Growing into the future
Over the past year, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada has been leaning into its strategic plan, “Growing into the Future,” a plan that honours the five strategic priorities set in 2022. The plan is anchored in MCEC’s identity statement—transformed, inspired and called—and includes four specific goals to be enacted over the next few years. Both the…
In prayer with old monks
I’m taking a group from our church on a spiritual retreat this weekend. I’ve gone on many personal retreats to the Abbey of the Genesee, a Trappist monastery in New York, but this is my first time leading a group retreat there. I decided to do this for several reasons. First, the monastery likely won’t…
Seeing clearly
I saw a commercial during a hockey game recently that ended with an image of an Uber Eats bag sitting beside a bowl of macaroni and cheese and a Kraft Dinner box. This struck me as odd. I wondered, what’s the connection between Uber Eats and Kraft Dinner? A few minutes later, the same commercial…
Walking through open doors
John and Edna Peters, 87 and 86, respectively, live in Winnipeg, where they are charter members of Charleswood Mennonite Church. Edna worked as a nurse and a pastoral coordinator and served on the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) board, while John taught agriculture at two universities, served with MCC in Paraguay and Bolivia, and worked as…
Restless hearts in Hollywood
So, a struggling actor and a pastor walk into a bar … What sounds like a setup for a lame joke was my reality one afternoon in the Rockies last year. My wife was attending some meetings, and I came along for the ride. Another tag-along and I found ourselves meandering around town before landing…
Resourcing the Anabaptist church
Over 500 years, the Anabaptist community has grown to be a diverse and global expression of faith. The resources of Anabaptism reflect this diversity. Mennonite World Conference (MWC) represents most Christian churches rooted in the Anabaptist movement. In addition to the ongoing resourcing work of its commissions and networks, MWC has several significant resource titles:…
Binding and loosing in an age of division
For the past three years, the United States has been my home, and in the U.S., division is impossible to ignore. Liberals on the left, conservatives on the right. Of course, Canada is not immune to these divisions, and neither is the church. In this context, what hope does the church have of discerning the…
Let’s agree to disagree
In my Zimbabwean African culture, elders are so revered that they are never seen as doing anything wrong. It is considered very rude to argue with one’s elders, even when we are certain that they are incorrect. Young people must bow their heads and make peace by being acquiescent. I vividly remember a time when…
Can’t we all just get along?
Are you losing hope in the possibility of everyone getting along? Division in the church is nothing new for me. I grew up in a harsh, conservative fundamentalist church that judged everybody. Especially liberal Christians. In my early 20s, I became agnostic and relentlessly judgmental toward conservative Christians. I returned to Christian faith and church…
Big tent, small centre
Here in British Columbia—the West of the West, where West and true East meet in North America—we sometimes tend to look more toward the traditionalist faith of the church in Asia than to the progressive, whiter, older Mennonite lands of eastern Canada. We also continue to be influenced by the neo-reformed fundamentalism of our dear, and…
