Back to class
Miraya Groot follows Mac Wallace, Zack Strike, and Brendan Paetkau as Conrad Grebel University College students unload the last of their residence room furniture before the first week of classes. Just as Grebel students share their treasured school traditions, well-loved skybunks and couches also get passed along from one year to the next. (Photo by…
Seeking redemption and peace
Canadian Mennonite received a copy of a letter sent to David Martin, executive minister of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, as a response to its releasing the story on the alleged sexual misconduct of the late Vernon Leis (Sept. 14, 2014, page 16). We have offered MC Eastern Canada space in our next issue to present…
Cooking up discipleship
When I was a small child, my parents took our family on assignment to Chile as church workers. In a country which at that time had no Anabaptist-Mennonite churches, our ties to the Mennonite community took other forms. Among these, my parents’ use of Doris Janzen Longacre’s More-with-Less Cookbook was perhaps the most tangible. So,…
Readers write: September 28, 2015 issue
Mennonite museum can help redress grievous wrongs of the past I crisscross Sumas Prairie (central Fraser Valley) on my daily school bus run and marvel at the lush agricultural land and the ingenious canal system that completed the draining of Sumas Lake in 1924, releasing more than 13,000 hectares of rich lake-bottom and marsh land…
Global gifts
Mennonite Church Canada’s history of engaging our global neighbours in mission and international church relations began more than 100 years ago. Since that time, the worldwide church has grown significantly. Almost two-thirds of the global Anabaptist community today is African, Asian or Latin American. That diversity is reflected within congregations across MC Canada that are…
Tribalism
Tribes are good (essential, I said in my last column). And yet there is danger when tribal extremes become virulent tribalism. Such tribalism takes what is good and life-giving about a bounded group and morphs it into a destructive, negative force. It proclaims the superiority of one group over another. It devalues and dehumanizes those…
‘Wholehearted giving’
“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (II Corinthians 9:7). My two-year-old daughter examined the chocolate doughnut hole for a moment before taking a bite. Her face lit up instantly, and in her excitement she began to…
The ‘terroir’ of church
During our 13 years in Niagara, my wife and I grew to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the winemaking process. Wine is fascinating to me. So is its intimate connection with the Christian faith. Consider how significant Jesus made wine to our understanding of redemption. Jesus’ constant use of earthy images and metaphors to…
The long path back to the Bible
“I am 86 years old now and I am confused.” The e-mail came from a Canadian Mennonite reader who was referring to references in this magazine to myth and metaphor in the Bible. The writer, who has read a range of books about the Bible, did not dismiss untraditional approaches to Scripture, but admitted difficulty…
