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Meet the pastors who moonlight
Someone once said, “There’s no such thing as part-time pastors, only part-time salaries.” If this is true, a lot of congregations within Mennonite Church Canada are getting good value for their money. Bi-vocational ministry has become increasingly commonplace as churches decrease in size and can no longer afford full-time pastors. Even large congregations who employ…
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An open letter on Future Directions
We are a group of pastors from each of the five area churches who have gathered around the current Future Directions Task Force conversations in an effort to understand and respond together. We write as younger pastoral leaders with hopes for many years yet in service to the Mennonite church in Canada, and so with…
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Prayer of preparation for Assembly 2016
As delegates prepare to gather for Assembly 2016, a group of 10 pastors from across Mennonite Church Canada wrote an open letter on the Future Directions process. They write, “In a spirit of pastoral response, we offer the following prayer to help gather God’s people around both the Future Directions and BFC processes as they…
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Guard your heart and mind
I memorized Philippians 4:4-9 more than 20 years ago when I was on bed rest during my pregnancy with my son Aaron. I had lost three babies before him—and one after him—so pregnancy for me was an obvious cause for anxiety. If truth be known, I am actually a professional worrier, so passages like this…
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Communion and Cabernet
Alcohol has become ubiquitous in Canada, so much so that on April 5 even Starbucks began serving beer and wine in three of its Toronto outlets. How does this preponderance of alcohol affect life in the Mennonite church? While there may not be alcohol in church buildings, it is certainly a part of the lives…
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What’s up with Mennos and mission?
About eight years ago, Daniel Pantoja shared the approach he and his wife Joji employed as Mennonite Church Canada Witness Workers in the Philippines: “Toss aside western church culture and rhetoric.” By shaping their approach from a Muslim context, they bridged the gap between perception and Jesus. “Don’t call it church-planting,” Pantoja cautioned then, since…
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Marriage in embodied mystery
Marriage has always been, and continues to be, a perplexing reality for Christians. From the Apostle Paul’s confusing advice to the more recent agonizing over divorce, Christian marriage has been plagued by anxiety and confusion. The conflicts in the church today are only the most recent chapter in millennia of struggle. Marriage has always been…
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Easter is past . . . where is Jesus now?
Excerpted and translated from a sermon preached at Niagara United Mennonite Church, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on April 26, 2015. It is based on chapter 21 of the Gospel of John, the well-known story of the disciples back in Galilee shortly after Easter. The entire Easter story is full of tension and contradictions. And the disciples had…
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Encountering the vulnerable Jesus
Lent is a 40-day season on the church calendar that brings the story of Jesus into the nitty-gritty of community life. It brings the story into everyone’s own particular time and place. Lent is a time that commemorates the 40 days Jesus spent in solitude, silence and fasting in the wilderness. During this time in…
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For what purpose has Christ grabbed hold of you?
A year ago, when a colleague and I spent an intense two days in the beautiful Fraser Valley of B.C. with the writing team for our Leader magazine, I met this passage again as part of the 2016 lectionary texts for Lent. Many important and life-giving words from these texts (including Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126…
