Of course, some of those basic human needs I mentioned earlier can be met elsewhere, but church does provide a place where you can just “can come as you are,” without being judged, and a place of drawing closer to God. That’s what we are all about, on the streets of Toronto or right here in Port Elgin and Burgoyne.
