Volume 28 Issue 1
Resource centre finds temporary home in Winnipeg church
Levi Foy (left), executive director of Sunshine House, stands with Crow Hart, drop-in program assistant, in the basement of First Mennonite Church.
It’s brighter than ever in the basement at First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.
Sunshine House, a community drop-in and resource centre, is operating there temporarily while its headquarters undergoes renovations.
The organization, which offers programming focused on harm reduction and social inclusion, moved into the church at the beginning of November.
Pursuing a career in worship music
Mykayla Turner. Supplied photo.
While pursuing degrees in health studies and music at the University of Waterloo, Mykayla Turner stumbled into a plethora of worship songs that left her wondering why and how she’d never heard them before.
B.C. churches mark Christmas and New Year’s
A young congregant shares a reading at an evening service at Cedar Valley Church in Mission, B.C. Supplied photo.
Mennonites in British Columbia celebrated the holidays in a variety of ways last month.
With both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve falling on Sundays, churches were presented with the question: How many services should be held, and what kind? Will congregants come to multiple services on a holiday weekend?
Landing out of hot water
Ruth Isaac Wiederkehr. Photo by Andre Wiederkehr.
One winter day in 2022, our family was discussing the problem of our society’s dependence on fossil fuels. One of our young-adult sons, who perhaps felt we were slipping into finger-pointing, brought the focus back around to our own household by asking: “What about our hot water heater?”
Readers write: January 12, 2024
(Graphic by Betty Avery)
Touched by death and life
Cat train
CMC Mennonite Pioneer Mission photo collection / Mennonite Heritage Archives
In this Mennonite Pioneer Mission photo, a “cat train,” powered by a caterpillar tractor, travels along an ice road, hauling supplies to northern Manitoba communities in the 1950s. Ice roads provide an economical way to transport goods to communities not connected to the all-weather road system.
The state of community in 2024
Photo: Tara Winstead for Pexels
Last year was a tough one. Global concerns raged around us, including images of climate crisis and state-led violence that continued to swirl.
I watched my church community formally come apart, by vote, in a deeply divisive scenario.
Linking membership and participation
Arli Klassen and her then-fiancé, now husband, Keith Regehr, in May 1980. Supplied photo.
It will soon be congregational annual meeting season. Do you look forward to these meetings? Are they well attended in your congregation?
Beyond boxes
Photo by Jesse Orrico for Unsplash
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.
Becoming an intercultural church
Photo by Andrew Butler for Unsplash
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.
Lord, hear our prayer
Photo: mstudio For Pexels
We asked people who wrote for Canadian Mennonite in 2023 to share their wish and prayer for the church in 2024.
I’m easily afraid. So is the church. I pray that we will listen for, and joyfully embrace, Christ’s “fear not, I’m here” in 2024.
– Dora Dueck, Tsawwassen, B.C.
Away in a manor
Mary, played by Donna Driedger, gazes lovingly at Jesus during Bethany Manor’s ‘Nativity on Wheels.’ (Photos by Emily Summach)
It’s not your typical nativity play.
