We are so swift to judge
In the days immediately following our publication of the sexuality statement by Maple View Mennonite Church, several people wrote letters in outrage. Two cancelled their subscriptions. The insert appeared in the Sept. 25, 2017, print edition, and the letters were printed on Oct. 23. These letters prompted two other people to cancel their subscriptions, because—wait…
Peace is everyone’s business
The political scientist Harold Lasswell once defined politics to be “who gets what, when and how.” If that is politics, peace studies in contrast can be seen as an attempt to answer the question “why” things are given to whom, when and how. While peace studies is concerned about the political challenge of stopping people…
Readers write: January 29, 2018 issue
When community discernment leads to a golden calf Re: “Recognizing potential in an uncertain future,” Dec. 11, 2017. When I read, at the very end of the article, that “the church is experiencing a shift away from the Bible as authority, to community discernment,” curiously a picture of Moses coming down the mountain came…
All gifts are important
Sometimes when I am very tired or discouraged, or both, I have trouble trusting God. I read the lovely promises that Paul writes to the church in Corinth and I wonder. I read Paul’s words, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given…
One word
A year ago, a friend issued a challenge. He urged me to select one word as the word for me in 2017. A word on which to focus and meditate. A word of (at least hoped for) transformation. Perhaps because it was January, perhaps because of the Spirit’s leading, I responded positively to the challenge.…
Does your financial plan include giving?
In the early years of our marriage, my wife Sharon and I often sat through our pastor’s annual sermon on tithing consumed by the feeling that we should do more. A serious discussion always followed, but with monthly bills, a mortgage, car payments, and school fees for our daughter, it was difficult to find the…
Love is acceptance and transformation
Does loving people and things as they are mean accepting them as they are? If so, what are we to do with the call to join the Spirit’s transformative work of making all people, places and things new? The call to transformation certainly seems to contradict acceptance. It focusses on what is wrong in the…
Bloodvein Reserve
Many years ago, our archives first described this photograph as “School children at Bloodvein Reserve, ca. 1956.” The subject heading included the phrase, “Indians of North America,” correct for the time. If you go to the photograph description now, you will see that the word “Reserve” has been replaced with “First Nation,” and “Indians” with…
Wildwood Mennonite unplugged
In this age of hectic schedules, electronic device dependency and human isolation, how can a church provide meaning, purpose and belonging? Saskatoon’s Wildwood Mennonite Church may have found an answer to this perplexing question. Wildwood Unplugged offered congregants three weekends of activities similar to a church retreat, but without the necessity or expense of leaving…
