Chinese Mennonites persist in Edmonton for 30 years
Each week, a little band of disciples known as Edmonton Christian Life Community Church meets at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in downtown Edmonton, where many homeless people congregate. The congregation of about 20 is made up of Chinese boat people who came to Canada in the 1980s, many of whom got jobs as cleaners…
A farewell to the ‘blue hymnal’
Over the span of a single weekend, Sean Goerzen sang or played every single hymn in the blue-backed Hymnal: A Worship Book. All 658 of them. “I feel like I know the hymnal in a very intimate way now,” he says with a laugh. Goerzen organized Sargent Avenue Mennonite Church’s hymnal sing-a-thon, a two-day event…
Praying without words
A solitary candle flickers on a low table in the middle of a darkened room. Participants chat quietly with one another as they wait for the session to begin, having come to partake in an hour of centring prayer and sharing. Melody Neufeld and John Gascho launched the centring prayer group in late August. Both…
A short history of Lao Christian Fellowship
After many years of war in and around Laos, the Laos PDR party took over in 1975, and hundreds of thousands of Laotians escaped to Thailand. Under Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, and with the help of individuals and groups under the leadership of Mennonite Central Committee, many families settled in Canada. The family…
Like a bird who flew away . . . and came home
Nancy Frey remembers as a young child seeing a bird flying by and telling her mother, “Someday I am going to be like that bird and fly away.” She did just that, spending a year in France after graduating from high school. That was only the beginning of a ministry career that has spanned two…
Langham artist finds connection through painting
Her parents called her Dynamite. Although she didn’t care for the nickname when she was a child, Valerie Wiebe has come to appreciate its layers of meaning. The Langham, Sask., artist says that when she looked up the etymology of “dynamite,” she learned that the prefix “dyna” describes “something with the potential for an explosion…
Journal connects Korean Anabaptists across the globe
Eight years ago this fall, a group of 10 Korean Mennonites met at Sherbrooke Mennonite Church in Vancouver and decided to start a magazine. The publication would be a resource for Korean Anabaptists around the world and connect them to one another. Nov.17, 2019, marks the seventh anniversary of the first issue of the Korean…
Book explores healthy masculinity
Once upon a time, living in splendid isolation, Mennonite men were moulded differently from the rest of society. Worshipping in a traditional peace church with a different set of values, they didn’t fit the western stereotype of a male. But today, Mennonite men are diverse; as much urban as rural, as much men of colour…
‘I realized I had been duped!’
Gordon Toombs was deceived by the Canadian military when he tried to register as a conscientious objector (CO) during the Second World War. His recent book, L74298: Recollections of a Conscientious Objector in World War II, is dedicated to Conrad Stoesz, archivist at Winnipeg’s Mennonite Heritage Archives, in gratitude for revealing the deception. The 98-year-old…
Overcoming the siren diversions of our digital age
What was your response the last time a good friend asked you how you were doing? If you said with a laugh or a moan, “Too busy,” or just offered an eye roll, this book might be for you. In The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction, author Justin Whitmel…
