Share your story in the first-ever “Yearbook” of the Canadian Church

By John Hamer, Director of Outreach and Innovative Mission

Somewhere on a shelf, many of us likely have a yearbook from our senior year in high school (or perhaps a whole set of yearbooks from our school days). If you ever take one down and open its pages, you might be instantly transported into memories of a completely different era of your life—pictures of people you grew up with, friends and acquaintances from long ago, activities, and a community that likely had been your whole world at the time.

As we come together in 2026 for the first time as one Community of Christ in Canada, I’m proposing that we assemble and publish a kind of yearbook of our own. This won’t be made up of rows of individual portraits, but it will include pictures, stories, and descriptions of everything we are doing as a church across Canada. I want to include descriptions and stories of every congregation, every program and ministry, every campground, every reunion and retreat, and every one of our charitable affiliates. I want to include stories and artifacts from our past—how we became who we are. I also want to include our hopes and vision for the future as we move onward together in mission.

Compiled, edited, professionally typeset, and illustrated with photos, maps, and other diagrams, the volume will be published in print so that every one of us can hold a book in our hands. I think this is important, as so much of our lives are lived virtually. The combined Canadian Mission Centre encompasses a vast geography; bringing our stories together in one book will help us get to know one another better. The volume will serve as a useful source of information and memory for years to come—and for our spiritual heirs who follow us. (As a historian, I can imagine how amazing it would be to have an artifact like this for the Canadian church published in 1881, 1926, 1950, or any year from the past!)

The first-ever “yearbook” for Community of Christ in Canada will require an enormous amount of work, so I need to enlist help from everyone. This might begin with congregation historians, communications officers, and pastors, but to get as complete a picture as possible, I want all hands on deck. In the coming weeks, I will share sample descriptions for congregations and other expressions of the church, along with instructions and questionnaires. Meanwhile, begin thinking about what you would like to share with members across Canada in the present—and with future generations.

As both a positive note and a gentle warning: 20 years ago, I compiled a yearbook featuring my mother’s extended family (all of my dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins), along with our family history. The final volume was 306 pages long and fulfilled its purpose beautifully. It allowed a generation of cousins to get to know one another as we were coming of age, and two decades later, I still refer to it to remember names, birthdays, and other details. In fact, it was so beloved that the main regret some expressed was that they had not filled out more than the minimum on their questionnaires or shared more pictures. In retrospect, they wished they had written and shared more so that more of their stories would have been preserved. (I leave that as a cautionary tale to motivate everyone to contribute!)

This is an exciting project, and I hope you will help make it as rich a resource as possible as we share with one another who we are as Community of Christ in Canada!