Well rooted, well winged
For most of us, the biblical canon with its 66 “books” has always been a given, inherited from the past, our parents and churches. We have not concerned ourselves very much with it, even though we may have heard that the Catholic version of the Bible has more “books” in it than the Protestant version. …
Love in the time of COVID-19
Thursday, as I sat down to a board meeting for the Micah Mission, a restorative justice organization in Saskatoon, I got the news that the Juno Awards show was being cancelled in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. For months I’d been hearing the Junos hyped on CBC Radio 2 and seeing advertisements…
A call to strengthen our core
A year ago I asked my oldest daughter, who was in the middle of a master of physiotherapy program at the University of Manitoba, to help me figure out what was wrong with my left foot. Her assessment was, “Dad, you are messed up. Make an appointment to see a physiotherapist.” I dutifully went. It…
Who was I that I could hinder God?
Update: In October 2020, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada announced the termination of the ministerial credentials of John D. Rempel, on the basis of ministerial sexual misconduct. To learn more, see ‘Credentials terminated for theologian-academic-pastor.’ The Book of Acts is the record of what happened to Jesus’ followers when their universe exploded, when the Holy Spirit, the…
Learning to live with technology
The internet and the myriad technologies that have accompanied its rise to media supremacy have transformed the way people communicate. For better or worse they have also transformed education. As principal of Rosthern Junior College (RJC), a Mennonite high school in Rosthern, Sask., Ryan Wood has seen the impact of technology in the classroom and…
Proclaiming Immanuel
I was eight years old. That year, the Sunday school Christmas pageant was going to be a no-fuss event. All the kids were going to stand up in a line, each of us reciting a memorized verse from Luke’s Christmas story. “And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told…
‘Taste and see that stuff is good’
The human struggle has always been—and always will be—between worshiping the God who made us or worshiping a god that we have to make for ourselves. Secularism is a myth because there is no such thing as not worshipping. Advocates of the secularization thesis believe that as science and technology advanced into the future, religion…
A disarmed heart
Update: In October 2020, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada announced the termination of the ministerial credentials of John D. Rempel, on the basis of ministerial sexual misconduct. To learn more, see ‘Credentials terminated for theologian-academic-pastor.’ How do we “take up our quarrel with the foe”? What does it mean to “break faith with those who die”? Those…
Faithful practices on a dying planet
Over the last few months, the reality of the climate crisis we are in the midst of has started to strike me in a new and terrible way. As the best-case scenarios for our planet grow more dire and the possibility of achieving even these scenarios grows more remote, it has started to dawn on…
Four decades of welcome
Toronto United Mennonite Church was the first church in Canada to receive privately sponsored “boat people” who were fleeing Vietnam and Laos during the chaos of the Vietnam War. Early in March 1979, an adult social-issues group meeting during the Sunday school period took the first step. The story of Southeast Asian refugees fleeing by…
