Our mission: to be a supportive, diverse, inclusive, ecologically sensitive, and spiritually nurturing Community sharing the good news of Jesus Christ through service to Simon Fraser University and UniverCity.
Our nature: joyously we live these values of The United Church of Canada in worship, theological inquiry and reflection, pastoral care, social justice, community outreach, and openness to the arts.
A New Creed:
We are not alone,
we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
Signature & Visual Identity
The Christian church has a rich tradition of symbolism and imagery to express and visualize the mysteries of our faith. The central image of Ellesmere United Church’s visual “signature” is a dove, which is a traditional symbol of God the Holy Spirit: It was in the form of a dove that the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism, revealing the favour of God the Creator and the beginning of Christ’s public ministry. The Holy Spirit is also the person of the Trinity most closely associated with the on-going life and work of the Church: moving in our hearts, interceding on our behalf, and nurturing the virtues we call “the fruits of the Spirit.” The dove is also one of the images in the crest of The United Church.
To this image, we have added a halo, a symbol of holiness and divinity. This halo incorporates the cinquefoil, a five-petaled flower used in European heraldry. The cinquefoil appears on the arms of Clan Fraser and also of Simon Fraser University. Like many heraldic devices, this is a pun, as the white cinquefoil represents a strawberry blossom, or, in French, a “fraise.” The cinquefoil represents our choice to move to Burnaby Mountain to reach out to university students and, therefore, helps capture the importance of community, openness and our church’s purpose on the mountain.
The signature is set in Gentium Book Basic, a typeface designed by Victor Gaultney to make quality typography available to a greater variety of languages. It is maintained by SIL International and released under the SIL Open Font Licence.
