Features

Photo by Taylor Summach

Part I: For Junia Grace, 2017 Photo by Taylor Summach I don’t like to write sermons. I am, at best, an unlikely preacher in our small Mennonite church. I languished through... Read More
March 6, 2024 | Feature | Emily Summach

Art by Jonathan Dyck

The feature for our February 23, 2024 issue is a 12-page comic by noted graphic novelist Jonathan Dyck. For the piece, Dyck collaborated with Dave Scott, an historian and... Read More
February 22, 2024 | Feature | Jonathan Dyck and Dave Scott

Photo by Jon Tyson/Unsplash.

The disciples were shocked when Jesus said, “One of you will betray me.” Judas’s story is told in different ways in the gospels, giving us some insight into how the disciples and... Read More
February 8, 2024 | Feature | Carol Penner

Emergency response personnel in the Sheikh Radwan area north of Gaza City on October 23, 2023. Photo by Mohammed Zaanoun/ActiveStills.

The gulf appears impossible to bridge. As bombs continue to fall onto Gaza and rockets somehow continue to fly out of Gaza, a conflict nearly as old as time and as entrenched as... Read More
January 25, 2024 | Feature | Will Braun

Gustavo Zentner and Richard Marceau. Supplied photos.

An interview with Gustavo Zentner By Will Braun Gustavo Zentner will never forget visiting areas attacked by Hamas. “We walked into the homes where you can still smell the smell... Read More
January 25, 2024 | Feature | Will Braun & Madalene Arias
On October 1, we launched our book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know about Each Other , at the Charles Pachter Museum in Toronto. Guests included... Read More
January 25, 2024 | Feature | By Raja G. Khouri and Jeffrey J. Wilkinson

Tarek Al-Zoughbi. Supplied photo.

“Deeply rooted in our Mennonite psyche is this idea that peacemaking is as simple as sitting across the table from someone and hearing their story,” says Joanna Hiebert Bergen,... Read More
January 25, 2024 | Feature | Madalene Arias

Photo: mstudio For Pexels

We asked people who wrote for Canadian Mennonite in 2023 to share their wish and prayer for the church in 2024. I’m easily afraid. So is the church. I pray that we will listen for... Read More
January 11, 2024 | Feature |

(Pexels photo by Antoni Shkraba)

Baptism rates among teenagers and young adults who grew up going to church have plummeted. Why? In response to this drop-off in baptisms, I could talk about what faith formation... Read More
December 15, 2023 | Feature | Kyle Penner

The ruins of Al Zahra, south of Gaza City, after Israeli airstrikes. (Photo by Mohammed Zaanoun/Active Stills)

What will Christmas be like in Bethlehem this year? What can we learn about the birth of Christ from those who live where he was born and where he lived? Below, we share... Read More
December 1, 2023 | Feature |

Selenna Wolfe (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-wiebe)

It might seem unlikely that young women would be drawn to church leadership and feel compelled to enter pastoral ministry. As young people, they are part of an underrepresented... Read More
November 16, 2023 | Feature | Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

(Photo by Aaron Epp)

There were nineteen beds in the hospice, that’s what I heard, most of them occupied, but I paid no attention to them. When we first arrived, yes, I’d glanced into the room next to... Read More
November 2, 2023 | Feature | Dora Dueck

(Photo by Aaron Epp)

There’s one church service that Fran Giesbrecht makes a special point not to miss: Eternity Sunday. Observed at his Winnipeg church on the last Sunday before Advent, Eternity... Read More
November 2, 2023 | Feature | Aaron Epp

Nelson Groh was a Mennonite killed in the Second World War. (Photos by A.S. Compton)

“Sir,” said the man, “you and your family can be very proud of your son.” I could tell the man at the door was important by the way his brass buttons shone, and the way Father... Read More
October 19, 2023 | Feature | Creative non-fiction by A.S. Compton

Protesters rally in Washington D.C. We altered the placard, which originally read, “Thoughts & prayers don’t save lives / Gun reform will.” (Photo by Lorie Shaull, Used as per creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0. adapted by Betty Avery)

When conservative Christians in the southern U.S. were agitating to erect monuments with the 10 commandments on them in front of courthouses, I heard someone suggest that they put... Read More
October 5, 2023 | Feature | Will Braun

(Photo by Alexander Alexandrov from Pixabay)

Robert Bruinsma remembers the day his friend, Sam, told him he was going to die. It was a few days before Christmas 2017, and Bruinsma was visiting Sam (not his real name) in the... Read More
September 21, 2023 | Feature | Aaron Epp

Curtis Wiens leads a forest church service the first Sunday of every month at Shekinah Retreat Centre. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Florence Driedger turns to look out the window before she replies to my question. “Well, we never know from one year to the next who and how many . . . whether we’ll still be... Read More
August 24, 2023 | Feature | Josh Wallace

The Wiederkehr family applying compost to a dry corn breeding experiment. (Supplied photo)

On a hundred hilly acres near Mildmay, Ontario, the Wiederkehr family is quietly pushing the limits of human energy, spiritual integrity and disconnection from the consumerist web... Read More
July 27, 2023 | Feature | Andre Wiederkehr

The Hermitage, a place of spiritual rest. (Photo by Kevin Driedger)

We asked the Canadian Mennonite community to reflect on rest and restlessness. Where do you find rest for your soul? What do you need rest from? How does Jesus’ promise in Matthew... Read More
June 29, 2023 | Feature |

The glass sculpture titled, Imperative Change, is made from upcycled glass by Steinbach, Manitoba artist George Klassen. (Photo by George Klassen)

In my mid-30s, two decades after the last time my father beat me, and two years after he died, I broke glass twice in one week. Once, for the first time in my life, in anger. On a... Read More
June 15, 2023 | Feature | Arthur Boers

(Flickr photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture)

I want to know how to pray. It’s December 2021. Advent. A season of waiting. Everything is waiting. Waiting for the pandemic to be over. Waiting for our leaders to start acting... Read More
June 6, 2023 | Feature | Josiah Neufeld

Milo Shantz pictured with a turkey in the late 1950s. Shantz and his brother Ross started a highly successful turkey business. (Photo courtesy of Marcus Shantz)

I was delivering a sermon on the story of Zacchaeus last October when I realized that when I talked about Zacchaeus, I was actually thinking about, and picturing, my father... Read More
May 18, 2023 | Feature | Marcus Shantz

Ross W. Muir, with camera bag in tow, among a Grade 1 class at the Unyama IDP Camp in northern Uganda, 2004. (Photo by Michael Oruni)

I’m basing the form of this final missive on the last book I read, Dispatches —a harrowing and sometimes hilarious memoir by Michael Herr, who covered the insanity of the Vietnam... Read More
May 4, 2023 | Feature | Ross W. Muir

A painting of Christopher Columbus planting his flag in the “New World,” by American artist Louis Prang. (L. Prang & Co., Boston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

After the Vatican’s recent repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, I spent two hours speaking with three Indigenous people about the 500-year-old church doctrine that is as much... Read More
April 20, 2023 | Feature | Will Braun

Michel Monette and Lyne Renaud. (Photo by Michel Monette)

When I was first called to church planting work in 2004, I prayed and sought God’s will. I also read Ray Bakke’s book, Hope for the City . It invited me back to the city. The book... Read More
April 6, 2023 | Feature | Michel Monette

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