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What to Do with Numbers
For most of my so-called working life as an accountant, I dealt with numbers: adding them up, balancing them and reconciling them. But what place do numbers have in the church? Of course, hymn numbers and biblical chapters and verses are important as reference points. Then there are the budget numbers and offering totals, and…
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Confessions of a Conflicted Mennonite
Nearly 500 years ago, my ancestors might well have been among those who supported the persecution of the early Mennonites. In other words, my ancestors might well have persecuted yours. It’s true. My paternal ancestors were Bessarabian Germans, Lutherans all of them, with roots going back to regions in Germany which were staunchly pro-Luther during…
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Bring on the mystics
I am sometimes asked about my hopes for Anabaptist communities. While I have many hopes, the one I come back to most often is this: I hope for more mystics. Mystics are a diverse lot, so I should say that I’m not thinking of the esoteric or hyper-ascetic type, the ones obsessed with the mystical.…
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Tending congregation-pastor relations
For many years, the model of ministry within Mennonite Church Canada congregations featured a solo pastor working full-time for a congregation of 100 to 150 members. MC Canada accordingly designed tools and support systems to facilitate such a relationship between pastor and congregation. Three notable examples include our pension plan, benefit plan and annual pastoral…
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Secondary identities
The first identity of a follower of Jesus is “a follower of Jesus.” The church is an alternative city within the city, a new way of being human and being part of a people centred on Jesus. Any other cultural or personal markers may be important, but they must be secondary. If we believe there…
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Beyond inspiration
I have a budding conviction about preaching. My conviction is that the goal of preaching is not inspiration; the role of the sermon is not to inspire those listening. (There’s a chance people from my congregation may think, “That explains a lot.”) In our current cultural climate, inspiration seems to have become a vocational cliché.…
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Adventures in reading the Bible together
With the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism this year, I am looking forward to receiving my copy of the Anabaptist Community Bible. During the winter of 2022–23, I was part of two Bible study groups which were formed in response to a call from MennoMedia as part of this Bible project. The idea was to have…
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Awakening to the Church’s true vocation
“God has been at work from the beginning to form a covenanted people of God to help bring about God’s plan for reconciling the world to its intended purposes.”– From The Baby and the Bathwater, by Robert (Jack) Suderman When I heard that Jack and Irene Suderman were visiting Winnipeg this fall, I reached out…
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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…
