For the second time in almost 50 years, the church on the corner of Bank Street and Argyle Avenue has a new name.
Effective Jan. 1, McLeod-Stewarton United Church, a Centretown landmark since 1908, will become Centretown United Church in recognition of its recent amalgamation with Bell Street United Church.
McLeod-Stewarton itself resulted from the 1961 amalgamation of McLeod Street Methodist Church and Stewarton Presbyterian Church. Now, both names will be disappear.
“Bell-McLeod-Stewarton seemed a bit cumbersome as a new name,” says Rev. Shaun Yaskiw, Centretown United’s minister. “A new name fit with the congregation’s understanding that God was calling it to a new ministry in a new way.”
The newly-joined congregation held a “name-that-church” competition and voted on a final three. It chose the name Centretown United Church.
Yaskiw, the former minister of Bell Street United, says amalgamation talks between Bell Street and McLeod-Stewarton began some years ago because of shrinking congregations.
“Fewer and fewer people see church as a part of their life, let alone any kind of a focus of their lives and so the numbers of people in the congregation had really decreased,” says Peg Craig, co-chair of the joint amalgamation committee.
“There wasn’t enough time and resources to do much other than just keep the doors of the building open and that’s not the aim of it. McLeod-Stewarton was less than a mile away and suffering the same phenomena; living the same phenomena. Our priorities were much the same. It made a whole lot of sense.” The amalgamation became official on Sept. 14.
Most of the people, from both former congregations, do not live in Centretown. Craig says that when discussions first started for the amalgamation, a big question was “what is our commitment to downtown?”
Among the submissions for the new name, the most common theme was some label of location and district.
Above all, however, community outreach was the main priority that brought the two churches together.
Centre 507, an adult drop-in centre that is housed and largely supported by McLeod-Stewarton United, was a big incentive to keep the historic church on Bank and Argyle. Bell Street sold its church to the Ottawa Korean Community Church, which had already been sharing the space.
“The decision to sell the Bell Street property was a difficult one – the building is more than a physical space: it is a spiritual one invested with the prayers of generations,” says Yaskiw.
Leaving Bell Street was as hard as selling your childhood home, says Craig. “But that doesn’t mean the next step isn’t exciting.”