Structure and identity
After Gathering 2019 last summer, Doug Klassen, then newly hired as executive minister of Mennonite Church Canada, sat down with me for a chat in the Abbotsford, B.C., airport. Amid the chatter of travellers and loudspeaker announcements, we considered the work ahead for our church. We talked about structure and identity. Since the denominational restructuring…
‘Marvellous . . . yet so repulsive’
Soren Kierkegaard once famously said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” So often it’s only after we’ve lived through something that we can look back and articulate what was going on; then we see the choices we made more clearly and understand better the way things unfolded. We could…
Readers write: March 2, 2020 issue
Reader pans new Trumpian Middle East peace plan, favours ‘one state’ solution Having worked in the private agriculture sector with various Middle East countries, including Israel, for 45 years, I submit that one should be pessimistic about the newly proposed American peace plan for the region. It’s high on patronizing cosmetics and low in reality.…
God is inclusive, not exclusive!
There are many changes in Canadian society today that compel us to be trained in “diversity and inclusion.” As Christians, what direction do we find in our own biblical texts? When Jesus first returned to his hometown, he read a passage from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” The whole synagogue was…
Twilight Auction
In this scene from Twilight Auction by John L. Ruth, young Harvard-educated Sam confronts his traditional Mennonite family’s willingness to sell treasured family heirlooms. Doug Millar, left, is the father, and Dale Shantz, holding the vase, plays Sam in this 1969 Conrad Grebel College production. The play explores themes of family and spiritual estrangement, and…
Making things right
I read the note from my son’s teacher and my heart sank. As the kids unpacked their backpacks and had a snack, I stood still in the kitchen feeling disappointed, sad and perplexed. My sweet seven-year-old boy, raised in a home where peacebuilding, non-violence and Jesus’ love for all are completely familiar and practised concepts,…
Partners in the body of Christ
Strange, I know, but I like to read financial statements. I remember, in my early 20s, listening to the treasurer in our Toronto congregation explain how to understand financial statements when they were meaningless to me. Since then, I have learned that financial statements show us how we think about our priorities and relationships. Numbers…
The snowball effect
The snowball effect refers to a situation in which something starts off small or insignificant and increases in size or importance at an accelerating rate. Like when you roll a small snowball through wet snow and it accumulates more and more snow until it becomes so large and heavy that you can’t move it anymore.…
Rockway celebrates 75 years
There was cake, balloons, confetti and a photo booth with goofy props. There was singing in harmony, and prayers of gratitude and blessing—all of it to celebrate the 75th birthday of a “small school for a big world.” Rockway Mennonite Collegiate in Kitchener marked the milestone with a Founders’ Day Chapel designed to celebrate its…
