Ethiopian Mennonites killed, churches burned
More than 400 Mennonite churches in Ethiopia have been affected by civil strife that started in November 2020. Though information is hard to verify and numbers will likely rise, about eight Mennonite churches have been burned and eight church members have died, including two full-time ministers. This according to Pastor Desalegn Abebe, president of Meserete…
Watch: A look inside Meserete Kristos College
This past March, we published a story about Lynell Bergen’s sabbatical at Meserete Kristos College in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. Bergen, who is the lead pastor at Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, spent her sabbatical teaching at the college. Now, you can watch a video exploring the time Bergen and her husband, Brian Dyck, spent at MKC. The…
Church growth stretches Ethiopian resources
Challenges accompany the joys of growth as tens of thousands of people new to Ethiopia’s Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) swell the denomination. Now with more than 600,000 participants, the world’s largest Anabaptist conference struggles to train enough pastors, find adequate meeting spaces, and keep vehicles maintained for its teachers, who travel to distant outposts on…
‘We really need each other a lot’
Werner and Joanne DeJong returned to Edmonton’s Holyrood Mennonite Church excited about the Anabaptist church in Africa and at home. They see possibilities for ongoing partnerships that benefit both the rapidly growing church in Ethiopia and the declining church in Canada. “We really need each other a lot,” Werner says. The Ethiopian church, unlike its…
