MC Canada offers pandemic preparedness web resources for congregations
As of March 11, the World Health Organization is now describing the global outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19 as a pandemic. This move is not to incite fear but to motivate governments to ramp up their preparation efforts before the virus spreads more quickly in their own countries. Mennonite Church Canada has updated web resources…
MC Canada, regional churches launch new websites
Mennonite Church Canada and its five regional churches all launched new websites over the course of a week in mid-February. The sites are part of a developing website hub created by Barefoot Creative of Breslau, Ont., that will allow congregations to create their own website, populate it with content from the regional and nationwide websites,…
Structure and identity
After Gathering 2019 last summer, Doug Klassen, then newly hired as executive minister of Mennonite Church Canada, sat down with me for a chat in the Abbotsford, B.C., airport. Amid the chatter of travellers and loudspeaker announcements, we considered the work ahead for our church. We talked about structure and identity. Since the denominational restructuring…
MC Canada announces Global Youth Summit 2021 delegates
Five young adults—one from each of Mennonite Church Canada’s regional churches—will represent the nationwide church at Global Youth Summit (GYS) 2021 in Salatiga, Indonesia. The Summit takes place from July 2 to 5, 2021, four days before the 18th Mennonite World Conference assembly. The event is for youth aged 18 to 30 and it provides…
Going deeper together
If you have been paying attention to what the regional churches are up to recently, you may have noticed a common question and a common longing. A question expressed at both regional and nationwide levels: What is God calling Mennonite Church Canada to do, as a church? And the longing: We desire to go deeper…
Watch: Doug Klassen addresses MC Canada
Mennonite Church Canada isn’t finished, disbanded, archived or dead. That’s the message Doug Klassen, MC Canada’s executive minister, delivers in a video uploaded to YouTube this past Friday. “Mennonite Church Canada is alive and well because the regional churches that comprise Mennonite Church Canada are alive and well,” Klassen says in the four-minute video, which…
Stories told and untold
This past summer I attended an event focused on Mary Magdalene, at which guest speaker Amanda Witmer reviewed what scholars know about this early follower of Jesus—not very much. In addition, over the centuries, the Christian church has perpetuated misinformation about Mary: No, she was not the “sinful woman” in Luke 7. The Gospel of…
Crokinole boards sold for China mission
Wooden game boards made in Yarrow, B.C., and a crokinole tournament at this summer’s Mennonite Church Canada Gathering 2019 have made a connection with modern-day Chinese Christians and a 16th-century Dutch Anabaptist martyr. Darnell Barkman, pastor of Yarrow United Mennonite Church, had received a crokinole board for his birthday last December, and after playing on…
Holy Spirit fire and imagination
“Sing a new church into being,” sang the 300-plus people gathered for the first nationwide meeting of Mennonite Church Canada since its restructuring in 2017. Behind the blended voices was the vision, “Igniting the imagination of the church,” the theme of Gathering 2019, held in Abbotsford, B.C., from June 28 to July 1. Representatives came…
Learning as we go
Gathering 2019 starts next week. From June 28 to July 1, several hundred attendees from across Canada will meet in Abbotsford, B.C., for the first major event since the re-structuring of the Mennonite Church Canada. Thank you, MC British Columbia, for hosting this gang! While getting together to worship and be inspired, to enjoy mealtime conversations…
