About

About the Presence Project

The Presence Project was part a faith formation pilot project by The United Church of Canada's General Council. Launched in 2018, the pilot project sought to shape a faith formation ecology to ground United Church people in basic discipleship practices. While this pilot has ended, the Presence Project continues!


While it's roots are within The United Church, The Presence Project is open to anyone. Please make use of these resources in whatever ways you find helpful.

A Theology of God's Presence

These are the core understandings that shape The Presence Project.

God’s Ever-Presence and God’s Manifest-Presence

God the Trinity promises to be present with us!

Foundational to the understandings of God within the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the insistence that:
  • God is distinct and independent from God’s creation; God transcends all that God has made.
  • God is everywhere-present throughout God’s creation; God is immanent to all that God has made.
We seek to hold both God’s immanence and God’s transcendence together, diminishing neither. So we rightly speak of God’s Ever-Presence.

We also speak rightly of God’s Manifest-Presence. On occasion, God chooses to make God’s Ever-Presence known to people experientially, alone, in small groups or in community. However, at times God chooses to withdraw or withhold God’s Manifest-Presence.

Of prime importance for our understanding are these instances of God’s Manifest-Presence.
  • The Scriptures and traditions of Israel speak of YHWH’s Shekinah (dwelling). God’s Ever-Presence is manifested locally, especially within the Tent of Meeting (Tabernacle), then the Jerusalem Temple. The Talmud Sanhedrin says, "Whenever ten are gathered for prayer, there the Shekinah rests."
  • These same Scriptures also speak of God’s absence, with the terrible possibility that God would “withhold God’s face” from the people (see, for example, Psalm 51:11).
  • The Christian Scriptures give witness to Jesus. He is God’s “Word” who is “equal with God,” and who became flesh and dwelt among us, taking on the form of a human being, even a slave (John 1:1-14, Philippians 2:1-11). In Jesus, God’s Presence was and continues to be among us in a new way.
  • Jesus promised to be with his people, including (but by no means limited to):
    • when they gather together in practices of reconciliation (Mt 18:20)
    • when they act with love towards one of the “least of these” (Mt 25:31-46)
    • when they welcome a child into their midst (Mk 9:37)
    • when they share at his table in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:34)
    • when they serve one another in ministry (Mk 10:43ff)
    • when they proclaim the Good News (Mt 28:20)
  • The outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the discipleship community is the fulfillment of God’s promise to be present with God’s people. “The Spirit is God’s own personal presence in our lives and in our midst.”  
And Yet . . .
Within our United Church of Canada and in many of its congregations, we have lost a sense of God’s Manifest-Presence. Perhaps in many cases we have never had it! Too frequently, we do not know how to experience God’s Presence. We don’t even know that we can! So we have no expectation that God might “show up.” Our worship can be very much about God, but not so much with God.

Many of us are suspicious of “relationship with God” language. Yet Jesus’ great commandment makes loving God paramount (along with loving our neighbour). Love is profoundly relational.

Likewise, we are often suspicious of claims to have experienced God. Larry Doyle has observed that, “Rather than celebrating hearts strangely warmed, we look askance at hearts warmed strangely.”

All this can be true when the church-community is gathered together to worship God! How much more is it true when Jesus’ people are “deployed” into their day-to-day lives!

The Presence Project Network aims to help congregations change their culture to become more aware, available and attentive to God’s Manifest-Present.

Our Colonial Legacy
Attempting to Limit, Control and Silence God’s Presence

The Presence Project Network will be attentive and accountable to the wisdom and experiences of the intercultural Church in Canada and beyond. We will learn from, celebrate and share with siblings in the Indigenous church and those who are joining us from different countries and cultures. God is working through them, shaping us together into the new church God calls us to be.

The majority-church has too often sought to limit the knowledge, experience and even the scope of God’s Presence. This has been a tragic manifestation of sin, a product of our temptation to “make ourselves gods” and manage God’s work. It continues. But God will not be controlled!

Christians from Europe came to what they wrongly thought was the “New World.” They assumed they were bringing God and “civilization” with them. They failed to recognize that the Creator God was already and always present in the lives and experiences of First Peoples. Rather, they suppressed the spiritual wisdom and practices of Indigenous Peoples. This is a sin against those people and against God. Also, this deprived the Church of valuable opportunities to grow in its understanding of God and God’s ways. But God will not be limited!

Similarly, Christians who identify as “White” have too often failed to recognize the powerful experiences of God’s Presence within cultures and communities which they colonized. Christianity was distorted, identified as the “White Man’s religion,” and used to tell lies about God and all those whom God has created and loves. But God will not be silenced!

Much to our shame, The United Church of Canada has participated in these futile efforts to control, limit and lie about God. Now, because of God’s judgement and grace, we are being availed of new opportunities for new beginnings. Through ongoing recognition, repentance, patience, humbly listening and receiving grace from Indigenous and racialized persons, including fellow Christians, we can become aware and receptive of the astonishing and transformative ways God is present among those whom we failed to see with the eyes of Christ.

The Network

The Presence Project is a network connecting congregations around a shared goal.


Growing Congregational Cultures where
Awareness, Availability and Attentiveness to God’s Presence is Experienced!


We want to see congregations alive to the Presence of God. Formed within communities of faith like these, people will become more alive to God’s Presence in their day-to-day lives.


Being a network allows us to share ideas, resources, experiences, and encouragement. Our hope is that The Presence Project will become a true collaboration.


You can become part of the network here.

Our Team & Contact Us

Greg Smith-Young serves in ministry with Hope Springs United Church, which serves neighbourhoods in the the Elora, Alma and Inverhaugh area near Guelph, Ontario.  He coordinates the Presence Project


Larry Doyle serves in ministry with Faith United Church in Courtice, Ontario. The Presence Project is emerging from research he did as part of his Doctor of Ministry program at Columbia Theological Seminary.


Chris Pullenayegem was instrumental in getting the Presence Project started, through his work with Faith Formation and Mission within the United Church's General Council. He now directs the Congregational Vitality Through Community Engagement Project with the Vancouver School of Theology.


You can contact our team here: info@presenceprojectnetwork.ca

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