You’re more interesting than you think
Earlier this month, I interviewed an ex-offender who had successfully gone through Mennonite Central Committee Alberta’s Bridges Ministries program. He mentioned that when you are locked up in prison, you have no internet and no fresh air. He then shared how his ex-offender friends who are currently staying at home due to COVID-19 joke about…
Mennonite Church Alberta holds virtual AGM
With COVID-19 limiting the ability to connect in person, virtual meetings now seem to be the wave of the future. Mennonite Church Alberta had already been using the Zoom platform to hold small provincial committee meetings online, but when its annual general meeting (AGM) was cancelled, the regional church decided to explore whether a larger…
A journey from fundamentalism to freedom
Donna Dinsmore never felt she fit into church life. “I wanted to serve in the church and I loved God, but I didn’t feel called to work with small children and I didn’t make casseroles,” she says. “Becoming an adult single woman in the church was difficult. I was a third-class citizen. Women were treated…
The women of Alberta rediscover Mary
“We grew up never talking about Mary. It was like the Catholics got Mary in the divorce settlement and Mennonites got a 30-minute sermon,” said Irma Fast Dueck in her opening talk at the annual Mennonite Church Alberta women’s retreat held from June 7 to 9 at the Sunnyside Retreat Centre in Sylvan Lake. “It…
MC Alberta embraces new life, hope and possibilities
It was an unusual delegate session, with the bulk of the time dedicated to discussion rather than business. “Discerning God’s call,” Phase 3 of Mennonite Church Alberta’s Vision 20/20 process, engaged participants in reflection on what was heard in congregations during the previous phase, “Season of prayer.” The reflections were then used to guide discernment…
‘Opening to God’s leading’
In opening comments at Mennonite Church Alberta’s first of three Vision 2020 gatherings, Tim Wiebe-Neufeld, the regional church’s executive minister, asked people in the crowd to stand if they had left their place of birth in search of new life and opportunities. A few stood, and the crowd was aware that this is the situation…
MC Alberta celebrates a ‘church born anew’
At the last minute, Lethbridge Mennonite Church had to scramble to host the 2018 Mennonite Church Alberta delegate assembly. Already working hard to finish entrance and meeting room renovations, a burst water pipe flooded the church basement just a week before the March 16-17 gathering. The Lethbridge congregation was able to host the March 16…
Breaking down walls in the name of Christ
“As a child, I didn’t see the wall,” Arlyn Friesen Epp told delegates to the 85th annual Mennonite Church Alberta assembly, as he spoke of growing up in small-town Saskatchewan with no real knowledge of, or connections to, first nations people other than negative stereotypes. Cheryl Bear-Barnetson, Friesen Epp’s co-presenter at the March 21-22 assembly,…
