Broad prayers in a time of fear
It has become a routine yet still shocking news report: another shooting in a quiet neighbourhood or at a shopping centre, nightclub, school or place of worship. Then come the familiar offers of “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their loved ones. Sadly, there have been too many opportunities to pray these prayers recently. …
MCC celebrates, serves where its work began
Under shade trees in a city park on June 16, about 40 Anabaptists shared a picnic of corn grits, rye bread and warm cocoa. The unusual menu held symbolic meaning. It was a “relief-kitchen dinner” like those that saved the lives of thousands of Mennonites and other Ukrainians on the brink of starvation in…
Readers write: August 19, 2019 issue
The message of Jesus is ‘superior and important’ Re: “Reaching out requires letting in,” June 24, page 13. Troy Watson’s column talks about “[t]his barrier is about our subtle . . . sense of superiority” in reaching out to people. First, I think this misses an important command given by Jesus, as recorded in…
The most important word
“With” may be the most important word in the Christian faith. So argues Sam Wells, an Anglican priest-theologian, in Incarnational Ministry, a book about being with the church. In the chapter “Being with the afflicted,” Wells uses the children’s book, Now One Foot, Now the Other, that tells of Bobby, a toddler who is named…
Petitcodiac Mennonite Church
The Petitcodiac (N.B.) Mennonite Church Council is pictured during a meeting in 1996. Whether around a kitchen table or a purposely built boardroom, church councils are the administrative hub of most mainstream Mennonite congregations. But it was not always so. The rise of the church council as a lay decision-making body was achieved only in…
Hope in the slow spreading of the kingdom
At the Mennonite Church Canada Gathering earlier this summer, my husband Darnell and I led a workshop on the theme of inspiring the imagination of the local church. While we invited sharing about the seeds of hope in our local congregations—the good stuff God is doing in our communities that interrupts the brokenness in the…
The divine flame
The song “Wonderwall” by Oasis came on the radio. I was about to change the station when these lyrics hit me, “Backbeat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out.” There are many fires that burn in one’s heart over a lifetime: The fire of recognition that leaps within…
Igniting flames of hope in the midst of ending
On June 30, at our annual general meeting in Abbotsford, B.C., Mennonite Women Canada elected to dissolve our nationwide ministry for the purpose of releasing energy and assets to the regional churches so that they can grow stronger in their ministry with and through women within their contexts. Does this mean that after 67 years…
‘We became Mennonites’
Welcoming visitors from North America, Ivan Kapelushniy, pastor of Nikolaipolye Mennonite Church, led his congregation of about 15 people in singing “For God So Loved Us” in Russian. “There are no born Mennonites among us,” Kapelushniy said on June 16 as mission worker Mary Raber translated. “We became Mennonites.” Kapelushniy counts himself among the converts.…
