Irma Fast Dueck reflects on lectionaries, honesty and worship
As some churches within MC Canada and MC USA embrace the Narrative Lectionary, Canadian Mennonite caught up with Irma Fast Dueck to ask about the use of lectionaries in Mennonite worship. Fast Dueck is associate professor of practical theology at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) where she has taught for over 30 years. She attends Bethel…
Alberta writing team creates 2024 Advent resources
Seven people from three Mennonite Church Alberta churches pooled their creative talents to produce worship resources for this fall’s issue of Leader magazine. Leader magazine, a MennoMedia publication for MC Canada and MC USA constituents, publishes worship resources for Advent through Epiphany each fall. The resources include calls to worship, readings, hymn and sermon suggestions…
Investment in youth summit pays off
Investing in young adults is a key way to move forward. Mennonite World Conference is the best way I can imagine to do that,” said Doug Klassen, executive minister of Mennonite Church Canada and the North America representative on MWC’s Executive Committee. MC Canada is putting its money where its mouth is, sending one official represen- tative from each of its five regional churches to the Global Youth Summit (GYS). The practice started with the 2022 GYS in Indonesia. The national church gives each region $1,000 toward the cost of their delegate.It’s up to the region to raise to leadership, as well as which sensitive topics…
MCEC reviews 67 church annual reports
Mennonite Church Eastern Canada invited congregations to share their annual reports with regional church staff in order to improve understanding of how MCEC can better support congregations and pastors, and also identify trends in giving and congregational activities.Sixty-seven of 108 MCEC congregations shared their annual reports with the regional church, allowing MCEC to compile a…
Blue Christmas
Walk into any store during this season and the message is clear: it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Sometimes, however, the message to be of good cheer creates its own pain for those who are struggling. That includes the bereaved, those with mental health challenges and the increasing number of people struggling to make ends meet. It’s also the time of year with the least amount of daylight and long, cold…
The world’s most low-key Advent group
In the middle of the pandemic darkness of the fall of 2020, when church gatherings were fraught, a small idea ignited. I sent an email to people I knew, inviting them to meet online each Sunday in December for what I called, “The World’s Most Low-Key Advent Group.” A grand name for a small gathering.…
Ethiopian ‘Joseph’ takes risks to serve
I have been the Tigray relief project coordinator for Meserete Kristos Church Development Commission (MKCDC) for the past four years. Because of this work, people gave me a new name. They called me Joseph, after one of the most renowned figures in the Bible, who saved his family and all of Egypt during the famine.…
Sacred disruption
I don’t like the dark. If I can’t avoid walking into a dark room, I will use my phone’s glowing screen to break up the night until I reach the light switch. What is it about darkness that I find so disconcerting? Perhaps it’s the uncertainty, the unknowability of what lies unseen. My brain tells…
The ordinary dark
Dawn comes slowly. There is no rush in it. Often—not always—the hour is still and quiet when the dark so gradually abates in the east. The dawn comes slowly. As it must. We can but wait. I have not always been an earlier riser, but since Cinnamon the milk cow moved into the barn on…
Readers Write: December 2024
A sprinkling of change As I read the “Exit Interviews” issue of CM (September 2024), I thought of the words of Jessica Herlein in a Rejoice devotional from October 30, 2021: “All our systems for righting wrongs and making amends pale in comparison to God’s overtures of mercy and restoration.” Born and raised Mennonite, I…
