Making room for dialogue with #thecovenantcrew
UPDATE: Youth Assembly 2016 has been cancelled, due to a shortfall in the number of registrations. See here for more information. Youth who are not attending Assembly 2016 but wish to speak into the Being a Faithful Church and Future Directions Task Force discussions are strongly encouraged to have conversation with their congregation’s adult delegates so that their…
Call-in style discussion series spotlights nonviolence in a time of war
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Karen Ridd was struck by how many people around her immediately called for military troops to be sent. “In those moments it becomes really hard as a pacifist to find ways to speak into that conversation, when we know there are atrocities happening,” says the Menno Simons College instructor…
Action seeks solution for Israelis and Palestinians
On July 9, 2016, a clear majority of delegates to Mennonite Church Canada’s Assembly 2016 voted in favour of a resolution seeking non-violent solutions to injustices in Israel-Palestine. Only one of 343 registered delegates voted against the resolution. (The resolution can be seen below.) A similar resolution arose at the 2014 assembly, but was tabled…
A crisis of faith and plumbing
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your…
Encountering the vulnerable Jesus
Lent is a 40-day season on the church calendar that brings the story of Jesus into the nitty-gritty of community life. It brings the story into everyone’s own particular time and place. Lent is a time that commemorates the 40 days Jesus spent in solitude, silence and fasting in the wilderness. During this time in…
Re-imagining touch as a spiritual practice
Pinch the skin on the back of your hand, then release it and watch it fall. Your skin gradually slides back into place. Constantly healing and being recreated, our skin both protects us and offers us the sense of touch through which we experience the world. In our modern times, touch and religion can make…
Talk of sin should start with forgiveness
The best moment of my Sunday school teaching career happened when the children were nearly stumped by a question. My co-teacher began the Bible lesson by asking the 8- to 10-year-olds, “What is sin?” whereupon a rare and rich silence descended as the children contemplated her question. The silence was broken by a spiritually precocious…
‘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…
Embracing traditions
Have you ever wondered about your family traditions? What are they and when did they come to be? That’s been me this summer. Every summer we have our “must do” plans, and my girls go along without question because it’s tradition. This year, it became clear that some of our habits have become family traditions.…
The urgency of untidy joy
I’ve been thinking again about joy. I know this theme is counterintuitive. The scope of violence and injustice in the world is crushing right now, both far away and close to home, and it’s proving chronic in ways that undermine efforts to be “joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (Romans 12:12). We need urgent action…
