Intentional with our time
Categories: OpinionWith fall schedules now well underway, I sense the pressure of a “busy” lifestyle creeping in on our days and cramping our summer style. I’ve chatted with many friends who have hopped right into the overwhelming patterns of rushing out…
How to talk about money at your church
Categories: OpinionChristians give in grateful obedience to a generous God. Gratitude provides a wonderful pathway to the spiritual discipline of giving. God’s mercies to us are new every morning, and we have so much to be grateful for. Imagine that one…
Revolutionary hospitality
Categories: OpinionWhen you search “hospitality” online, Google auto-fills with words like industry, services and tourism. You will find links to lodging, food and beverage establishments, entertainment and travel services, and hospitality management training institutions. What you don’t find, unfortunately, are links…
Finding spiritual fruits in Mennonite orchards
Categories: OpinionWhen Ly Vang was growing up on a farm in Laos, her family planted it own fruits, and her parents always said, ‘Whenever you eat fruit that tastes good, save the seed so you can plant it. That way you…
Once Round the Barn: Cheap Edition
Categories: Web First – Opinion“Most of us harbour a degree of financial neurosis, tinged with religious uptightness,” Will Braun, Canadian Mennonite’s resident ranter, says at the start of his latest video. Follow our pigpen pundit once around the barn on his southern Manitoba farmyard…
Readers write: September 16, 2019 issue
Categories: OpinionReader gives biking story a ‘wow’ Re: “Cycling into the future,” July 22, page 30. I enjoy Canadian Mennonite very much. This story really impressed me. Philip Martin had the smarts to see the need for bike safety for his…
A collaborative leadership approach
Categories: OpinionWe have a lot of pastoral transitions happening at the moment in Mennonite Church British Columbia. It is a time that has given me pause to think about how we do church ministry and what our pastoral ministry positions look…
Peter Regier
Categories: OpinionIn 1894, Anna Enss (1855-1914), left, and Peter Regier (1851-1925) moved their family from Prussia (now Poland) to Tiefengrund, Sask., where Regier was the founding leader of the Rosenorter Gemeinde and the Conference of Mennonites in Canada. His sermon collection…
Parable of the ‘phone’ incident
Categories: OpinionA woman I’ll call Adelle stops by the church from time to time, looking for food or for a ride to another part of the city. My congregation has supplied me with non-perishable food, toiletry items, and, in colder seasons,…
Help for reading the Old Testament
Categories: OpinionMany conversations about the Old Testament are determined by questions of modernity. What are the facts? What really happened? The facts are then loaded as ammunition in the culture wars of “liberal” and “conservative.” Other questions bring faith to the…
‘Camps make church come alive’
Categories: OpinionIt’s 10:30 on a sunny August morning and the lodge at Camp Koinonia, near Boissevain, Man., is bursting with shouts and harmonies. People dance and laugh together. The group radiates energy. If the church is the body, then camp is…
Valaqua: A place where people express God’s love
Categories: OpinionI have worked at Camp Valaqua for a total of six summers, and this summer I am back on staff after being away for a few years. Valaqua is a place where I learned many things. It was my first…
Creating a wardrobe to match your values
Categories: OpinionIf you wear clothes, then you need to care about how they were made and who made them. Even if you aren’t interested in “fashion.” Even if it means giving up your favourite stores and finding new ones. Even if…
Readers write: August 19, 2019 issue
Categories: OpinionThe message of Jesus is ‘superior and important’ Re: “Reaching out requires letting in,” June 24, page 13. Troy Watson’s column talks about “[t]his barrier is about our subtle . . . sense of superiority” in reaching out to…
The most important word
Categories: Opinion“With” may be the most important word in the Christian faith. So argues Sam Wells, an Anglican priest-theologian, in Incarnational Ministry, a book about being with the church. In the chapter “Being with the afflicted,” Wells uses the children’s book,…
Petitcodiac Mennonite Church
Categories: OpinionThe Petitcodiac (N.B.) Mennonite Church Council is pictured during a meeting in 1996. Whether around a kitchen table or a purposely built boardroom, church councils are the administrative hub of most mainstream Mennonite congregations. But it was not always so.…
Hope in the slow spreading of the kingdom
Categories: OpinionAt the Mennonite Church Canada Gathering earlier this summer, my husband Darnell and I led a workshop on the theme of inspiring the imagination of the local church. While we invited sharing about the seeds of hope in our local…
The divine flame
Categories: OpinionThe song “Wonderwall” by Oasis came on the radio. I was about to change the station when these lyrics hit me, “Backbeat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out.” There are many fires…
Igniting flames of hope in the midst of ending
Categories: OpinionOn June 30, at our annual general meeting in Abbotsford, B.C., Mennonite Women Canada elected to dissolve our nationwide ministry for the purpose of releasing energy and assets to the regional churches so that they can grow stronger in their…
Leon’s ‘fifth step’ to sobriety
Categories: OpinionThroughout my years of ministry, being involved in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step program has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my work. No, I am not an addict. But at times I’m called on to help addicts…
Opinion/columns
