Coaldale baptism
This classic baptism photo from Coaldale Mennonite Brethren Church has been incorrectly dated as from the 1940s. Dedicated volunteers, who have a long-standing passion for the history of the church and a long institutional memory, believed there was an error in the description. With some effort, they found two newspaper reports that gave the details…
Future Directions: Take Two
Faced with a funding crisis, sliding attendance and shifting cultural contexts, the response of Mennonite Church Canada and the five area churches has been a five-year process of restructuring denominational offices. Peter Rempel—moderator of Mennonite Church Manitoba and a veteran of other restructuring processes—says pastors tell him that 90 percent of people in the pews…
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…
Future Directions process accelerated
“The timeline [for the Future Directions plan] from Saskatoon did not reflect what was possible,” Willard Metzger, executive director of Mennonite Church Canada, told the denomination’s fall leadership assembly in Toronto on Nov. 10, 2016. Instead of bringing a plan for restructuring to a previously scheduled July 2018 delegate meeting, church leaders now see the…
‘When all you have is a hammer . . .’
Carol Penner went into ministry to be a “humble tool in God’s tool box—to preach, go to meetings and love people,” like the hammer she brought to the lectern with her. “But,” she said during her address to the annual Conrad Grebel University College pastors breakfast on Nov. 1, 2016, “the church is in a…
‘In the midst of suffering, faith does not disappear’
In October 2016, students arriving at a Christian school in Aleppo, Syria, discovered that a rocket had blown out a portion of a classroom. So many rockets were landing in the area that the school administrators hadn’t yet realized the school was hit. One of the area pastors sends his children to that school and…
‘Mennonites, land and the environment’
Academics, students, independent researchers and lay people alike gathered at the University of Winnipeg in late October 2016 for a global history conference on “Mennonites, land and the environment.” The conference drew attention to historical intimacy between Mennonite identity and farming, highlighting certain theological values that have contributed to this relationship, including humility, service and…
Assembly 2016 resolution about more than BDS
“In this resolution we are not taking sides between Israel and Palestine,” said Palmer Becker at Mennonite Church Canada’s Assembly 2016. “We support the need for a safe place to live for both Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Arabs. We grieve whenever there is loss of life, whether that is Palestinian or Israeli.” The resolution…
Missionaries’ influence spans the generations
Missions is not a very popular word in some circles these days, but when Masaki Higashiguchi visited Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Abbotsford, B.C., on Oct. 30, 2016, it was a reminder that missionaries of the past have made an impact. Masaki is a high school teacher in Takachiho, Japan, who is taking a study leave…
‘Marriage geek’ offers her take on love and fidelity
If self-confessed “marriage geek” Katherine Willis Pershey knows one thing after 14 years of marriage, it’s that couples bound together in a sacred covenant need more than cheery how-to advice on achieving marital bliss. The author and pastor offers a bracing dose of reality about the “agony, ecstasy, and tedium of wedlock” in her new…
