McMaster Studies in Practical Theology Welcoming the Other

As the church in Canada faces a post-Christendom future, the welcome and inclusion of diaspora communities offers opportunities for revitalization. In 2022, J. Greg Sinclair went on a yearlong ethnographic journey to understand the experience of hospitality at Willowdale Christian Reformed Church, a sixty-three-year-old congregation of Dutch ethnic heritage in Toronto, Canada. Using a pastoral cycle of experience-exploration-reflection and action and an ethnographic research method, Sinclair sought to understand and reflect on Willowdale's experience of welcoming many newcomers from Iran. Using Zoom interviews and in-person observation, this qualitative study investigates the changing nature of one congregation in Canada and the challenges and opportunities of welcoming increasing cultural and linguistic diversity. Willowdale's experience points to the potential of hospitality as a culture and habitus to move a congregation from an us-versus-them dynamic to mutuality. This book is for church members seeking new modes of hospitality and presents a hopeful vision of a multicultural, revitalized, and faithful church in Canada.