Substance over glitz
While public conversation swirled in July over the details of WE Charity’s speaker fees and all-expenses-paid trips for donors, my church was having a sermon series on Mennonite Central Committee’s 100 years of service in the name Christ. Over several weeks, church members who had volunteered with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Canada and around…
Selling generosity
When I am asked what I do for a living, I often say, “I show people how much fun it is to give their money away.” That elicits a better conversation than if I tell them I manage a registered, charitable, donor-advised foundation. I love what I do. It’s a joy to work with donors…
Readers write: September 14, 2020 issue
‘Better stories’ needed for ‘future inventories’ Re: “A Black/Menno inventory,” June 22, page 13. I deeply appreciate this column. While I am sure that there is much more history than could fit in it, I wonder how to understand the general scarcity of stories of cultural contact and sharing. Is it too pessimistic to ask…
It’s been a feast!
“Find us empty and wandering . . . find us in the wilderness, and fill us with your feast.” This lyric by Phil Campbell-Enns, pastor of Home Street Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, is from a song that was chosen for the first Mennonite Church Canada online worship service on March 22. At the time, it…
CMBC student discussion
In Saskatoon, at the 1975 Conference of Mennonites in Canada annual conference, the Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC) board, “long embarrassed about faculty salaries,” asked for funds to raise salaries to a maximum of $20,000 per year for PhD professors after 10 years of service. Many leaders and teachers in our churches and church institutions…
Bethel moments
A story in Genesis 28 describes the patriarch Jacob stopping for the night while on a journey. His sleep includes a dream of a visit from God. In the morning, Jacob awakes and offers the profound observation, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn’t know it! This is none other than the…
Learning from Quakers
Because of my Christian friends I’m taking a hiatus from social media. One has repeatedly posted a meme of Jesus with an AK-47 assault rifle. I tried hard to explain in detail why I thought this was horrible. What I mean, of course, is that we argued. Then there are the Christian friends who live…
A spiritual disruption
“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God” (Hosea 14:1). In this final chapter of Hosea, God bids the Israelites return to God and acknowledge their waywardness, but also to be assured they will find compassion and fruitfulness in God. It’s really not a unique theme, but I think it offered me a biblical image…
White Mennonite static
The Mennonite church has the opportunity to become a dependable partner in the work of dismantling racism. The church as a whole has a record of racism—both overt and covert—that has been attested to by generations of Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) community members both within and outside the church. The question is…
