Join our
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)! At the moment, we’re especially looking to fill these roles:
Christmas Lunch Volunteers (12), December 13, 18, 19, 20, 21
Food Donations Delivery Driver (1), Wednesday mornings
On-call Dishwasher (2), Thursday afternoons
Light Kitchen Cleanup (2), Fridays in December
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
Drop-in Mindfulness Awareness Meditation is back! Paul Belserene and/or Greg Sutton lead an hour of Mindfulness Awareness Meditation in our Sanctuary every Monday at 7 pm. Co-sponsored by St. Andrew’s United Church and the Vancouver Shambhala Centre.
All are welcome! By donation.
Bible Study
Stay tuned to this block for opportunities to study the scriptures in 2024!
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). We’ve taken part in nation-wide vigils, and with St. Andrew’s-Wesley we organized a town-hall discussion on GLI with the Pacific Mountain Regional Council.
Learn more about GLI and the United Church of Canada’s work on it, as well as 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
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 New Horizons for Seniors 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 for our food program.
Emergency Food Program
Tuesdays, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Friendship Room at St. Andrew’s
Co-sponsored by St. Andrew’s and Harvest Project. At this two-hour drop-in program, volunteers welcome folks to share a cup of coffee and discuss their immediate food needs. Volunteers then provide information about available resources for food, shelter, assistance, and engagement in North Vancouver. A free bag of emergency groceries is provided to everyone.
If you would like to volunteer, please contact Laurie-Anne Bourdon at outreach@st-andrews-united.ca.
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 now 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. George’s 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
Scroll through the photos below for a snapshot of the 2023 16th Annual Teddy Bear Picnic held at St. Andrew’s. A very successful event, and a lot of happy faces!