St Nicholas of Narol's New Space for Sunday Services
Like many other Orthodox Churches across the Archdiocese, St. Nicholas of Narol has been growing and growing and growing with people seeking a greater and more profound encounter with a saving love of God. Truly this growth has been a blessing beyond words, especially considering that St. Nicholas is by definition a "rural" parish, situated about 20 min North of Winnipeg. The challenge is that the community has outgrown its current space.
Last year, the St. Nicholas parish council established a committee to investigate what options might be available to accommodate this growth, whether it be renovating, purchasing a pre-existing structure, or building a new Church. Everyone recognized that this would be a somewhat lengthy process, and in the meantime, would have to be creative at how to accommodate about 70+ people on any given Sunday.
As this process slowly developed, the Parish council at St. Nicholas was approached by the parish of Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church (about 3 min north of St. Nicholas), about the possibility of renting their space. Given that they recently had their service schedule reduced to once a month, they did not want their Church to sit empty for the remaining weeks.
In many respects this was a miracle, as the St. Nicholas building committee was still exploring solutions, even as the parish had outgrown their space, and was still growing. With this offer, the parish of St. Nicholas could serve in a much larger space and still work towards finding the appropriate solution to accommodate everyone. The other aspect of this miracle is that it is not a radical change in distance between both communities, which provides the ability to serve weekday liturgies and evening vespers (services that are less attended) at St. Nicholas, and then feastal and weekend services at Holy Trinity (well attended services). This was very important for the faithful of St. Nicholas as it ensured an active liturgical presence at St. Nicholas (especially given its beauty and history -established in 1911, and rebuilt in 1953).
A lot of work was done for St. Nicholas' first liturgy - including the installation of an accessible washroom on the main level of the Church (done in under a week!); as well as a portable Altar was constructed to facilitate multiple priests and deacons serving and iconostas with beautiful Icons provided by Natalia Morin. It is certainly providential that this all happened just before the blessed feast of Pascha! Indeed serving in this new space felt no different than serving at St.Nicholas (where this feast has been celebrated for over a hundred years). The only real change that was felt by everyone was the fact that we did not like sardines!
This is truly a blessing that is providing the community of St. Nicholas, an opportunity to discern what the Lord's will is, while meeting the current needs of our community, and presenting an opportunity to accommodate growth.
May the Lord bless the dedication and work of those who have facilitated all this growth, and those who have had trusted in the Lord's saving providence as we look towards the future; for "unless the Lord builds a house, those who build it labor in vain" (Ps 127:1)