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amazing community

At the heart of faith formation and all we do at St. Andrew’s United Church rests our love of God and neighbour. We’re committed to environmental stewardship and believe everyone deserves access to fresh, healthy and inexpensive food.

  • Fair Trade purchasing
  • Zero-waste
  • Energy conservation
  • Food sustainability

Interested in volunteering with us? We always welcome those who want to help out around the church (and the life of the church)! At the moment, we’re especially looking to fill these roles:

Food Donations Delivery Driver (1), Wednesday mornings
On-call Dishwasher (2), Thursday afternoons

For more info, check out our Volunteer Success page (just scroll down to the bottom of that page to see our opportunities).

Open Sanctuary

The Sanctuary is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm for quiet reflection, meditation, or prayer.

All are welcome!

Meditation

Drop-in Mindfulness Awareness Meditation is back! Paul Belserene and/or Greg Sutton lead an hour of Mindfulness Awareness Meditation in our Sanctuary every Monday at 7 pm. Co-sponsored by St. Andrew’s United Church and the Vancouver Shambhala Centre.

All are welcome! By donation.

Bible Study

Stay tuned to this block for opportunities to study the scriptures in 2024!

Livable Income

Poverty can happen to anyone. St. Andrew’s has been working with other United Churches to advocate for a federally-instituted guaranteed livable income (GLI). 

Learn more about GLI and the United Church of Canada’s work on it, as well as steps you can take to help, here.

Refugee Sponsorship

St. Andrew’s United Church and a Sponsor Group are working together through the UCC for the resettlement of a young woman named Tanaz. We’re looking forward to meeting Tanaz, a dancer, translator and activist who has been repeatedly imprisoned and beaten in Iran for her art and her activism around women’s rights. She fled to Turkey five years ago and can’t return to her family in Iran for fear of  imprisonment or even death.

Mission & Service

Loving our neighbour is at the heart of our Mission & Service: together, we support global partnerships, community outreach, and human rights across Canada and around the world. Your gifts for the Mission & Service of The United Church of Canada make a better world possible and bring hope for the future.

 

Free Community Lunch & Bread Ministry

Thursdays, 12 – 1 pm
doors open at 11:30 am
in the Friendship Room

Join us for a free community lunch in the Friendship Room at St. Andrew’s every Thursday afternoon from 12 – 1 pm, and pick up bread from Cobs Bread or Westlynn Bakery before you leave. Everyone is welcome!

We are grateful to the City of North Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver and New Horizons for Seniors for their generous financial support of our food program. Thank you, too, to Cobs Bread, Westlynn Bakery, and the Salvation Army for donating food every week.

Emergency Food Program

Tuesdays, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Friendship Room at St. Andrew’s

Co-sponsored by St. Andrew’s and Harvest Project. At this two-hour drop-in program, volunteers welcome folks to share a cup of coffee and discuss their immediate food needs. Volunteers then provide information about available resources for food, shelter, assistance, and engagement in North Vancouver. A free bag of emergency groceries is provided to everyone.

If you would like to volunteer, please contact  Laurie-Anne Bourdon at outreach@st-andrews-united.ca.

Community Garden

St. Andrew’s United Church Community Garden fosters fun in community as residents of North Vancouver and members of St. Andrew’s tend 19 garden beds. Among other plots, our gardeners built and now maintain a communal herb garden and a butterfly & bee garden, to attract and nourish the sweet pollinators. The gardens are on the land adjacent to the Christian Education Building at 1046 St. George’s Avenue.

If you would like to be part of our gardening cooperative, please contact our Community Outreach Coordinator.

Climate Action

We are committed to living and working in sustainable, earth-friendly ways because we recognize that caring for our planet is indivisible from caring for each other. Climate friendly measures include greening our buildings and supporting zero-waste and food sustainability activities.

Urban Beehive

We’ve partnered with Alvéole, an urban beekeeping company, to build a honey bee hive on the east side of the church, near the ramp. Urban beekeeping is an excellent way to educate the community on the importance of bees while helping to protect these essential members of the ecosystem. Check out our Alvéole MyHive Page.

In 2023, we extended our butterfly & bee garden with support of the Sustainability Grant from the District of North Vancouver. The $1,000 grant helped us get a wide array of native plants from the Coast Salish Plant Nursery and Dÿkhof Nurseries. You can now see blueberry, huckleberry, wild ginger, kinnikinnick, goldenrod, rose, ocean spray and many others around the church. Native plants are ideal allies to mitigate climate change and alleviate biodiversity loss. They are well adapted to the local climate and provide habitat and food for native animals and insects. Native pollinators are particularly fond of them, like our bees who provide us with local honey.

Teddy Bear Picnic

Scroll through the photos below for a snapshot of the 2023 16th Annual Teddy Bear Picnic held at St. Andrew’s. A very successful event, and a lot of happy faces!