Last Thursday, Toronto’s Anglican Diocesan Council decided to give St. Stephen’s a stay of execution.
The council resolved to let the congregation of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, a church on College St. at the north end of Kensington Market, stay in their building “on a month-to-month basis until a tenant is found, and subject to the continued cooperation of the parish with the Diocese.” Reactions at the congregation were mixed.
“I had been hoping…that with the sorts of feelings we’ve been getting, the feedback we’d been getting, that we were going to do better than we did,” says Martha Cunningham, a parishioner who has been coordinating efforts to raise support for St. Stephen’s.
The parish had been trying to convince church authorities to completely reverse a decision made last June 17 to evict the congregation from their building at the end of September. The dispute, over a $400,000 debt owed to the diocese from the congregation, has inspired a great deal of public support for the community-minded trilingual ministry. In the last five weeks, $140,000 has been raised, reducing the church’s debt to $210,000.
Cunningham isn’t sure how the church can function on a month-to-month basis.
“Some people are calling it death by a thousand cuts,” she says.
Members of the congregation are also concerned about the word “cooperation,” wondering if it means that they will be evicted for campaigning too strenuously against the diocese.
The congregation will meet on Wednesday to discuss their next move, but one thing is certain-they will keep fighting to stay in their building. Cunningham says that they would welcome a co-tenant. A real estate agent is working with the diocese to find a tenant.
“When the tenant comes in we really don’t know if we’re going to be another tenant here, who’s going to be the prime tenant, who will be the secondary,” says Cunningham. The Friends of St. Stephen’s say that since they found a real estate agent for the diocese, the congregation should be allowed to stay on as a co-tenant.
The diocese has repeatedly refused to comment on St. Stephen’s and has not yet released a statement on Thursday’s meeting.
In the meantime, activity continues at the church. Yesterday afternoon there was a multilingual service, in English, French, Spanish, and a Congolese language, followed by a potluck. Church members shared food in the back room of their building-a congregation with an uncertain future.
