There may be another United church with an outdoor pizza oven that offers karaoke and pizza on a Friday night, but at Broadview, we haven’t heard of one. Bedford United in Bedford, N.S., has found a way not only to stem decline, but to reverse it and their story is instructive for the whole denomination.
Congregational minister Rev. Katie Aven came to Bedford in 2018. She has seen Bedford go through both growth and significant decline. In 2023, facing an $80,000 deficit, Aven said that the board decided that it was a moment for unvarnished truth-telling.
“We told the congregation that we were going to run out of cash in 18 months and we needed to make major changes,” she says.
Aven is very clear that the goal was to be a church, not a social service agency or a community hub: “The process of visioning really helped us to catalyze the church,” she says. “And then when [lead minister Rev. Beth Hayward] came a year ago, it was like, we were so ready for what she brought.”
The consultation process that Aven started played a vital role in Bedford’s next stage. She was clear that they were not going to “bounce back” without a concerted effort to “strengthen our welcome and turn our gaze outward to the community around us.”
From theatre arts, to music, hiking and book groups, they invited the community to join them regardless of their church participation. This invitation was clearly heard and accepted.
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Cassandra Pynn is a 20-something new member who saw that for herself. She was experiencing a spiritual yearning and based on her boyfriend’s advice, decided to give Bedford a try. She was impressed. “I was averse to the idea of church and religion. So I thought, ‘these people are crazy, basically.’ I got there, and they were talking about real-life things,” she says. “They brought up evolution and science. I thought ‘these are real people, and they have real beliefs that align with science which I value.’”
Lead minister Rev. Beth Hayward, who joined the church in 2024, believes that she came at just the right time.
“I don’t know what the combo was, but since my arrival, we are clearly in this renewed moment again,” she says. “ In the spring of 2023 were averaging 80 in person at worship, now in 2025 we have 175, in addition to up to 200 views online every week. Participation in our small-group ministry is growing and we do expect to see a steady growth over the coming years.”
One of Bedford’s keys to success is that they have a detailed and vigorous ministry plan, one that is being implemented each week.
This, according to long-term member Heather Boucher, is key. “The whole congregation shares the same mindset: “We are consistently welcoming, consistently questioning, consistently curious. So there’s consistency, I think, within the whole community, of wanting to continue to grow, and how do we do better tomorrow than we did today and how do we continue to move and be responsive to the ever-changing world around us?
One of this congregation’s strengths is that there are many pathways into the community.
When Nic Fieldsend joined Bedford in 2012, music was his entry point, but the church quickly became more for him: “What really struck me about Bedford is that it’s never been a place that says you have to show up a certain way to be part of us, quite the reverse. We want you to be you, the best version of you,” he says.
This congregation knows exactly who they are and what God is calling them to do to serve their wider community, karaoke and all.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that Bedford United was facing an $80,000 deficit in 2021, not 2023. This version also corrects a spelling of Katie Aven’s name.
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Rev. Christopher White is a United Church minister in Hamilton.
Comments
Rose Marie Hanes says:
Awesome. Congratulations. I hope this continues to other churches