Rev. Kimberly Heath, lead minister at Wall Street United in Brockville, Ont., has been nominated by Eastern Ontario Outaouais Regional Council to be the next moderator of The United Church of Canada.
Heath has served Wall Street United for 18 years. After ordination, she ministered in the southern Alberta towns of Claresholm and Stavely, where she learned about farming and ranching. Heath and her family settled in Brockville in 2007, where she ministers at the same church that her father led for nearly two decades. She was the last president of Bay of Quinte Conference and was on the transition team that created Eastern Ontario Outaouais Regional Council.
“I see a lot of weariness out there in the church,” Heath says, describing pressures stemming from aging congregations to churches that are surviving week to week because they lack ministry personnel.
“There’s a part of me that wants to remind the church that they’re enough, that being faithful is enough, that they’re a gift,” she says, noting that the United Church’s identity tends to be linked to being a “national leader” who “will do more” and “be recognized in big ways.”
Heath suggests that the church must “learn how to be small again.”
“I think we’re terrified of death [and] of not mattering,” she says, noting that learning to be small is part of decolonizing the church along with humility and “not feeling like we have to be the saviours of society.”
“But churches are connecting points,” she says, explaining that bringing together isolated people is one of the big ways that churches can make a concrete difference.
More moderator nominees:
- Samuel Dansokho is hoping to be the United Church’s next moderator
- Cheri DiNovo nominated for United Church moderator
- John Pentland throws his hat in the ring for United Church moderator
In 2023, Heath earned a doctor of ministry from McCormick Theological Seminary, part of the Association of Chicago Theological Seminaries in Chicago. About a dozen recovery programs meet at Wall Street United, so, reflecting the importance of that ministry at her church, her dissertation categorized the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous into three movements — awareness, reparation and renewal — and reframed them as a way for everyone to experience transformation.
“Our relationship with people in recovery ended up shaping and transforming the whole congregation and giving all of us a path through difficult things in life,” she says, “and an ability to be honest with where we struggle, where we are not strong, where we have weakness or brokenness, or places that need healing — just giving us permission to be authentic.”
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Leslie Sinclair is a freelance journalist in Toronto.
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