Volume 16, Number 16
Young couple to lead church plant in Germany
Rabus and Otto
Jennifer Otto and Gregory Rabus, from Ontario and Connecticut respectively, have accepted an invitation to lead an urban church plant in southern Germany in partnership with the Verband deutscher Mennonitengemeinden (VdM) and the Deutsches Mennonitisches Missionskomitee (DMMK).
Sharing what they have gained
Pastoral intern Christina Edmiston engages ministry team leader Mike Thiessen in conversation at the potluck following Wanner Mennonite’s 175th-anniversary celebration service on June 24 in Cambridge, Ont.
The way Ken Bechtel, Wanner Mennonite Church historian, puts it, the “175” in this year’s celebration refers only to the construction of the first dedicated church building.
God is not in the violence
Is the New Testament inherently violent? What does Jesus’ brutal death on the cross mean to persons holding a more passive view of non-resistance? How does one seriously read the text and make sense of Jesus’ teaching of non-violence and his behaviour with the money-changers in the Temple, for instance?
Recognizing God at work
Muriel Bechtel, retiring this summer after 12 years as Mennonite Church Eastern Canada conference minister, is pictured in her office, familiar to many pastors through the years.
After 12 years as Mennonite Church Eastern Canada’s conference minister, Muriel Bechtel will be moving into retirement this summer. On June 24 she also celebrated 20 years since her ordination, when she was pastor of Warden Woods Mennonite Church, Toronto.
MCC material aid reaches Syrian refugees in Jordan
Basil Kaboushi, left, and Wajdi Haddad, volunteers with Caritas Jordan, an MCC partner, help to distribute MCC relief kits and comforters to Syrian refugees at the Latin Patriarchate School in Mafraq, Jordan, in June.
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) continues to address needs of refugees fleeing from increasing violence in Syria. Caritas Jordan, an MCC partner, is distributing comforters, relief kits, school kits and hygiene kits in five governorates, similar to provinces or states. In the Mafraq governorate, milk powder and diapers also are distributed.
Portage Mennonite Church closes
Derek (7) and Michael (10) Thiessen, comprising the entire Sunday School, began a goat project in June, just weeks before the last worship service of Portage Mennonite Church. They are not sure where will they will go to church now that it is closing.
Portage Mennonite Church
For over 35 years “the little church that could” nurtured faith, built community, and sent many of its members out into the wider world to work in with MCC, Canadian Foodgrains Bank or Mennonite Church Canada programs. It was a place for those Christians who moved into the city of Portage la Prairie to grow in their faith and find fellowship with others who shared these Anabaptist convictions.
Bricks and mortar
An artist’s drawing of the proposed MCC Ontario building.
The new $12-million complex Mennonite Central Committee Ontario (MCCO) is building in Kitchener will fit the more-with-less ethos, says Rick Cober Bauman, MCCO’s executive director. “But,” he adds, “it is still clearly sending a message that we are a serious player in relief, development and peace; and we’re not hiding.”
The limitless power of limits
The church in the North American context is facing limits she must accept, for God has placed them in her path for the sake of his glory and the integrity of faithful witness to the Kingdom of the risen Jesus.
This is nothing new.
Two everyday heroes of the faith
Abe Buhler and Eric Olfert
What’s at the heart of the matter? What is basic and essential to our questions of faith and life? Such questions were asked of Jesus in attempts to trap him. They are also important questions in helping us find our way to a more life-giving centre in a context where our Christian faith is often perceived as more exclusive than embracing—more restrictive than freeing.
Readers write
Must respect be earned, or simply expected?
Bringing in the ‘peaceable kingdom’
There may be good reason why we, the Mennonites, are not joining the United Church of Canada, the Anglican bishops and 28 Presbyterian churches in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland in a protest against the Northern Gateway oil-sands pipeline.
