ATHABASCA – The Athabasca United Church hosted a special visitor on May 4 when the head of the United Church of Canada stopped in to preach, check in, and talk with the congregation.
The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne is the 44th Moderator of the United Church of Canada, and in that role she is responsible for overseeing the direction of the denomination and providing leadership and guidance to its 2,450 congregations across the country.
“We’ve only had one other moderator come in our 100-year history of being the United Church of Canada here in Athabasca. It’s a very rare and special event,” said local minister Monica Rosborough.
“It would be like the Prime Minister of Canada coming to the Athabasca Advocate and wanting to sit in and say, ‘Hey, how are things going?’”
Lansdowne’s visit drew worshippers from Barrhead, Westlock, Fort McMurray, and as far away as Grande Prairie for the event, which took on a slight Star Wars theme thanks to its timing on May the Fourth.
Music is a large part of any United Church service, according to Rosborough, so bringing multiple congregations together elevated that experience, with the group singing hymns throughout the morning.
“Music is the way that God speaks to our hearts. Worship can be very logical and rational, and it needs to be both logical and something that we feel deeply,” said Rosborough.
“That’s where music comes in, because it does speak to our hearts. We don’t usually have as much music as we did, but it was a very special day.”
The year 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the United Church, although the Athabasca congregation predates its official formation. Since then, the church has been known as a progressive entity, breaking barriers around Indigenous inclusion, the role of women in ministry, and LGBTQ+ rights. While far from perfect — and having experienced a major schism over its progressive values — Rosborough said the denomination continues to grow through reflection.
“All those sorts of things have been issues the United Church has wrestled with and, at times, been a role model on for the rest of Canada,” she said. “Yes, we’ve made mistakes, yes we’ve had our problems, and yes we’re still learning — but we’re learning with humility, and hopefully we’re able to bring that learning and that struggle back to our people.”
Reflection through faith
Lansdowne’s sermon, which is available online via the Athabasca church’s Facebook page, touched on a variety of themes — from the Easter season to the intersection of traditional Indigenous views and Euro-Christian experiences. Lansdowne is the first Indigenous woman to lead any religious denomination in Canada and is a member of the Heiltsuk First Nation in B.C.
She spoke to the 100-plus congregation about her own experiences with God, the pressure of always being busy doing important things — religious or otherwise — and the broader struggles facing modern churches.
Rosborough said her words rang true in a world that is rapidly changing. Part of the reason Lansdowne was in Athabasca is because Rosborough has been taking a course with her, where one of the themes has been the fragmentation and diversity of modern belief systems.
“It used to be that you could predict a person’s church based on their ethnicity and socioeconomic status,” said Rosborough. “It was a given — if you did this job, you went to this church; if you did that job, you went to that one. That’s all changed.”
“For people who are starting to have these deeper conversations, there are so many gurus on the internet, there are so many experts on social media, and it’s really hard to know who to listen to,” she added. “Sometimes these voices can be so overwhelming that we just shut down and give up.”
Rosborough said one of the biggest challenges for clergy today is connecting these modern complexities to the lessons passed down over thousands of years.
“My challenge, as someone called to speak faith into this complexity, is to respect both the diversity and the depth of it — while also grounding the conversation in the testimony of those who came before us.”
