From the pews
For an hour each week we sit together. Most of us are mostly silent. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we sing, sometimes we wander off in thought. Sometimes I wonder what other people wonder about. What do they wish church would be? What do they really believe? What pains would they share? What recollections warm their…
Holding out hope for the post-Christendom church
The Naked Anabaptist, by British author Stuart Murray, summarizes the foundational tenets of Anabaptism, but “I have a feeling it wouldn’t have sold quite as well with a different title,” he quipped. Murray was speaking in Rosthern as part of a two-week tour thanking Mennonite Church Canada for sending Witness workers Michael and Cheryl Nimz…
B.C. pastor heads new Canadian Mennonite board
Henry Krause, pastor of Langley (B.C.) Mennonite Fellowship, was elected chair of the Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service (CMPS) board at its 45th annual meeting, held at Rosthern Mennonite Church from April 21 to 23. He succeeds Tobi Thiessen of Toronto, who is going off the board after serving for six years as a CMPS board…
B.C. paddle-a-thon: a successful tradition
The number of people in the vessels may have been smaller this year, but it didn’t seem to matter in the end for the total earned at the 2016 Camp Squeah paddle-a-thon When the canoes and kayaks arrived at the Fort Langley marina on April 17, 2016, the paddlers who had started out from Hope…
Stephen Lewis addresses Power of Partnership fundraiser
“Don’t get too used to this kind of event,” said Rick Cober Bauman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Ontario, to gales of warm laughter as he welcomed around 500 participants to the organization’s “first-ever signature event,” a four-course dinner at the St. George Banquet Hall in Waterloo on March 30. In spite of…
Faith up front in Thailand
A farmer disappointed by tumbling returns on his cassava crop is still eager to use a portion of his property for a future youth Bible camp facility. Another man is excited to witness to Christ in his secular job. These are just two of the inspiring Christians encountered by a Canadian mission team during a…
Coffin maker overcomes evil with good
When missionaries arrived in Colombia to establish the country’s first Mennonite congregations, Tulio Pedraza and his wife Sofía became two of their first converts. They were baptized in June 1949. Only a year earlier, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a liberal political candidate, had been assassinated; his death ignited a civil war that would last for 10…
Contradicting the status quo
After exploring lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer inclusion in the Mennonite church in This Will Lead to Dancing, the Stouffville, Ont.-based theatre company Theatre of the Beat is setting its sights on the experience of conscientious objectors (COs) for its new production. Entitled Yellow Bellies, the play is a historical drama that highlights the experiences and public response to…
The things that are most worthwhile
The following article was originally given as a short speech at a community supper at Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, Ont., where Maia Fujimoto lived in residence for two years. Looking back on my years at university, I am always brought back to my first day at Grebel. It was a hot, sweaty day. I…
Mennonite ‘routes’ go deep
Building of a light-rail transit system along the spine of Waterloo and Kitchener had to change focus in March 2016, when excavations in uptown Waterloo exposed the remains of a corduroy road. Archeologists are dating the road to the late 1700s or early 1800s. It was probably built by Mennonites, the original settlers in the…
