(The following article discusses a difficult topic in story form. All characters are fictional, although the events referred to are based on an amalgamation of true experiences.)
She went to her pastor for advice, not sex.
Another woman accepted her pastor’s invitation to chair a committee he oversaw, not an invitation to be sexually preyed upon.
Debora Prabu, from Indonesia, sings during one of the nine worship services at Mennonite World Conference Assembly, held July 21 to 26, 2015. She was part of the 17-person international music ensemble led by Marcy Hostetler, of the U.S.A. Each day they focussed on music from one of the continents.
Members of the Mennonite-Anabaptist family from around the world gathered July 21 to July 26, 2015, in Harrisburg, Pa., U.S.A., for the 16th assembly of Mennonite World Conference. To learn more about the event, click on the links below. (Jim Cheng photo)
Morning and evening worship services featured songs from various cultures and countries. Many people found the music inspiring. (Photo by Jim Cheng)
More than 250 friendship groups allowed MWC assembly participants to become friends with believers from around the world. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
Martin Junge, executive secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, was among the guests from other world churches who addressed the assembly. He said he was “amazed and humbled by the gift of reconciliation and forgiveness” in the Anabaptist-Lutheran dialogue. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
A group of five from Kenya sang on Thursday evening. Of the choir of 30, only these five received visas to come to the U.S. For a report from the visa task force, go to canadianmennonite.org/mwc-2015-visas (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
The assembly was a “green” event with strong encouragement to compost as much as possible. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
Liesa Unger, chief international events coordinator for MWC, rides one of the Amish-made scooters used by volunteers and coordinators to get around the enormous complex. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
In his friendship group at the Mennonite World Conference assembly, Francis Ojwang found that getting to know fellow believers from distant places brought an unexpected blessing.
Marcy Hostetler, led the international music ensemble. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman)
Worship rises to the rafters as Mennonites and Brethren and Christ join their voices in music from around the world at PA 2015 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Differences exist in theology and culture, yet music is a unifier at the conference, even when it stretches comfort zones.
Natasha Neustaedter Barg gets some tips on playing a gamelan instrument from player Andrew Beltaos, as part of an evening youth event. (Photo by Doreen Martens)
Clara Flores (left), Kailey Schroeder and Joel Heppner, who knew each other as youngsters in Bolivia, were able to spend time together. (Photo by Doreen Martens)
Megan Breidigan may be only 16, but she’s already figured out there’s nothing quite like a Mennonite World Conference assembly.
Participants in the Global Youth Summit wrote messages of encouragement to Lee Sang Min, a conscientious objector under detention in South Korea. (MWC photo)
The three-day Mennonite World Conference (MWC) Global Youth Summit (GYS) concluded Sunday, July 19, with a strong call to young adults to impact the world by sharing their gifts.
Roland Yoder (centre) puts his own thumbprint on the three-dimensional sculpture of the MWC logo that he designed. Vikal Rao (left) from India was the overall creator of the Global Church Village and Lowell Jantzi (right) helped to carry out the concept. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman)
Young people enjoy playing Dutch Blitz in the North American tent. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
“This seems like an innocent form of community graffiti,” Roland Yoder said with a smile as he watched the hub of activity around the three-dimensional sculpture of the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) logo that Yoder designed for the Global Church Village (GCV).
Left to right: Lesly Henriquez (Honduras), Albita Castillo (Guatemala), and Aurora Pereira (Honduras) work at a communal art project titled, “Women in Conversation.” Artist and pastor Audrey Kanagy (far right) designed the four panels, depicting women from different continents. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
Marta Lucia Gomez (Colombia) hands a candle to Sylvia Shirk Charles as Lydia Harder (Canada) looks on. (Photo by Dale D. Gehman for Meetinghouse)
For the first time Anabaptist women gathered from across the world to consider forming a global Anabaptist women’s network. The Mennonite World Conference (MWC) assembly, provided the occasion for regional gatherings of women as well as a joint meeting to explore the vision for greater connections among women doing theology and pastoral work across the Anabaptist world.
Danisa Ndlovu (left) of Zimbabwe and Janet Plenert of Canada have completed six years as president and vice-president of Mennonite World Conference.
In four days of meetings just prior to the July 21-26 Mennonite World Conference Assembly, the General Council gathered with about 120 representatives from MWC member churches around the world. About half the time involved sharing stories and reflecting on themes of unity and diversity.
Three Mennonite women from different countries share together during a Mennonite World Conference gathering in Ethiopia. (Photo by Merle Good)
The last in a five-part series leading up to Mennonite World Conference Assembly in Harrisburg, Pa.
When someone asks you to use a few words to describe yourself, what words do you use? Would you change those words to describe yourself when you are with your family? At work? Travelling to some distant place?
The Sermon on the Mount is the thorn in our side and the rainbow in our sky, discomforting and comforting by turn, but always calling us beyond our perspective to a more joyous and loving existence.
I was down in Mississippi, at a small African-American church. My parents were volunteering there with a ministry that had many different programs going. They had a farm, a clinic, a law office, a school, sports activities for the youth of the community, a resale shop, among other worthy endeavors.
‘Which of you, if your children ask for a moon cake, will give them a stone?’ (Matthew 7:9, paraphrase) (Photo © iStock.com/Voraorn)
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7:9-10).
Pressure is increasing once again. The violent and repressive imagination created by apartheid still dominates. Recent violence directed at African foreign nationals is but one example of this. (Photo by Karen Suderman)
The journey towards reconciliation is not easy. Attempts to repair wrongs involve time and intentionality. Healing broken relationships takes longer still.
On April 18, Karen and Andrew Suderman and at least 18 others protest recent eruptions of xenophobia by wrapping about 100 trees in the downtown core of Pietermaritzburg with yellow fabric and a statement from South Africa’s Freedom Charter: ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it.’ (Photo courtesy of Karen and Andrew Suderman)
As a colourful protest against xenophobia unfolded in downtown Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, people living in the neighbourhood come out and help wrap trees in yellow fabric to symbolize friendship, warmth, welcoming, joy and hope, and to fasten posters of inclusion to the fabric. (Photo by Andrew Suderman)
What do you do in the face of hatred, a hatred so immense that it drives people to pillage, beat and even kill others? What do you do when that hatred is simultaneously “out there” and in your own backyard? How do you show love, kindness and hospitality in rejection and defiance of such wanton violence?
Palmer Becker and J.T. Masih (centre) in a teaching mission in India. (Photo courtesy of Palmer Becker)
Just as there are Lutheran, Baptist and Anglican Christians, so there are Mennonite Christians. The name “Mennonite” is most appropriately used as an adjective rather than a noun. We are first of all Christians and secondarily a certain kind of Christian.
“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come . . . . Rise up my love, and come away” (Song of Songs 2:10b-12a, 13b, KJV)
My grandmother’s church is, like all Old Order Mennonite churches, plain. The white walls are bare. There are no stained-glass windows, no gilded altars and no images of saints or martyrs. Pews of hard, blonde oak sit in tight rows on worn linoleum.
“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.
Matthew 10:37 reads, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
For many people, the Christian faith and poverty are deeply interconnected. Acts of charity are widely viewed as a key aspect of the Christian life, and the church has a long history of providing relief and advocacy for justice for the poor.
Anneken de Vlaster, an Anabaptist woman, is thrown into the fire in 1571, as pictured in Herald Press’s Martyrs Mirror.
Lydie Yougbaré emerges from her baptism and into the fellowship of the Bobo Dioulasso congregation of Eglise Evangélique Mennonite du Burkina Faso. (Photo by Frank Nacanabo)
Sometimes, a single act can have enormous consequences.
Indigenous students and their families arrive by plane for a Mennonite-run Bible school at Stormer Lake in northwestern Ontario in 1981. (Photo by Martin Frey)
Children from indigenous communities in northern Manitoba are pictured with their teacher at a summer camp in Loon Straits, Man., in the 1950s. (Photo by Edwin Brandt, courtesy of the Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
A resident of the Beardy’s & Okemasis Willow Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan reads a thank-you letter from MCC Canada for his donation of $5 in 1968. (Photo courtesy of the Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
Henry Berg, third from left, and indigenous men build a chapel at Cross Lake, Man., sometime in the 1950s. (Photo courtesy of the Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
The Niagara Iroquois Dance Group performs in the chapel of Conrad Grebel College as part of ‘Tandi: Symposium on Native Peoples,’ held Jan. 20 to 22, 1976. (Photo courtesy of the Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
“History,” wrote American poet Maya Angelou more than 20 years ago, “despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
The term “settler” for Canadians of European descent was popularized by Roger Epp in his 2008 book, We are all Treaty People. This term acknowledges—rather than ignores—the conflicted history of the colonial project that began in Eastern Canada in the late 1500s.
In an appendix to Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Vol. II: Diverse Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking (Orbis Books), which I co-wrote, I explored the question of how principles and practices of restorative justice might be applied to historic and continuing violence, as is the case regarding indigenous justice in Canada.
