{"id":19734,"date":"2018-02-01T13:02:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T18:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19734"},"modified":"2018-02-01T13:04:39","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T18:04:39","slug":"davis-to-leave-trinity-aurora-after-11-years-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/davis-to-leave-trinity-aurora-after-11-years-of-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Davis to leave Trinity Aurora after 11 years of service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Keith Franklin<\/em><\/p>\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Parishioners at Trinity Anglican church are preparing to say goodbye to long-time pastor Reverend Dawn Davis at the end of this month as she prepares to take a new position in St. Catherines.
\nDavis has led Trinity Anglican Church through significant changes within the church and demographic shifts through the community at large.
\nFrom the perspective of Rev. Philip Josselyn-Hamilton, Trinity\u2019s Associate Priest, Davis has steered the parish through a shift from being growth and building oriented towards a church more focused on community, spiritual growth, community outreach and growth.
\n\u201cShe focused on growing deeper rather than bigger,\u201d says Josselyn-Hamilton. \u201cPart of her legacy is the spiritual formation focusing on getting people to encounter the spirit wherever and however they do that, giving broader and more diverse options, bringing in things like meditation and alternative practices of prayer that might not be originally thought of when they think of Christian spirituality. She brought in sort of a focus on prayer being less of a \u2018churchy\u2019 conversation and more of an experience.\u201d
\nTogether, the two spearheaded a series of less-formal sermons with catchy titles, such as \u201cHoly Shift,\u201d which caught the eye of Christians and non-Christians alike.
\nBringing to the table a background in parish and congregational developments, Josselyn-Hamilton says Davis led the Trinity parish through some significant changes in Aurora, including demographic shifts of age, culture and ethnicity, including working across faiths to settle refugee families locally.
\n\u201cDawn has a great impact on the lives of those she touches,\u201d says parishioner Mei Zhu, who also serves the Trinity community as a warden. \u201cI truly believe the ripple effect of how she impacts the lives of others goes on well beyond Aurora. She genuinely loves and cares about the people she meets. She has that magic power and tremendous energy diving into the relationship and uncovers the deep yearning of people.\u201d
\nMs. Zhu says she moved to Aurora shortly after Davis took the helm at Trinity. After \u201cchurch shopping\u201d for a little bit with her young family, Mei says decided to become more involved in Trinity through small group discussion nights led by Davis which fostered a sense of community.
\n\u201cI believe the most valuable legacy of what we can pass to our children in our lives is a spiritual legacy, a legacy of faith, which is what Dawn has been diligently working towards,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the past 11 years, Dawn has passionately, yet carefully cultivated an atmosphere where faith can thrive, by showing people the value and relevance of faith. This is a legacy not easily tossed aside.\u201d
\nUnder Davis\u2019 leadership, the roof of Trinity has enabled the faiths of two communities to come together. After the devastating fire which destroyed Aurora United Church (AUC) in April 2014, Davis was one of the first faith leaders on the scene to lend a hand \u2013 and a worship space \u2013 to the distraught AUC community.
\nThey have shared this space ever since and the AUC leaders are also singing the praises of their colleague.
\n\u201cAlthough we had known Dawn as a colleague in town, our actual friendship began the day of the AUC fire,\u201d said Revs. Andy Comar and Lorraine Newton-Comar, in an email. \u201cDressed in her \u2018clerics\u2019 on her way to a funeral, she stood with us in the early hours of the day offering the use of Trinity Anglican Church building to gather the congregation that evening. We worshipped together that Palm Sunday and soon after we were welcomed with open, loving arms into the building where we have rented space for worship, administration and ministry groups ever since.
\n\u201cOver the course of these almost four years now, we have come to deeply appreciate Dawn\u2019s commitment to us and to the AUC congregation \u2013 supporting our plans for the future while leading Trinity in deepening the friendships we have developed in this time. We will miss Dawn as a colleague and a friend, always remembering the important role she played in our lives and in the lives of our congregational members when we were in such need.\u201d
\nJosselyn-Hamilton will also miss Davis in much the same way, but over the past three years of his own time at Trinity, their bond has been forged deep. He says he is more apt to seek positions based on the mentorship opportunities they provide above most other factors and Davis has more than delivered \u2013 on a professional and personal standpoint.
\n\u201cShe was one who did the work behind the scenes to pave the way for lesbian and gay marriage at Trinity Aurora, the first Anglican church in this area to have a gay marriage,\u201d says Josselyn-Hamilton, who wed his husband Alex in the very first ceremony officiated at the Trinity. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I could get married in the church, at least not now. It was nice to have the support of the community, knowing that my boss was in my corner.
\n\u201cDawn identifies people\u2019s gifts and empowers people in the community and in their ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parishioners at Trinity Anglican church are preparing to say goodbye to long-time pastor Reverend Dawn Davis at the end of this month as she prepares to take a new position in St. Catherines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/2018-02-01-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-58i","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 18:04:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}