Whistler MBs inspired by Catholic cross

Photo: Christine Lamb

When Craig Smith strolled by Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church in Whistler, B.C., he chanced to look up at the cross perched high over the church.

Smith, a member of Whistler Community (MB) Church, began to reflect on how Christians are taught to lay life’s problems at the foot of the cross.

“I realized that our church community, which was struggling through the difficult planning stages of building a new church, could depend on the cross to draw the strength we needed.”

On January 14, after Smith ran his idea by fellow WCC members, a wooden cross – a sign of hope and new life for all Christians – was erected on the building site of the new church, which they hope will be completed by 2010, the year of the Winter Olympics.

Smith was happy to discover that his congregation had put up its cross near the start of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, dedicated to strengthening relationships between Christians of different denominations.

The Week of Prayer, observed in the third week of January, brings together Christians from around the world, inspired by Christ’s prayer, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. . . . so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:21–23).

“It was, after all,” noted Smith, “the beautiful cross on a Catholic church that made me realize our evangelical community should have a cross on which to focus our thoughts and prayers.”

Smith enlisted the help of his fellow church members, including Steve Legate, to bring the cross project to fruition.

Legate arranged for some logs to come from Continental Log Homes in Mount Currie, B.C. and was soon busy notching, sanding, and arranging for them to be trucked to the building site where they could be assembled.

Finally, on a cold and snowy day, the community banded together to lift the three-metre high cross into place on their 1.74-acre property.

Now that they have asked God’s blessing on the site, the cross will undoubtedly “be a reminder of what God wants for our community,” said Smith.

Whistler Community Church is one of the town’s oldest faith communities, with a rapidly shifting population of members and visitors. Meetings began in 1979 at the old Skiers’ Chapel. Sunday services are now held at Myrtle Philip Community Centre in a gymnasium used by the community centre and school. Tim Unruh is pastor.

Smith hopes the new cross will also inspire local residents and visitors to work together to welcome the world in three years to the Olympics. Building fellowship, he said, can be compared to building a bigger fire.

“As we add logs to the fire (gather more people together), the fire burns brighter. Take the logs away and the fire dies down and sometimes even goes out!”

—Laureen McMahon in The B.C. Catholic, Jan. 29