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Friday Message
January 2, 2026
Thank you for the wonderful celebration of our ministry last Sunday. All I can say is that I am deeply honoured by all your loving kindness. I cannot imagine ending my journey any place else but with you at Erin Mills United.
I know that many of those who read these Friday Messages were not able to be at the church, so the following is a shortened version of my words to the gathering:
One of my favourite professors at Emmanuel College told us that our first task as a minister was to “love the people.” You have all made that so easy for me. I have been honoured to be your pastor and you have been outstanding among congregations.
I am thankful for the wonderful work relationships I have had with Len, Tina, and of course, Peter. It is really a gift to have colleagues that you respect and genuinely like.
I want to thank you as a congregation, for giving me some of the greatest memories of my life. I had no idea when I accepted the call to come to Erin Mills that I would find so many people that would care for me and my family as they loved their own. I had no idea how many of your children and grandchildren I would come to love as my own.
It has been an incredible journey.
You are among the finest people I have ever met. Your love and your presence in my life made me far richer than I could dream.
I hope you heard from me that you don’t have to be perfect or to have the perfect family, to be a witness for God or to be loved by God.
Thank you for all the joys and the celebrations we shared together, the graduations, the promotions, the marriages, the retirements, the babies and baptisms, the birthday parties.
Thank you for the trust you placed in me during some of the most intimate and painful moments in your lives, times when we hugged and sometimes cried together.
Thank you for the love and support we showed each other during our times of grief and loss.
Thank you for your faithfulness in your giving weekly, your giving to the special offerings, and your giving to the capital campaigns we held through the years.
Thank you for giving to the United Church Mission and Service fund. It is your love and commitment that make so many things possible.
Thank you for all the meetings we shared as we tried to study the word of God, or understand where God was leading us. Thank you to the members of the Leadership Circle and the Board of Trustees for your commitment and passion for this faith community. Thank you to everyone who volunteers to ensure that life keeps happening in this place.
Thank you for all the music, the praise, the worship, the choirs as we sang to the glory of God. Thank you to all of you who serve in the important work of hospitality, as ushers, cooks, cleaners, snow shovellers, greeters, decorators, and more.
Thank you for sharing me with the wider church. You made room for me to go to commission meetings and Regional Council meetings. You gave space to share my time with other churches and organizations when they needed pastoral leadership.
Thank you so much for the tech and communication teams that have allowed us to take our message far beyond the walls of this church. People can join our services anywhere in the world over Zoom. Our email and social media reach many people who no longer can attend in person and many more who never have. I am so impressed that when the world was shutting down, Erin Mills reached out.
Thank you for your faith. Thank you for taking a risk and becoming an Affirming congregation – open and welcome to everyone, but with a special love for the ones often marginalized by the church. You have made me so proud to be your minister.
There have been times I wish I could have served you more effectively. I ask your forgiveness for when I was too busy to notice you wanted to talk. I ask your forgiveness for forgetting to return a phone call or not getting to you as soon as you thought I should have.
I ask your forgiveness for leaving your name out of a bulletin or not giving you credit along with others. I ask your forgiveness for when I may have given you a wrong impression of who Jesus Christ was or what the scriptures taught.
I ask your forgiveness for when I may have been so passionate about an issue that I came off as insensitive, or unkind. I ask your forgiveness for any way in which you felt I failed you as a pastor. It was not my intention to hurt any of you.
Finally, I want to thank you for all of the times that you sent up prayers on my behalf during the course of our ministry. It’s an honour to have a congregation praying that God will keep you safe.
My prayer for you comes straight from scripture, the letter to the Thessalonians:
This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
And as the apostle Paul told the Philippian Church, “I am confident of this, that the One who began a good work in you, shall be faithful to complete it.”
Blessings, Kathi
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