Volume 16, Number 3
The REAL thing at Bethany College
Matthew Bergen creates large graffiti art for Bethany College’s retreat.
Every February, high school students from across Canada brave the cold, snow, and winter wind to make the trip to Hepburn, Saskatchewan for Bethany College’s Youth Advance (YA)! Bethany’s annual youth retreat brings people together to be challenged through dynamic teaching, drama, music, art and loads of fun activities.
Seduced by our abundance
Walter Brueggemann inspires School for Leadership Training participants to move beyond the drive to accumulate toward accepting God’s gracious abundance.
Beware of seduction by accumulation. That was one of the money issues explored by Walter Brueggemann, a world-renowned Old Testament scholar, in talks to as many as 700 people gathered at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) Jan. 16 through 18.
Mennonites writing in Canada: The first 50 years
Rudy Wiebe is pictured after his reading at Conrad Grebel University College with moderator Hildi Froese Tiessen, professor of English and peace and conflict studies. Wiebe kicked off Grebel’s Celebrating Mennonite Literature reading series on Jan. 11.
The chapel at Conrad Grebel University College was packed to hear renowned Mennonite author Rudy Wiebe read through his life of writing on Jan. 11, 50 years after his 1962 novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many, was published.
New Grebel program encourages agents of peaceful change
In the culmination of more than a decade of dreaming and a year of intense work, Conrad Grebel University College announces the launch of a new master of peace and conflict studies (PACS) program.
Keep the Bible central: Wally Unger
Unger
Columbia Bible College is proof that “where there is a vision, people will support,” said president emeritus Wally Unger at an Oct. 22 banquet to celebrate the school’s 75th anniversary. As part of that vision, Columbia’s faculty “didn’t teach students for information,” he said, “we taught them for transformation.”
Billy Graham meets the evangelist of outrage
Billy Graham chats with President Obama
I recently received two books by authors in their 90s: Nearing Home by Billy Graham, and Time for Outrage by Stéphane Hessel, a retired French diplomat and concentration camp survivor who helped draft the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Each book conveys a strong sense of mission and each is made more compelling by the author’s age.
New church emerges in Winnipeg
Cutline: Sandy and Barrette Wiebe Plett with their children Meredith, 2 ½ years, and Orie, 4 years.
When Barrette and Sandy Wiebe Plett returned from Egypt in 2008 after a three-year assignment under Mennonite Central Committee, they tried to move back into the church life they had left behind. But it wasn’t the same. They had changed. Their family now included two preschool children.
Question-shaped faith
Seven years ago one of my professors suggested our class watch the television series LOST to better understand life in postmodernity. I followed up on the homework assignment and my wife and I became fans of the show immediately.
An unsung hero of the church
When was the last time you prayed for your treasurer or thanked him or her for his or her work? Your treasurer is a key person in church operations and carries a great deal of responsibility for the finances and legal status of the church.
Making dreams real
I am crocheting a baby afghan. The soft, multi-coloured yarn slides through my fingers. I catch it on the end a hook, spin and loop it into the expanding blanket. My cat lies beside me, sometimes taking a swipe at the tantalizing string, but mostly curled up sleeping.
Readers write
Come to the defence of ‘God’s great gift’
In the beginning—13.7 billion years ago—God created the heavens, also known as the universe; 4.5 billion years ago God created our planet, Earth. Life began on Earth some 700,000 years later, with human beings—homo sapiens—appearing in Africa some 70,000 to 100,000 years ago.
For discussion
1. What technology does your congregation use in worship? What are the challenges to learning how to use new technology in worship? How much power is wielded by those who control the sound board?
Is technology enriching our worship?
Youth worship at Charlotte 2005
Andy Brubacher Kaethler currently teaches and directs the !Explore program at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind.
Technology is the single most significant characteristic of modern western culture. Canadian philosopher George Grant contends it has long displaced democracy and capitalism as top identifiers. Technology directly shapes Christian belief and practice in ways we must at the very least question, if not actively resist.
