Encounters with the church in Cuba
Sixteen Anabaptist Christians from Canada and the United States came to Cuba from Jan. 12 to 16 to learn about the church there. I was one of them. Jack and Irene Suderman of First Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., organized our travel experience through TourMagination. Longtime students of Cuban history, economics, culture and politics, the…
Well rooted, well winged
For most of us, the biblical canon with its 66 “books” has always been a given, inherited from the past, our parents and churches. We have not concerned ourselves very much with it, even though we may have heard that the Catholic version of the Bible has more “books” in it than the Protestant version. …
Love in the time of COVID-19
Thursday, as I sat down to a board meeting for the Micah Mission, a restorative justice organization in Saskatoon, I got the news that the Juno Awards show was being cancelled in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. For months I’d been hearing the Junos hyped on CBC Radio 2 and seeing advertisements…
Out of holy weakness, mysterious power arises
I could not have predicted the responses I got when I asked 15 Mennonite Church Canada pastors—all women—how they would explain the meaning of the cross and resurrection to a 12-year-old. When I was 12, the idea of “Jesus dying for my sins” didn’t make sense. I believed it in some sense but I also…
‘Marvellous . . . yet so repulsive’
Soren Kierkegaard once famously said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” So often it’s only after we’ve lived through something that we can look back and articulate what was going on; then we see the choices we made more clearly and understand better the way things unfolded. We could…
A call to strengthen our core
A year ago I asked my oldest daughter, who was in the middle of a master of physiotherapy program at the University of Manitoba, to help me figure out what was wrong with my left foot. Her assessment was, “Dad, you are messed up. Make an appointment to see a physiotherapist.” I dutifully went. It…
Who was I that I could hinder God?
Update: In October 2020, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada announced the termination of the ministerial credentials of John D. Rempel, on the basis of ministerial sexual misconduct. To learn more, see ‘Credentials terminated for theologian-academic-pastor.’ The Book of Acts is the record of what happened to Jesus’ followers when their universe exploded, when the Holy Spirit, the…
Learning to live with technology
The internet and the myriad technologies that have accompanied its rise to media supremacy have transformed the way people communicate. For better or worse they have also transformed education. As principal of Rosthern Junior College (RJC), a Mennonite high school in Rosthern, Sask., Ryan Wood has seen the impact of technology in the classroom and…
Encountering the gifts of a global church
The world is getting smaller. Peoples, places and cultures that in the past existed in distant lands may today be just around the corner. Here in North America, because of migration, many neighbourhoods have become mosaics of people of a variety of skin colours, languages and cultures. Some of the newcomers are Christians and they…
Empower children . . . end poverty
This year marked the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Fittingly, the theme of the 2019 Universal Children’s Day, held on Nov. 20, was “Acting together to empower children, their families and communities to end poverty.” Despite decades of progress, millions of children remain trapped in poverty. According…
