From our leaders

A long time ago I told God that I was his, and that I would follow him wherever he led me. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to decipher God’s leading!

Does that still small voice belong to God, or is that just my own will whispering loudly? Closed doors and open windows are often a sign but, sometimes, as you crawl through the window, you wonder if this is really the best way.

“So . . . what’s next??”

The dreaded question for every graduate.

It’s been a few years (plus a few more!) since I graduated from high school and university, but I still remember this sense that, come graduation, I needed to have a roadmap of my future aspirations ready to explain in one easy sentence.  No problem, right? Should be easy enough! (Insert “zany face” emoji here.)

We have gone to places yet unknown, trusting in a God who leads and a Spirit who prays when our own words cease. Mother’s Day 2020 was the beginning of many outbreaks at the Leamington (Ont.) Mennonite Home, where I serve as chaplain.

To some, rest is a four-letter word. There are a myriad of reasons why people avoid sleep: some restrict it in a counterproductive attempt to increase work output; others devalue sleep for the preference of entertainment; still others are reluctant to acknowledge their limits and they push through when their body signals it’s time to sleep.

I have a selective hearing problem. When I’m at home on a Thursday night, weary from a day’s worth of important religious listening, the certain pleas of a younger family member of mine to discuss the latest plot twist in an all-too-predictable cartoon become easy to ignore.

As the people of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, we’re going on a journey of courageous imagination. Over the course of the next year we will dream, imagine and listen to each other’s stories of faith as we seek to hear God’s voice and discern together where God is calling us in the years ahead.

My first season of a church in an intentional pastoral transition process was as an associate pastor with my home church in Surrey, B.C.

In his book Transforming Mission, missiologist David J.

In the early 2000s, I sat in the church office of Pastor Wang in southern China. He was lamenting the fact that 300 people from his congregation had signed up to take baptismal classes during services over the Christmas weekend. I tried to encourage him by saying that that number was beyond a Canadian congregation’s wildest dreams.

Ever since the arrival of the coronavirus, there have been segments of the church that have been criticized for not taking the pandemic seriously. Christian sceptics and those who criticize them are well-represented on my social media feed.

The youth of the Mennonite church are often on my mind, and over the years, they have secured a place in my heart. It has been total joy and privilege to share time and space with them at national gatherings, regularly in my ministry within Mennonite Church Manitoba, and through the sharing of stories in Canadian Mennonite.

My kids are old enough to start playing ball, and weekly practices and physically distanced games are a regular part of the Barkman routine. In high school, I was a catcher, and Christina played third base, so we want our kids to grow into confident athletes. That means they are learning to practice. Continuous repetitions teach my kids how it feels to throw and hit a ball.