Lessons from the medicine wheel
Each year, A Common Word Alberta brings Muslims and Christians together in Edmonton to plan an annual interfaith dialogue.
Each year, A Common Word Alberta brings Muslims and Christians together in Edmonton to plan an annual interfaith dialogue.
I’ve been thinking about simplicity. Are today’s Canadian Mennonites committed to faith-motivated simple living? Am I?
Grace has increasingly become my lens for reading both scripture and other people. I have come to think grace—the wildly undeserved favour dispensed by God—is the most important feature of the gospel.
History lesson
Will Braun’s editorial about Di Brandt (“The institution of messiness,” September 22, 2023) is a valuable piece that I hope many people will read.
In the past two centuries, the arts have gone through an unprecedented transition in Western societies, and our institutions—including churches—have often been resistant to that change.
New Year’s Day is often a time we reflect on the events and experiences of the past year. It is also the time we look forward to what might lie ahead.
Since Will Braun’s strong editorial in the December 1, 2023, issue (“What kind of peace church are we?”), the pages of Canadian Mennonite have included some passionate responses.
This is a good thing. Perhaps I’ll add one more.
I begin with a story.
How many sermons do you remember from 25 years ago? Likely not many.
Even the most meaningful and formative sermons from long ago tend to fade and become less a specific memory and more an unrecallable influential moment; a ripple whose impact remains but becomes indistinguishable the further life goes beyond that moment.
The following is adapted from a sermon that Kevin Barkowsky, pastor of Sherbrooke Mennonite Church in Vancouver, preached on January 28. Reprinted with permission.
The question was how churches in North America could directly communicate their support to Palestinian churches. It came during a December 18 call that Mennonite Central Committee convened with four Palestinian pastors and several dozen North Americans.
Pastor Ashraf Tannous unmuted, then muted again; he hesitated and hedged, eventually responding with uncommon candour.
In this new joint column, the four writers will take turns writing the primary column, with the other three offering replies.
God on the line
By Ryan Dueck
I recently became the owner of an orange rotary telephone. This artifact came to me via a Christmas gift exchange for which guests were instructed to repurpose something from their homes.
It will soon be congregational annual meeting season. Do you look forward to these meetings? Are they well attended in your congregation?
Most of you have heard, and likely agree with, this statement: “You can’t put God in a box.”
Of course, this means you can’t be put in a box either, for you are made in the image of God. If God doesn’t fit in a box, neither do you. Yet we often put ourselves in boxes. We limit ourselves and confine our identities.
Just as Matthew 7:21 states, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” not every intercultural church will experience the fullest stage of reconciliation in fellowship with others, which is an ultimate goal of becoming an intercultural church.
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) worker Alice Snyder (right) shows needlework done by rural and refugee women in Jordan and the West Bank to Esther Weber at the MCC Ontario offices in Kitchener in 1964.
The Overseas Needlepoint and Crafts Project would become SelfHelp and later, Ten Thousand Villages.
—With files from GAMEO.org