Connecting to North Town

Fifty years ago, Scott St. MB Church found the perfect location. It’s still the right place to be.

Our church founders thought they found a perfect location when they built our church. It was situated just north of St. Catharines, Ont., close – but not too close – to town, and still surrounded by the farmland that provided jobs for many of our church members. It was a perfect location – were we not called, after all, to be in the world but not quite of it?

That was 1954. Since then our church’s situation has changed a lot. Roads have been paved and the farms replaced by subdivisions, strip malls and several large apartment buildings.

Today we find ourselves in a situation to which many city churches can probably relate. Our church members live scattered across the city while our actual church building is surrounded by hundreds of people we have never met, let alone found ways to show love to.

What can a church do about this?

This is a question our church has often asked itself, even before we became a “city church.” This year marks the second year since we started doing something that is a bit unusual for us. We started our very own community basketball drop-in out of our church’s gym.

It’s been a frustrating and exhausting experience at times. It’s occasionally gotten rough; some fights have started and it’s brought the police to our church at least once. At the same time it’s an idea our volunteers have grown to appreciate. With our goal being to meet our neighbours, basketball has worked out pretty well for us. Believe it or not, we’d actually recommend it to other churches.

A 3-on-3 outdoor basketball tournament at Scott Street MB Church.

Getting started

Our ministry started when we put up a basketball net in our church parking lot. At the time it was really just a metaphor: a sign that hopefully said welcome to passersby. Kids started using it and we came to appreciate that the kids in our neighbourhood didn’t mind being on our property.

Then, three years ago, on little more than our youth pastor’s whim and with little evidence that kids would come out, our church started our (now) annual basketball tournament. Five teams showed up the first year and eight the second. It was a good experience for us, so afterwards, when kids started asking why they couldn’t use our gym on a regular basis, it ended up being a hard question to answer.

By September 2003 we were bracing ourselves for our entry into the drop-in scene. We had felt immediately that “basketball night” wasn’t about the neighbourhood getting to meet us; we wanted to meet the neighbourhood. We encouraged kids to come, to bring their friends, to make use of our gym.

Things started slowly but kept growing. By January we were seeing more kids from the community than we could handle. Fortunately, Grantham MB Church, a daughter church just one kilometre away, liked what we were doing and offered to help us by starting their own drop-in. Today kids in the community have two places from which to choose.

Teaching us

The drop-in has taught us a lot about the community that now surrounds our church. We are just a short distance from a low-income housing development where most of our neighbourhood kids live. They call it “North Town,” a name we incorporated when we named our ministry the North End Basketball Drop-in.

We have kids from more than 20 countries of origin coming out on a regular basis and we’re still in for the occasional surprise. Once, after talking to a rather shy kid, one of our volunteers discovered we had our first Kurdish Iraqi. He had been in the country just over one month.

When parents come out to see what their kids are up to we often take the opportunity to give them a heartfelt greeting. Somehow we’ve found a way to start meeting our neighbours, and the chance to let the kids know we’re available for them. It’s at times like these that the phrase “love your neighbour” starts to take root.

It’s inevitable that things will change in the future. Our city will change and so will our ministry to our community.

For now our basketball night seems to fit well with other ministries that our church is already operating. We run a kids club and a VBS program that are also well attended by kids in the neighbourhood.

Our congregation turned 60 years old last year, an event we marked with an appropriate amount of reflection and thanks to God. We continue to find reasons to believe that God wants us where we are. As it turns out, this place can still be a perfect location for a church.

Matthew Jantz is a computer analyst/technician in St. Catharines, Ont. and an active volunteer at Scott St. MB Church.