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Worship and song submissions, recommendations sought for new hymnal
What songs connect you to God and your community, and empower you to serve? What songs do you turn to in joyful or difficult times? What are your heart songs? These are questions the Mennonite Worship and Song Committee is asking, inviting Mennonites to fill out a survey as it embarks on a listening and study…
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Australians speak for the stranger
Christian activists in Australia repeatedly risk arrest when they call attention to the plight of asylum-seekers suffering mistreatment in indefinite detention. One of the activists is Matt Anslow, vice president of the Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand. With some friends, he co-founded the organization Love Makes A Way (LMAW) in 2014 to take…
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Third Way’s 2016 top 10 quirky queries
Millions of people will never pick up a book or magazine about Mennonites or enter any Mennonite church. But they will drop in anonymously to the Third Way website (thirdway.com) to get a quick glimpse of what Mennonites are about. The website averages more than one thousand hits a day, nearing a third of a…
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Film on COs wins awards and attention
A film produced by the Mennonite Heritage Centre (MHC) Archives about conscientious objectors (COs) is garnering significant attention. CBC recently aired The Last Objectors on its national channel, as well as in Manitoba. The 44-minute documentary won a Silver World Humanitarian award in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was also nominated for the Best Feature Documentary at…
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Mission worker befriended Jews and Palestinians
Florence Cressman Kreider was a friend to both Jews and Palestinians, and she sought to spread peace wherever she traveled. The former mission worker died Nov. 1, 2016, in Broadway, Va., at the age of 87. A native of Ontario, Florence Kreider was a graduate of the Ontario Mennonite Bible Institute of Kitchener in 1948…
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The refugee highway in Kitchener-Waterloo
“Why are there three Mennonite organizations working on refugee support in the Kitchener- Waterloo area?” was the question being answered at a Nov. 29, 2016, meeting at 50 Kent Ave. in Kitchener. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Reception House and Mennonite Coalition for Refugee Support, which all work at the refugee question from different angles, provided…
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The danger isn’t over
For five days last October, intense rainfall caused severe flooding along Colombia’s Pacific coast in the Chocó area, seriously damaging the homes of more than 20,000 people. Carlos Andres Palacios Lozano, a member of Sión Mennonite Brethren Church, recalled that at around 1 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2016, heavy rains caused the river to quickly…
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Future Directions Dream
I want to be excited about church. I do not attend regional or national assemblies, but I care deeply about the broader church. I would rather hang out with my boys than attend a meeting to discuss a wordy Future Directions report, but I would clear my schedule to sit in a circle with others…
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‘Thanks to God, I have a new house’
Digna Macias remembers clinging to a door frame in her home in Manta, Ecuador, while the walls fell around her last April following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck the Pacific coast of northern Ecuador, where she lives. Fortunately, neither Macias, nor her daughter, Nidia Palma, who lives with her, were injured badly, but 668 died,…
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Roi des Rois interested in God’s kingdom realized
Twenty-five years ago, Michel Monette was selling encyclopaedias door to door seven days a week. One of his fellow salesmen, a Mennonite Brethren man, would take Sundays off to go to a local evangelical church and would do the same Wednesday evenings for Bible study. On Halloween Eve 1991 in Rouyn-Noranda, Monette said to the…
