page_title: St. Paul's Anglican Church, Vancouver
section_title: New ministries
hierarchical_section_title: St. Paul's Anglican Church, Vancouver / Post-1980 changes / New ministries
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the first indoor labyrinth crated in Canada following the revival of labyrinth walking in the 1990s.
context_page_description: St. Paul's Anglican Church serves the south-west downtown peninsula of Vancouver, British Columbia, alongside Christ Church Cathedral serving the north-east. Both parishes separated from St. James, the first Anglican Church in Granville, as Vancouver was then known.
context_section_description: Foremost of all, Crawley initiated a ministry to members of the LGBT community, many of whom were at that time facing the challenges of the AIDS crisis.  He and his assistant priest, Neil Gray who became Crawley' successor (1991 - 2003), opened up the parish to the wider community and co-operated with other agencies like St Paul's Hospital and AIDS Vancouver.  In reflecting upon this experience, Crawley later wrote: "St Paul's had not so much found a mission as it had regained its soul"
  As the AIDS crisis receded, Gray set about consolidating the positive response received from the LGBT community by advocating at the 1998 synod of the Diocese of New Westminster for permission to bless covenanted same-sex relationships.  The initiative achieved the immediate success of a favourable vote, but it was not sufficiently favourable to win the consent of Bishop Michael Ingham.  Permission was sought again in 2001, with an even more favourable outcome, leading in 2002 to episcopal consent.  
  The result had repercussions throughout the international Anglican Communion, meriting among other responses a rebuke from the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.  Ingham expressed his own position thus:
  "In many places around the world homosexual people are still treated as criminals and even worse, and in some instances with the support of the church.  We regret this [. . . ] and express our sadness and disquiet at their suffering, and hope that our actions in this part of the world may bring comfort and relief to those millions of people who look to the church for safety and support instead of judgement and condemnation."
  In 2004, the then assistant priest, Dale Yardy, officiated at the first Blessing of a Covenanted Union of a same-sex couple in St Paul's. 
  In 1995, St Paul's Advocacy Office was established to provide support and information for people facing problems associated with government benefits, tenancy disputes, immigration, and the like.  From its inception, the program has been operated by a salaried director and volunteer associates (most of whom are not members of the parish), conducting as many as four thousand interviews in a year with clients from a wide area.
  
  St Paul's played a major role in the re-introduction of labyrinth-walking as a meditative technique.
    In 1997, under the direction of the then assistant priest, April Stanley, a 13-metre, full-scale replica of the medieval labyrinth found at Chartres Cathedral in France was painted on the floor of the parish hall to become the first permanent indoor labyrinth in Canada.  Very soon, the number of individual visits to the labyrinth exceeded four thousand a year, mostly by persons who were not members of St Paul's.
caption: General view of the replica of the Chartres labyrinth painted on the floor of  the parish hall
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D800", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2019:02:06 09:46:25", "Image Artist": "Sandra Vander Schaaf", "Image Copyright": "\u00a9Sandra Vander Schaaf 2015", "Image ExifOffset": "2422", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5264", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "15537", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "2500", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:06:23 13:52:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:06:23 13:52:09", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "5906891/1000000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Cool white fluorescent (W 3900 - 4500K)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "60", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "60", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1678051/8192", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1678051/8192", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "4", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "24", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Portrait", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "5001891", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[24, 120, 4, 4]", "EXIF LensModel": "24.0-120.0 mm f/4.0", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}