Homeless find shelter in MCC building
By day, the material aid warehouse at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) B.C.’s headquarters is used to store and process items such as school kits and blankets to be shipped overseas. But, in the colder fall and winter months, by night the space is converted into an extreme weather shelter hosting the city’s most vulnerable. The…
Breaking bread builds community
Every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., students, staff and faculty at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ont., gather to share a meal called Community Supper. This tradition traces back to the mid-1960s, when the college was founded, and to Grebel’s very first president, J. Winfield Fretz. In those early days, he insisted on having small…
Community Supper bread recipe
This recipe is from the kitchen staff at Conrad Grebel University College. (Read about the recipe’s significance here.) This recipe makes 22 very large loaves 15 tablespoons instant yeast 35 cups warm water 5 cups sugar 5 cups vegetable oil 10 tablespoons salt 98 cups flour or more Mix yeast, water, sugar, oil and salt…
Limits and surprises
I had other plans for this space; this is not the editorial I was intending to write. But, reading over this issue’s proof pages, I saw some unexpected themes emerging. Several contributors highlight ways in which we humans try to limit the intentions/purposes of our Creator. Columnist Troy Watson reflects on the common tendency to get…
Who was I that I could hinder God?
Update: In October 2020, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada announced the termination of the ministerial credentials of John D. Rempel, on the basis of ministerial sexual misconduct. To learn more, see ‘Credentials terminated for theologian-academic-pastor.’ The Book of Acts is the record of what happened to Jesus’ followers when their universe exploded, when the Holy Spirit, the…
Readers write: February 3, 2020 issue
Old photo brings back ‘fond memories’ Re: “Moment from yesterday” photo of the Rosengart church in Poland. The picture brought fond memories back. It was my home church. I was baptized in it. I think the church was the only Mennonite church with a separate bell tower. I once pulled the rope in it to…
Expressions of encouragement
Over the years, I’ve attended many youth gatherings, even organized a few. But none were like the one I attended on Sept. 20, 2019, when the Manitoba Youth for Climate Action called students to gather for a Die-In in Winnipeg. In solidarity, I and a number of Mennonite Church Manitoba pastors stood on the sidelines…
Cornelius Penner
In 1944, Cornelius Penner was separated from his wife and four children in Poland. He was sent to a German work camp while the rest of the family was taken to Siberia and later Tajikistan. Cornelius came to Winnipeg in 1949, and worked at the Mennonitische Rundschau newspaper. He never gave up trying to be…
Giving up a dream
I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions this year but I definitely jumped into this new decade with a challenge to choose what matters most to our family. My husband and I came incredibly close to buying our dream house, and then, at the last hour, with all our number-crunching and life-planning efforts exhausted, we gave…
‘We discuss and we divide’
In early December, I received an email from Jeremiah Choi, our Mennonite World Conference (MWC) regional representative for Northeast Asia, about the situation in Hong Kong, where he lives and pastors: “Please pray for Hong Kong churches for unity. We were not used to discussing political issues. Now we discuss and we divide. Some people…
