News

Published on July 24, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

Q: What do 20 pairs of span­dex shorts, a 24-hour head start, and shaved legs have in common?

A: Hot Pur­suit 2010.

From July 17–21, cyclists rode their way from White Rock, BC, to Win­nipeg, MB. My dad, Arvid Loewen, was the solo cyclist that went all the way alone. A team from Cana­dian Men­non­ite Uni­ver­sity (includ­ing pro­fes­sor Chris Hueb­ner and sev­eral alumni) relayed their way through the Rock­ies and across the Prairies. They started 24 hours behind him with the hope of catch­ing him. They were rid­ing in sup­port of inter­na­tional edu­ca­tion, and Arvid was rid­ing in sup­port of Mully Chil­drens Fam­ily, an orphan­age in Kenya, Africa.

In Arvid’s first few hours, he set a blaz­ing pace to put some fear in the hearts of the CMUers. And it worked. In the first few time sta­tions, he was actu­ally bik­ing faster than a relay team. But as soon as the moun­tains hit it changed. Able to switch rid­ers in the mid­dle of the climb, not need­ing to stop for night or for food, CMU being to gain ground. They truly set an insane pace through the Rock­ies, and con­tin­ued it right on into the Prairies. Tail­winds from Can­more on helped them ride 2330km in an amaz­ing 2 days 18 hours — well ahead of their goal. Arvid came through in 4 days 3 hours 42 min­utes, a per­sonal best by over 18 hours.

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A team of grannies (rang­ing from 50–81 years of age) raced from Cal­gary to Win­nipeg, and a team of Win­nipeg Police offi­cers started just three hours behind CMU, but had to drop out at the end of the Rock­ies due to ill­ness and injury. To read about the jour­ney or make a dona­tion, visit www.hotpursuit2010.com.

We’re Being Watched …

Published on July 24, 2010 by David Driedger. 2 Comments Tags: , .

I think it is impor­tant to take note that Men­non­ites, per­haps more than ever are being watched by the larger the­o­log­i­cal and eccle­sial world.

Inhab­i­ta­tio Dei is one of the most active the­o­log­i­cal blogs out there.  The admin­is­tra­tor, so far as I can tell, did not ‘grow up’ Men­non­ite but actively engages our tra­di­tion as a vital resource for con­tem­po­rary the­ol­ogy and eccle­si­ol­ogy.  In his most recent post (that actu­ally does not have to do with Men­non­ites) the com­ment sec­tion is quite instruc­tive as to the larger con­ver­sa­tion around Mennonite/Anabaptist tradition.

Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley

Published on July 20, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

Cross­roads Val­ley Brethren-Mennonite Her­itage Cen­ter (from www.vbmhc.org)

The Men­non­ites and Brethren in the Shenan­doah Val­ley have been here a long time. A recent visit to Cross­roads Val­ley Brethren-Mennonite Her­itage Cen­ter gave a glimpse of how the his­tory of this area has been shaped by the early Brethren and Men­non­ite farm­ing communities.

The Men­non­ite groups that came to this area were Swiss-German and arrived as early as the 1700s. Brethren groups came about the same time, and the com­mon­al­i­ties of the two com­mu­ni­ties pro­moted coop­er­a­tion in estab­lish­ing farm­ing set­tle­ments in the area.

Dur­ing the Civil War, the peace posi­tion of the two groups was not pop­u­lar. It also became a chal­lenge for indi­vid­u­als and church com­mu­ni­ties who expe­ri­enced pres­sure of the soci­ety, but also the judge­ment of the com­mu­nity. James O. Lehman describes the diary of one Men­non­ite bishop as “most inter­est­ing on the ques­tion of loy­al­ties” but empha­sis how most of the groups clung to the peace position.

The visit prompted reflec­tion on my own com­mit­ments and caused me to ques­tion the lengths that I might go in keep the faith of my her­itage cen­tred in peace. It also gave me a new per­spec­tive on the Har­rison­burg area, influ­enced so pro­foundly by the “quiet in the land.”

Meet Officer Bubbles

Published on July 20, 2010 by David Driedger. 1 Comment

My intro­duc­tion to him was a lit­tle late but if you have not yet met Offi­cer Bub­bles from the G20 protests in Toronto then say hello … at your own risk!

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This tragic scene actu­ally makes me laugh out loud every time I see it. Reduc­tion to absurdity.

Biblical Languages and the Preacher

Published on July 20, 2010 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: , .

I have stud­ied in a few insti­tu­tions were some (notable) NT and OT profs have claimed that you can’t under­stand cer­tain bib­li­cal pas­sages with­out a work­ing knowl­edge of Greek or Hebrew. Now in a sense this is true as Eng­lish trans­la­tions have already per­formed much of that work for us. How­ever, I never sat very eas­ily with the sort of mech­a­nis­tic approach that some of these profs seemed to work from. I can remem­ber one prof at a chapel expound on a ‘dif­fi­cult’ text with a sort of swag­ger, as though he him­self had cut the key that would finally unlock its meaning.

If a con­fes­sional com­mu­nity approaches the Bible as a text that will help wit­ness to a liv­ing rela­tion­ship with God and a sub­se­quent man­ner of liv­ing then I am not too con­cerned that we need a high priest­hood to dis­trib­ute ‘tech­ni­cally cor­rect’ readings.

In say­ing all this though I do feel it is tremen­dously advan­ta­geous for a preach­ing pas­tor to have a good han­dle on bib­li­cal lan­guages. Preach­ing on Jonah last Sun­day two of my main moves depended on draw­ing atten­tion to what was going on in the Hebrew text. Jonah is a highly lit­er­ary if not poetic piece. This places greater strain on the trans­la­tor but I think we need to swing back away from a sense of ‘dynamic equiv­a­lence’ which does not account for a poetic lit­er­al­ism. The pas­sage below is from the NIV. The words in italic and bold type are the same Hebrew noun while the under­lined words rep­re­sent the same Hebrew verb.

ch 3 7 Then he issued a procla­ma­tion in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste any­thing; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let man and beast be cov­ered with sack­cloth. Let every­one call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their vio­lence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with com­pas­sion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had com­pas­sion and did not bring upon them the destruc­tion he had threatened.

ch 4 1 But Jonah was greatly dis­pleased and became angry.

Maybe its just me but it seems when the same word is being used in rela­tion to all three sub­jects in such a dense pas­sage it may be help­ful to draw some atten­tion to it. The move­ment of the Nin­eveh away from her evil and God away from his destruc­tion which then comes to set­tle in Jonah’s dis­plea­sure seems the­o­log­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant. Again I am not say­ing a care­ful reflec­tive per­son could not gather this the­o­log­i­cal nuance from a trans­la­tion but there seems to be another path that does not assume an elite dis­tri­b­u­tion of exeget­i­cal truth but rather a theological-aesthetic that seeks to unfold and cel­e­brate the lay­ers of the text.

57 Flags

Published on July 16, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

Canada Day was warm, and so Jeanette and I went with some friends to Birds Hill Park to spend some time on the beach. Appar­ently a few other peo­ple had the same idea. The beach was packed, and we spent a good amount of time in the water. When you looked around, you didn’t really notice any sig­nif­i­cant amount of Cana­dian flags.

When we weren’t cool­ing our­selves off in the water, we went up onto a field to throw a fris­bee and foot­ball around. At first we were closer to the beach, but we started to drift a lit­tle bit away. I was fac­ing the beach, and so my back was towards a ser­vice road and a small grove of trees. The foot­ball flew over my head, and I turned to chase it. It bounced against the legs of another man, stand­ing in a group and talk­ing with some fam­ily and friends.

I was imme­di­ately hit by a wave of Cana­dian flags: pinned to trees, painted on faces, on shirts, draped over pic­nic tables, and on just about every other sur­face imag­in­able. Big smiles were plas­tered across the faces of the peo­ple present.

While I went to pick up the foot­ball, I had to con­sider what made these peo­ple dif­fer­ent than me. The first dif­fer­ence was obvi­ous: they were East Indian. The cir­cum­stances led me to the con­clu­sion that they were immi­grants, hav­ing moved here to Canada prob­a­bly not that long ago. And what was remark­able was how much they seemed to cel­e­brate Canada. They very obvi­ously thought Canada was a great place to live. They were happy to be here.

Maybe we’ve all been desen­si­tized; we spend our time com­plain­ing about taxes, road con­di­tions, gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, and the stuff that dilutes the truth: we live in a remark­able coun­try. It shouldn’t take fifty-seven Cana­dian flags worn on the backs and faces of a cel­e­brat­ing fam­ily to remind me of this.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

Religious Experience

Published on July 12, 2010 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: , , .

For the past num­ber of sum­mers I have helped to orga­nize some Fri­day night events for my church. We have aban­doned the tra­di­tional model of ‘sum­mer bible school’ were kids come dur­ing the day and learn verses, sing and do crafts. Instead we have hoped to cre­ate a more inter-generational expe­ri­ence gath­er­ing around a camp­fire for a less more for­mal time while still try­ing to be engag­ing across the ages.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Reli­gious Experience’

Sing a Joyful Song

Published on July 9, 2010 by Will Loewen. Closed

There was a church once, and like many other sim­i­lar Men­non­ite churches it was very proud of its music pro­gram.  They orga­nized a spring music fes­ti­val with “Sing a Joy­ful Song” as the theme.  It fea­tured, among other things, Sat­ur­day work­shops in four part singing, con­duct­ing and con­tem­po­rary music inte­gra­tion.  The fes­ti­val was to cul­mi­nate with a Sun­day morn­ing wor­ship ser­vice where choirs would sing, the acoustics of the sanc­tu­ary would finally be showed off and the newly instructed con­gre­ga­tion would then be more equipped than ever to make a joy­ful noise unto the Lord.

The fes­ti­val of course took months to plan and all of the best musi­cal minds of the con­gre­ga­tion assem­bled to make it work.  The most dif­fi­cult deci­sion was over who should be the song leader on that Sun­day morn­ing.  After all, the con­gre­ga­tion would be larger and louder that morn­ing and a new song or two should be intro­duced, so a strong and steady voice was needed.  After some delib­er­a­tion, the com­mit­tee chose Geof­frey a recent uni­ver­sity grad­u­ate with a music degree.  He had a good music pedi­gree, com­ing from a strong musi­cal fam­ily, and he had received voice coach­ing for over ten years.  Some on the com­mit­tee also felt that it was good to high­light his youth­ful pres­ence as a sign that their good musi­cal her­itage was being passed on to a new gen­er­a­tion.  After some prod­ding by his par­ents, Geoff agreed to lead the singing for that morn­ing and started to prac­tice the new songs.

By the time that Sun­day morn­ing arrived, Geoff knew the song flaw­lessly.  He knew the tricky parts and knew exactly what needed to be pointed out to the con­gre­ga­tion to guide them through it.  The night before also, Geoff had been an active par­tic­i­pant in the work­shops and had stayed for the potluck sup­per.  But some­thing, prob­a­bly some under­cooked meat or fish prod­uct, wasn’t sit­ting right with his sys­tem.  When his girl­friend Char­lotte stopped in to pick him up for church, he was planted by the toi­let bowl, clearly in no posi­tion to lead the singing later that morn­ing.  Had he been of sound body, he would have been happy to lead singing.  If he had been of sound mind he prob­a­bly would have thought of a music com­mit­tee approved replace­ment song leader.  Since his thoughts were only on his fail­ing body Char­lotte stepped up and made the deci­sion for him.

She knew the new songs as well or bet­ter than any­one else at the church, she was not afraid of being in front of large groups and there was far too lit­tle time to get any­one else to replace Geoff, so of course she would be the song leader.  She stayed with Geoff long enough to help him clean up a bit and to get some med­i­cine and vital flu­ids acces­si­ble range to him, and then she had to leave.  The phone was already ring­ing when she left his apart­ment, but answer­ing it would make her late for church and Geoff had no energy to pick it up either.  On her way into the sanc­tu­ary of the church Char­lotte was met by more than one per­son want­ing to know where Geoff was.  It was unclear which news was more upset­ting, that he was vio­lently ill, or that Char­lotte would be his replacement.

Peo­ple loved Char­lotte, even peo­ple on the wor­ship com­mit­tee, but music was not her strong point.  Sure she had lead singing before, but only because she had been will­ing while oth­ers had not.  She met up with the pas­tor and wor­ship leader in time to join them on the front pew.  Dur­ing the call to wor­ship and words of greet­ing, there were a few peo­ple ask­ing around if per­haps some­one else could fill in for Geoff, and even though nobody knew the new song some­body was still appointed to replace her.  But before the more pro­fes­sional style song leader could get to Char­lotte, she had already been called up to lead the first hymn and since she was already on the stage, it wasn’t worth the embar­rass­ment of inter­rupt­ing her there.

As the ser­vice pro­gressed, the Wor­ship Com­mit­tee vet­er­ans could only look on in dis­be­lief.  Char­lotte was invit­ing the chil­dren to shake keys and whack hym­nals as per­cus­sion instru­ments, she was rarely in per­fect sync with the pianist, she laughed at her own mis­takes and gig­gled when the con­gre­ga­tion made mis­takes.  Most song lead­ers here would sim­ply stand in silence to revel in the har­monies of a well sung hymn, but Char­lotte vocal­ized her admi­ra­tion.  She had utterly ruined their festival.

Old Mrs. Miller summed up well the thoughts of the entire com­mit­tee when she said, “How were we sup­posed to sing with joy with all her car­ry­ing on, noise mak­ing, gig­gling, and laugh­ing?”  The ques­tion remained though in their minds, next year will there still be the work­shops, will they still try to teach new songs, will they be able to sing with joy?

Scarcity and Abundance

Published on July 8, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

An enter­tain­ing yet thought-provoking film in the ‘teach­ing diverse learn­ers’ class prompted dis­cus­sion about assump­tions, habits, and the auto­matic responses of human beings. What causes us to react with self-preservation instincts to a per­cep­tion of scarcity? What allows us to share gen­er­ously with oth­ers out of a knowl­edge of abun­dance? Is it some­thing within us? Is it in how oth­ers respond to us? The sur­round­ings we’re in? Or is it the work of the spirit build­ing com­mu­nity within and across bound­aries? Just a few ques­tions to ponder….

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Review of Logos Bible Software 3

Published on July 7, 2010 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: .

Some time ago, before a lit­tle bun­dle of joy set every­thing in life back about a year, I was given a review copy of Logos Bible Software’s Scholar’s Library.  Logos uses the Libronix Dig­i­tal Library engine which nav­i­gates what seems to be an almost end­less list of resources that can be pur­chased and added to this base platform.

I have delayed this review not only because of exter­nal life cir­cum­stances but also because I never felt like I could do it jus­tice.  The pre-loaded resources I received always seemed to suf­fer from a lack of coher­ence.  330 vol­umes were included  and among these vol­umes were Ara­maic tar­gums, Akka­dian let­ters, youth min­istry resources, and devo­tional mate­ri­als.  I have not ven­tured out into many of these resources because the vast major­ity of them are either unin­ter­est­ing or irrel­e­vant for my pur­poses.  The vast major­ity of the resources that are not directly related to ancient lan­guages should be con­sid­ered dated at best.  That being said explor­ing the Logos web­site I can find numer­ous resources that I would like pur­chase (at a greatly reduced cost com­pared to print ver­sions).  How­ever, the included vol­umes seemed far too dis­parate in nature to be of broad use to myself.

I have used the resource pri­mar­ily as a tool to study bib­li­cal lan­guages.  Even here the range strikes me as unman­age­ably broad.  At its sim­plest there is a ‘go’ fea­ture in which you can enter a bib­li­cal cita­tion or topic and the soft­ware will search rel­e­vant resources.  I never use this fea­ture as it brings too many things to bear that I am not inter­ested in.  At the other end I have not fig­ured out how to nav­i­gate the com­plex searches that are pos­si­ble in the bib­li­cal text.  I found that I actu­ally return to Gramm­cord to per­form some basic searches that I have not yet fig­ured out in Logos.  Granted I have not spent sub­stan­tial time in the tuto­r­ial but I did not need tuto­ri­als for Gramm­cord which I was able to com­pre­hend more intu­itively.  This is not nec­es­sar­ily a crit­i­cism of the software’s abil­ity only of its dis­parate nature that may leave many scratch­ing their heads in the mid­dle of the two basic search func­tions with one of the modes com­ing off as too sim­ple and the other too com­plex.  Again, I relate this to my own posi­tion as nei­ther a spe­cial­ist nor a layper­son when it comes to bib­li­cal studies.

With these crit­i­cisms aside almost daily now I use the soft­ware for read­ing bib­li­cal pas­sages in their orig­i­nal lan­guages.  I am able to open a save a work­space that includes the Greek NT, the Hebrew OT, and the Sep­tu­agint along­side var­i­ous Eng­lish trans­la­tions, lex­i­cons, and the­o­log­i­cal dic­tio­nar­ies.  Of the 330 vol­umes included in this par­tic­u­lar library these will likely be the only ones I ever open.  In addi­tion to these basic func­tions the endur­ing value of this soft­ware will be the immense resources that can be pur­chased and integrated.

I would def­i­nitely not dis­cour­age any­one from buy­ing this soft­ware only that they con­sider pur­chas­ing one with less vol­umes free­ing up some of that money to pick and choose some addi­tional prod­ucts to add-on which is where I see the real value.