A life devoted to God
Jeff Warkentin’s passion for God shaped a life defined by service and relationships. As son, brother, husband, father, teacher, pastor, mission worker, musician and friend, he reflected God’s grace and love to everyone he encountered. Warkentin’s skill in working with small groups played a key role in the ministry he shared with his wife Tany…
‘Burning bush moment’ leads to refugee children singing
It was a “burning bush moment” that got Marian Hooge Jones of Rosthern (Sask.) Mennonite Church started on her lengthy involvement with the sponsorship of refugee families from Myanmar (formerly Burma) living in refugee camps in Thailand. While glancing through a church bulletin one Sunday, she read that refugee sponsors were urgently needed by Mennonite…
Strangers and Pianos
I believe that one of the great joys in life is meeting strangers. Sometimes strangers are kindred spirits. Sometimes strangers are a window from a world you don’t understand, but get to glimpse into, just for a moment. Sometimes they are shadows of who you were, and again other times they are glimpses of who…
Refined, pared back, purified
In his book Transforming Mission, missiologist David J. Bosch famously pictured the church’s mission as “a ceaseless celebration of the Feast of Epiphany” with our life together, our prayers, our programs always “pointing to God, holding up the God-child before the eyes of the world.” We gather before the starlit cradle, where Zion’s light casts…
A transformational moment
“I wonder where my wrapping paper is,” my mother mused. “I know I’m not supposed to go to the attic, but I did. Maybe it’s up there.” (The attic is a garage loft, accessible by a pull-down ladder.) I was the only witness to my mother’s “confession” as we sat together in her home; at…
Circling back to simplicity
I’ve been thinking about simplicity. Are today’s Canadian Mennonites committed to faith-motivated simple living? Am I? I first encountered the spiritual discipline of simplicity 20 years ago when I read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. I had grown up in fundamentalist Baptist churches that were legalistic about what our minds needed to believe and what…
Making the time together good
Sleeping soundly with his legs pulled into his hunched frame, my grandfather was comfortable before I woke him. He made a statement about it being early for me to be there and then proceeded to unbutton his shirt. His effort to prepare himself for a new day by changing his clothes showed his detachment from…
Binding and loosing in an age of division
For the past three years, the United States has been my home, and in the U.S., division is impossible to ignore. Liberals on the left, conservatives on the right. Of course, Canada is not immune to these divisions, and neither is the church. In this context, what hope does the church have of discerning the…
Love is acceptance and transformation
Does loving people and things as they are mean accepting them as they are? If so, what are we to do with the call to join the Spirit’s transformative work of making all people, places and things new? The call to transformation certainly seems to contradict acceptance. It focusses on what is wrong in the…
Readers write: September 29, 2014 issue
Reader addresses what he believes are ‘inaccuracies’ Re: “From milk and honey to a land of rubble,” Aug. 18, page 4. There are a several inaccuracies in this article that need to be addressed: 1. The author writes: “As I examine Scripture, I find three different sets of land boundaries. . . . Given this…
