Volume 20 Issue 20

We are pleased to announce that the family of the late Ted Friesen, the first publisher of The Canadian Mennonite, has agreed to set up—and seed with a $50,000 gift—a fundraising initiative that we are calling the Ted Friesen Legacy Fund.

‘Affluenza’ should trump ‘gender’ issue for Mennonites

As community-oriented Anabaptists, we should be spending more time on “affluenza” than on the “gender” issue.

When I reflect on how I became a Mennonite, I find myself agreeing with what a peasant once told an Irish priest. The priest, who approached the peasant praying by the roadside, said, “You must be close to God!” The peasant replied in a way that points to the precedence of God’s love over our faith (I John 4:19), saying, “Yes, he is fond of me.”

“Are you on a tour?”

Squinting in the summer sunlight, we glanced across the street as a man stepped out of his car. Guilty as charged. Our walking neighborhood tour, composed of members and friends of Home Street Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, had come to stop at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Aboriginal Catholic Parish on Ellice Avenue in the heart of the city’s West End.

It isn’t every day that Mennonites share a potluck meal with Muslims. Yet this is what happened when Wildwood Mennonite Church in Saskatoon invited members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at to join them for a fellowship lunch.

Ted and Darlene Enns Dyck came in the late 1980s to Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ont., from Winnipeg, Manitoba’s urban capital. When they completed their time at Grebel, they felt a call to co-pastor and expected to do that in “more liberal” southern Ontario. But no call came to them from there.

I recently enjoyed a visit with a Rosthern (Sask.) Junior College (RJC) alumnus whose graduating class is from decades past. There were many smiles as we talked about old classmates, teammates, teachers and coaches. His stories were certainly evidence that RJC is a place where one makes friendships that last a lifetime, and that RJC has been a true learning community for generations.

On a hot June weekend, more than 100 Rockway Mennonite Collegiate alumni rehearsed, relived and performed a Rockway choral experience.

Three beloved choral directors—Jan Overduin, Robert L. Shantz and Ann L. Shultz, a 1984 graduate—each chose a hymn and two pieces that, with prayer and reflections, were melded into a moving, worshipful experience.

CMU

For some people, writing a song is a laborious process. Not for Michaela Loewen. Most of the time, the music and lyrics come to her in under half an hour. “I know if I can write it in 20 minutes or less, it’s a good one,” the Winnipeg musician says.