Bradford United Church welcomes new minister to lead congregation

Bradford United Church has officially welcomed a new minister with Reverend Bruce Sweet coming out of retirement to lead the congregation on Sundays.

Sweet has remained with the United Church through pulpit supply, which is when a minister fills in for communities who are without their regular minister, and has spent plenty of time getting to know the Bradford United Church community as a fill in.

“I think we had a good connection when I was there doing pulpit supply,” said Sweet. “My experience with Bradford has been wonderful and they’re eager to move forward."

All the Sunday’s coming in and leading the congregation made Sweet a natural fit to take over full-time in Bradford.

“We had established quite a relationship,” he said. “They asked me if I would be interested in being appointed to Bradford United Church for six months and I started on January 1, and it will carry to the end of June, at which time I suspect I’ll be retiring yet again!”

Sweet, 72, grew up in Essex County before moving to Windsor, and while attending the University of Windsor, he became a candidate for ministry.

“I then graduated from the University of Windsor and went to Emmanuel College in Toronto, the theological college for the United Church of Canada,” he said.

When he finished at Emmanuel College and was ordained in 1976, the interview committee of the church would then ask the newly ordained ministers where they would like to go.

“I answered, ‘you can send me anywhere at all,’ and I discovered anybody who made that response would either go to Newfoundland or Saskatchewan,” explained Sweet. “So my very first faith community that I served as minister was in little Pense, Saskatchewan. It was right on the Trans-Canada halfway between Moose Jaw and Regina.”

After spending three years in Saskatchewan, Sweet made the decision to enter the Canadian Armed Forces as a chaplain.

“You needed three years experience at a church before you could enter as a chaplain,” he said. “Then I served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 20 years, from 1979 until 1999. In that time I served at Petawawa, Bagotville in Quebec, Gagetown in New Brunswick, at base in Kingston, and finally at the Royal Military College.”

During his time as a chaplain in the military, Sweet had quite the experience working with both the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“At one point I was posted with the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which is a parachute regiment,” Sweet said. “When you’re the chaplain, you have to go with the troops, so I took the parachute training course and had several jumps with the Airborne and in 1981, we did United Nations peacekeeping in Cyprus for six months.”

After 20 years with the Armed Forces, Sweet decided to return to the civilian faith community.

“I had done some summer work with Glenburnie United Church just north of Kingston,” he said. “I was at Glenburnie for seven years and then went to Emmanuel United Church in Waterloo and was there for 11-and-a-half years.”

With 41 years under his belt, Sweet then retired, but the itch never went away and retirement didn’t last long.

“Clergy are so bad at retiring, I was retired for a whole six months,” he joked. “I became involved in pulpit supply and I did that for three years, and then COVID-19 set in. COVID was a big adjustment period for the United Church and we’re still recovering from the impact.”

The pandemic led Sweet and his wife Vicki to move from the Kitchener area closer to their son Jacob and his family.

“A year-and-a-half ago we moved to Barrie,” he said. “I was then retired again for seven months, but wanted to be more involved. So I put my name back on the pulpit supply list again and it was quite busy. In just the last year I’ve preached on most Sunday’s in six or seven faith communities, but I visited Bradford the most because they didn’t have a regular minister.”

For Sweet, the thing that has kept him invested and loving what he does is the congregation and its consistent commitment to support the community.

“Every congregation seems remarkably the same in that they’re trying to do their best and be active in serving the community,” he said. “People ask me, ‘isn't there something you’ve wanted to do over all these years but you never could because you’ve been working?’ I tell them, no because being a part of a faith community is what’s been meaningful for me.”