Pancakes, Play & Delight: How Rev. Maren McLean Persaud Deliberately Builds Community

At 5:00 pm on Tuesday, February 25, Rev. Maren McLean Persaud stood alone in the Grace gym, arranging pylons for pancake races, placing fresh pancakes in the pancake flip station, and adding brightly coloured tablecloths of green, red, yellow and blue on tables to invigorate the space. The pancake party would begin at 5:30 p.m. Invitations had gone out to Grace members, Connaught School, Grace Manor seniors, Calgarians – even the media.

But would they come?

Maren felt they would. The pancake party was her fourth community gathering, following summer pop-up play in the park, Trunk ‘N’ Treat, and the Family Christmas Party. Each had engaged significant people, and many returned. Her deliberate strategy to provide opportunities for inter-generational connection (including the Grace volunteers preparing food, ranging from youth to adults to seniors) was working.

Maren brings deliberate all-ages interaction to her work as she knows it keeps youth engaged. “That sense of community kept me in church as a kid growing up in Nova Scotia,” she says. “Adults and seniors talked to me and cared about me. For me church was family and fun.” Faith, Jesus and God came later.

Building a community is a very intentional methodology. “It’s all about play and delight – we need space in our lives for that,” Maren says. While play is often dismissed as frivolous, Maren says “play is not the opposite of seriousness. It is the opposite of control. Often the church takes a control approach. But fun and family and community is where faith starts.”

Maren’s background includes running camps for children and youth, many of whom have experienced trauma or come from tough family circumstances. It is only when kids feel safe that they can let go, have fun and are “most fully themselves. Play transforms the lives of those kids,” she says. “That is serious stuff.”

Opening Grace’s doors to those in the Beltline – and engaging all from Connaught families to Grace Manor seniors, from Grace members to millennials walking by, from kids to those experiencing hunger and homelessness – is no small goal. It fulfills the human need for community that is so lacking in society today. “Kids have kid stuff – and they need that,” Maren says. “Adults and seniors have and need their own stuff too. But all of us benefit from coming together deliberately.”

Grace is becoming a missional church, and “mission isn’t hard”, Maren says. “It is a deliberate choice each of us makes.” Choosing to share a meal, chat with others you know as well as those you don’t, playing together and experiencing delight is something churches – and Grace – can do extremely well.