Ten years later
The question isn’t, “Has our world changed since that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001?” It is rather, “How have we changed 10 years after?”
Editorial
Food as faith formation
What is it with Mennonites and food?
A new Mennonite archetype
I have never met César García, but I am impressed with his story as told by Meetinghouse freelancer Kathy Heinrichs Wiest on page 4. García is the general secretary-elect of Mennonite World Conference.
Assembly’s afterglow
Maybe it was the downright gorgeous summer weather before the heat wave swept into central and southeastern Canada. Maybe it was the powerfully inspired music led by Paul Dueck and his gifted musicians in University of Waterloo’s Humanities Theatre.
Time for the family to ‘pony up’
Although the thousand delegates and locals attending the annual assembly of Mennonite Church Canada represent only 3 percent of our 32,000 members, the event has the feel and dynamic of a family reunion.
A teachable moment
Have we learned anything about resolving church conflict in the past 50 years?
After reading the painful account of the German/English language dissension resulting in several congregational splits (“Changing the language of worship is a test of love,” page 4), our faith community should take a contemplative look at how to redeem this blot on our past.
Conversing in the ‘big tent’
“If we step back and review the letters to the editor in this magazine over the past several years, we generally find debates in the church and religion framed in terms of conservative and liberal.
“Each side thinks the other is at best misguided, perhaps even profoundly wrong, and misinterprets Scripture. There tends to be a fair bit of each side yelling at the other.”
How much is a Mennonite education worth?
The case for Mennonite schools is an increasingly complicated one as the values of our religious system and that of the dominant culture, of which we are a part, both change.
A political lament
As an American living and working in Canada, I am both intrigued and saddened by two political events of the past ten days in these two North American countries—the take-out of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. military and the take-over by a militaristic Conservative majority government in Monday’s elections in Canada.
‘Habits of repair’
Not in my lifetime did I imagine that neuroscience and the Anabaptist construct of “community” would come together as a paradigm shift “away from the cult of the individual and back to nurturing relationships,” as one planner of a recent weekend seminar on “Attachment Theory” put it.
Vote your core beliefs
While we won’t endorse candidates of the five political parties in the upcoming May 2 election, or tell you how to vote, we do ask Mennonite voters to both examine the political views and voting records of candidates regarding our deeply held core beliefs in peacemaking, compassion for the poor and care for creation before placing your ballot in the ballot box.
My vision for Canadian Mennonite
“I have never heard the editor’s vision for the magazine,” said a reader when asked what she thought of Canadian Mennonite. The observation caught me up short. Assuming my vision was implicit in the biweekly conversation I engender, being explicit with my goals and aspirations didn’t seem necessary.
Death as life with the saints
At age 65, he was too young to die. For Stan Benner, my brother whom we just remembered this past weekend, it was especially incongruous. Living life at full throttle, he had big plans for the last leg of his journey.
Priesthood: A work in progress
The church, or congregation, as a “royal priesthood” was announced as one of our core beliefs by the Anabaptist Reformers nearly 500 years ago, setting us apart from our Catholic-Protestant counterparts who, in that time and place, were perceived to have corrupted the faith with their vertical view of a believer’s relationship to God.
Is Egypt changing our worldview?
It’s been some week. As I write this several days after a stubborn dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has finally stepped down in Egypt, there is a feeling of relief even though the event has transformed an oppressed country half a world away.
Yes, we are online
We do have a website, dear readers, a recently re-designed one, in fact.
And we know many of you are reading Canadian Mennonite online. Our Google Analytics tell us that as many as 2,400 unique visitors a month are coming to the website for some 16,000 page views and staying an average of three minutes to read something of interest.
‘Tunnel vision’
Joe Neufeld puts his finger on an important artificial divide in our congregational care-giving (page 4) when he raises the spectre of perceiving some aspects “sacred”—and thus safe and legitimate—while others are considered “secular”—and thus suspect.
The past as prelude
As a people of hope, what should we, as a Mennonite faith community, expect on the road ahead in 2011?
If the past is prelude, as the adage goes, there are road signs, some of them giving helpful direction, others giving us warnings. At the risk of oversimplifying, we will deal with only three: cultural shifts, ecumenism and a new mission/service focus.
Advent: Waiting for the surprises
Two Advent themes should bring us to our feet this season: surprise and waiting. In our hurried, harassed lives, we are probably prepared for neither.
Congregations, too, want ‘new wineskins’
It’s too bad the New Wineskins consultations of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), that covered a four-year period and got Mennonites together from all over the world, didn’t “become a hot topic” in the pew, as Will Braun observes in our main feature on page 4.
Where are our churches headed?
What will the typical Mennonite Church Canada congregation look like in three years?
Canadians need stake in new media merger
Canadians have every right to ask questions about the merger of Mennonite Publishing Network (MPN), with offices in Waterloo, Ont., and Scottdale, Pa., and Third Way Media, located in Harrisonburg, Va.
The narrative endures
The bad news: Our kids don’t know their Bibles. The good news: They are probably practising it better than many of their elders.
Discerning the ‘liturgical core’
With music being so much a part of the Mennonite DNA, is it any wonder that the spectre of a new hymnal brings some trepidation to the congregational scene?
Step up to the peace plate
Tragic, isn’t it, that one fringe religious leader with a very small following can get international attention, damaging beyond calculation the good work in Christian-Muslim relations when all of the remarkable work our congregations are doing goes largely unnoticed?
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