Willowdale church offers winter warming centre

Creative ways to love our neighbours

Joel Gordon of Willowdale Baptist Church shares:

We are a small, welcoming church that practises hospitality and care for our neighbours. There were years of relational foundation before this outreach started. City councillor Lily Cheng helped bring this to pass. She has served in ministry and civic service in northern Toronto for years. Our city was struggling to find places to host and facilitate a warming centre in late 2022. She reached out to me at the church. We’ve been partnering with them now for three years.

They rent our lower level and work with a third-party organization, Dixon Hall, to provide security, social workers, cots and all social assistance support visitors would need. On the south side of our building we have a second entrance that leads to the warming centre. The active way we’ve found to interact with visitors is to keep our doors wide open during our Sunday morning services, Wednesday prayer meeting and monthly community dinner. It makes room for organic connection.

If another church is thinking of doing something similar, I’d encourage them to build meaningful relationships with other Christian leaders in your community. I’d recommend getting to know your local elected officials and prioritize praying for them. Also, anticipate resistance in your congregation for this type of partnership. It would be wise for church leaders to educate members of your community about its benefits. In our community we talked about it as a church, discussing how it fit into our ethos and faithfulness in responding to the heart of the gospel. Working with the city, we also hosted a town hall meeting where neighbours could ask questions.

We talked about how it fit into our ethos and faithfulness in responding to the heart of the gospel.

—SAMMY KYEREME

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