Volume 19, Number 4
The church will prevail
While personally rejuvenated from my four-month sabbatical, I am saddened to come back to a faith community that seems wounded and immobilized with what one of our interim editors, Barb Draper, called a “difficult debate” over sexuality.
The joy of pizza
My wife Rachel and I wanted to start practising radical hospitality, but we live in a cosy basement apartment. It would be so much easier if we had our own house with lots of common space. But we felt Jesus was calling us to open up our doors with the room we did have.
Potluck picnics in the park
If you find yourself in Victoria Park in Kitchener, Ont., on a Thursday evening in the summertime, wander down the tree-lined path and over the bridge until you reach the island. You will pass families from many cultures out for an evening stroll or a drum circle under the gazebo. Keep going.
Readers write: February 16, 2015 issue
Conscience Canada offers ‘peace tax’ alternative to taxpayers
For better or worse we are Pharisees
The Pharisees were Jesus’ nemesis, his constant sparring partners, fellow citizens who conspired eagerly against him. The Pharisees (spit) are the bad guys in the story even as it is told to children. “I don’t want to be a Pharisee” is still irritatingly hummed from one generation to the next.
Celebrate the gift of leadership
As I scan the directory of pastors and congregations in our area church, I am inspired and immensely grateful. I know that very fine pastoral leadership is happening. I know that intense hours are being spent crafting biblically sound sermons. I know that lonely people are being visited, small people are being noticed and subdued voices are being heard.
‘Where’s God in my song?’
Music plays an important role in most teenagers’ lives. Through music they connect with peers and with issues that matter to them. Perhaps that’s why the Saskatchewan Mennonite Youth Organization (SMYO) chose “Where’s God in my song?” as the theme for its recent senior-high retreat.
A positive space to speak out
Pam Booker, Kelsey Dick and Rachel Loewen Walker were just some of the people who talked about sexuality and gender identity at Wildwood Mennonite Church’s listening event. (Photo by Rachel Bergen)
Pam Booker, Kelsey Dick and Rachel Loewen Walker were just some of the people who talked about sexuality and gender identity at Wildwood Mennonite Church’s listening event. (Photo by Rachel Bergen)
It was a “magical” and “spirit-filled” Jan. 24, 2015, evening for many who attended a Wildwood Mennonite Church event, held to provide a positive space for members of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgender/queer (LGBTQ) community, family and friends to tell their stories and be vulnerable with each other.
Langley church adopts indigenous protocol
Langley Mennonite Fellowship has become the first Mennonite Church B.C. congregation to acknowledge in writing that it sits on unceded first nations territory.
Blankets for vets
Retired Canadian Forces Captain Wayne Johnston received a warm welcome at 50 Kent, the home of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Ontario and other Mennonite agencies in Kitchener last month. Invited by MCC Ontario director Rick Cober Bauman to make a noon-hour presentation, Johnston shared his story of harm and healing.
When vets mourn what should Mennos do?
A new Sunday School peace curriculum in the U.S. pushes Mennonites in a direction very different than the predictable emphasis on the evils of war and the theological superiority of pacifism.
“Returning veterans, returning hope: Seeking peace together” encourages Mennonites to see veterans not as people with incorrect views, but as fellow human beings to be understood and embraced.
‘Another cool move’
Vernon Erb had a busy fall. Wet weather combined with a late planting season last spring meant the soybeans and corn were hard to get off the fields.
‘Bring the wall down’
Rhonda Harder Epp stands beside the final panel of ‘Green Lines,’ where the image of barbed wire unravelling leaves observers with hope for the eventual removal of barriers.
“Walls became an obsession when I went to Berlin in 2010,” artist Rhonda Harder Epp told the crowd at the opening of her Walls: Arbitrary Impediments art exhibition at King’s University College, Edmonton, last month.
Who feeds the world?
Will Braun
Without conventional agriculture more people would starve. That is the link commonly drawn between global hunger and the dominant form of North American farming, which depends heavily on fertilizer, fuel, pesticide and genetic inputs.
“Your congregation knows how to care for seniors”
Gloria Dirks, parish nurse at Waterloo-Kitchener United Mennonite Church, holds a plush “microbe” that she uses in children’s education in the congregation.
When Gloria Dirks was retiring from the joint position of Administrator and Director of Care at Parkwood Mennonite Home in Waterloo, Ont. in 2003, she knew she wanted to use her skills in some way. The call of her congregation, the Waterloo-Kitchener United Mennonite Church, to research the potential of a parish nurse seemed like a good fit.
Caring for our seniors
Martha Brubacher, Florence Frey and Vera Martin work on a relief sale quilt at Floradale Mennonite Church.
Across the country, many MC Canada churches are staring at the numbers and scratching their heads. As young people drift away from the church and the baby boomers retire, church leadership is faced with increasing numbers of grey heads.
