Welcome
Welcome to North Shore Unitarian Church! I am delighted that you are interested in learning more about our congregation and about Unitarian Universalism.
For 40 years, our church on the North Shore of Greater Vancouver has delivered a message of religious freedom, acceptance of diversity, faith based on reason and action for the good of the world. People have come here seeking more from life, looking for answers to painful questions or desiring a deeper purpose. Why do I feel empty when I thought I had almost everything I want? What do I make of this confusing world? How do I educate my children about how to make smart choices? What does life require of me? What do I require of life?
In our community, we enjoy the fact that we don’t all believe the same way, or use the same words, or seek truth by the same methods. Rather than valuing beliefs themselves, we treasure the richness that comes with the independent search for what we find most true. We encourage each other to question in order to grow clearer about what we believe.
To nurture this freedom of belief, we embrace diversity. Many of us come from different religious backgrounds, or from no exposure to religion at all. In our services and in our work together, we are side by side with others who may be, feel or think quite differently from us. How else would we learn the questions we have not yet thought to ask, or be offered possibilities we have not yet considered?
Some of us were born and raised Unitarian, which means that we were encouraged from childhood to engage with difference. Our Religious Education programs help our children to see the beauty that comes from diversity of all kinds. We teach our children and youth more about how to believe than what to believe; more about how to consider right and wrong than simply to conform to what most people think. This way we best prepare our next generations to both live in and help develop our world.
In our community, we find it important that each person finds beliefs that also satisfy the mind; there need be no contradiction between belief and thought. We commit ourselves to asking tough questions about life, and we relish the fact that sometimes the lack of an answer is the most satisfying, honest or beautiful truth there is.
Years ago, I looked at a Unitarian web-site and decided to visit. My life has been transformed.
Take a look at the FAQs (frequently asked questions) on our website, and come on a Sunday morning to see for yourself who we are, what we do and how it fits for you. And, when you do come, please do introduce yourself. Like most people in this congregation, I love to welcome visitors.
See you soon,
Stephen Atkinson
