‘Who are we as the church now?’
Justin Sun has never known pastoring other than during a pandemic. A year-and-a-half into his first pastorate, he says, “It’s been rough. How do I even do this job? I didn’t even attend a real in-person service until June.” That was nine months after he started in is job as a youth pastor in Richmond,…
‘God didn’t create you wrong’
Although some Mennonite churches in Canada have wrestled with whether to accept LGBTQ+ people in their congregations, the conversation around queer issues is rapidly expanding in the public sphere. Gender identity is one topic that has been gaining popularity in the last several years, yet the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse Mennonites remain relatively unexplored…
Biblical companions on my cancer journey
My family does cancer in a big way. In my immediate family of five members, there have been 10 occasions when a doctor told one of us that we have cancer, or that, despite the treatments, the cancer has returned. My wife Esther has had two rounds of breast cancer. Our son Tim, who was…
Simple wonder, peculiar generosity
Annie Janzen earned no degrees and was never elected chair of a church council. She did not start a church, write a best-seller or perform for large audiences. She did cook at Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg for 27 years, travel the globe and make an unlikely diversity of friends. She lived a good,…
Let’s talk about power
Did you know, there are over 650 occurrences of the word “power” in the Bible? Dunamis, a Greek word for power, occurs 120 times in the New Testament and means “strength” or “ability.” It is used to describe, for example, the power of God (Matthew 22:29), the power of Elijah (Luke 1:17), and the power…
What if we stayed together?
What do we do when we disagree with people in our church? There are lots of reasons to disagree. We can disagree about how we talk about salvation, about who we should include or not include, about political views, or even about vaccination. Across North America, we see issues dividing congregations and conferences. When people…
Mary’s story: Our inheritance
Mary’s story comes to us this year, maybe in a new way, at a time when we welcome some really good news. We could use an encouraging, empowering and heart-warming story right now. Year after year in pageant, poetry and hymnody we rehearse Mary’s good news story and the angel’s message: “Fear not!” I confess…
Advent and idolatry
The first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the Christian year, so it would be appropriate to greet each other with the recognition that a new year has begun. Advent is the most Jewish of Christian seasons. Yet we are accustomed to approaching Advent in a way that strips it of its Jewish character,…
Tending the cairn
A public apology is one of many ways that a church may address past wrongs and those persons who have been harmed. Right now, for example, even following the apology by the Canadian Catholic bishops, there remains a strong call for an apology by Pope Francis for residential schools in Canada and abuses that happened…
The great Mwenezi cook-off
All of Joseph Gudo’s hard work was summed up in one small plate of food. He’d laboured for months in the field and uncountable hours in the kitchen all in service to this dish—a neat pile of mashed cowpeas (black-eyed peas), buoyed by a bold pinch of cayenne pepper and dressed up with pops of…
