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amazing community
At the heart of faith formation and all we do at St. Andrew’s United Church rests our love of God and neighbour. We’re committed to environmental stewardship and believe everyone deserves access to fresh, healthy, and inexpensive food.
- Fair Trade purchasing
- Zero-waste
- Energy conservation
- Food sustainability
Interested in volunteering with us? We always welcome those who want to help out around the church (and the life of the church)!
For more info, check out our Volunteer Success page (just scroll down to the bottom of that page to see our opportunities).
Open Sanctuary
The Sanctuary is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm for quiet reflection, meditation, or prayer.
All are welcome!
Meditation
Paul Belserene and/or Greg Sutton lead an hour of Mindfulness Awareness Meditation in our Sanctuary every Monday at 6 pm. Co-sponsored by St. Andrew’s United Church and the Vancouver Shambhala Centre.
All are welcome! By donation.
Bible Study
Livable Income
Poverty can happen to anyone. St. Andrew’s has been working with other United Churches to advocate for a federally-instituted guaranteed livable income (GLI).
Learn more about GLI and the United Church of Canada’s work on it, including steps you can take to help, here.
Refugee Sponsorship
St. Andrew’s United Church and a Sponsor Group are working together through the UCC for the resettlement of a young woman named Tanaz. We’re looking forward to meeting Tanaz, a dancer, translator, and activist who has been repeatedly imprisoned and beaten in Iran for her art and her activism around women’s rights. She fled to Turkey five years ago and can’t return to her family in Iran for fear of imprisonment or even death.
Mission & Service
Loving our neighbour is at the heart of our Mission & Service: together, we support global partnerships, community outreach, and human rights across Canada and around the world. Your gifts for the Mission & Service of The United Church of Canada make a better world possible and bring hope for the future.
Free Community Lunch & Bread Ministry
Thursdays, 12 – 1 pm
doors open at 11:30 am
in the Friendship Room
Join us for a free community lunch in the Friendship Room at St. Andrew’s every Thursday afternoon from 12 – 1 pm, and pick up bread from Cobs Bread or Westlynn Bakery before you leave. Everyone is welcome!
We are grateful to the City of North Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver, and the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program for their generous financial support of our food program. Thank you, too, to Cobs Bread, Westlynn Bakery, and the Salvation Army for donating food every week.
Community Garden
St. Andrew’s United Church Community Garden fosters fun in community as residents of North Vancouver and members of St. Andrew’s tend 19 garden beds. Among other plots, our gardeners built and maintain a communal herb garden and a butterfly & bee garden, to attract and nourish the sweet pollinators. The gardens are on the land adjacent to the Christian Education Building at 1046 St. Georges Avenue.
If you would like to be part of our gardening cooperative, please contact our Community Outreach Coordinator.
Climate Action
We are committed to living and working in sustainable, earth-friendly ways because we recognize that caring for our planet is indivisible from caring for each other. Climate-friendly measures include greening our buildings and supporting zero-waste and food sustainability activities.
Urban Beehive
We’ve partnered with Alvéole, an urban beekeeping company, to build a honey bee hive on the east side of the church, near the ramp. Urban beekeeping is an excellent way to educate the community on the importance of bees while helping to protect these essential members of the ecosystem. Check out our Alvéole MyHive Page.
In 2023, we extended our butterfly & bee garden with support of the Sustainability Grant from the District of North Vancouver. The $1,000 grant helped us get a wide array of native plants from the Coast Salish Plant Nursery and Dÿkhof Nurseries. You can now see blueberry, huckleberry, wild ginger, kinnikinnick, goldenrod, rose, ocean spray, and many others around the church. Native plants are ideal allies to mitigate climate change and alleviate biodiversity loss. They are well adapted to the local climate and provide habitat and food for native animals and insects. Native pollinators are particularly fond of them, like our bees who provide us with local honey.
Teddy Bear Picnic
Our 18th Annual Teddy Bear Picnic is on Sat. June 21, 2025 from 11 am – 2 pm.
(Photos below are from the 16th Annual Picnic.)
Emergency Weather Shelter
St. Andrew’s hosts an Emergency Weather Response (EWR) shelter in our Friendship and Rainbow Rooms. This community service is run by the Lookout Housing + Health Society. We provide beds, food, and items like warm clothing to those who are unhoused on the North Shore during extreme weather events. Lookout defines extreme weather events as those called by the City and EWR staff, but that include nights when: temperatures are at or below zero Celsius; there’s significant snow accumulation; there’s freezing rain; there’s a wind chill that reduces the temperature to feeling like zero Celsius; or when there’s a severe wind warning.
The EWR shelter at St. Andrew’s will start again on Oct. 15, 2025, and run through to Apr. 15, 2026.