CPT receives International Peace Award
Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) was awarded the International Peace Award by the Community of Christ Church and the Shaw Family Foundation on April 22 during the church’s international conference.
Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) was awarded the International Peace Award by the Community of Christ Church and the Shaw Family Foundation on April 22 during the church’s international conference.
For more than 20 years, a refugee support group at Ottawa Mennonite Church has used an unusual fundraising method that has allowed it to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent subsidy to newcomers. The rising cost of living has made this support all the more important.
Hundreds of students are preparing to graduate this month from post-secondary institutions supported by Mennonite Church Canada and its regional churches.
These days, if someone asks, “What number are you?” they are likely not asking your age. The Enneagram, a personality typing system based on nine types, has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years. Now Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Saskatchewan is helping to bring the Enneagram into correctional facilities.
Although Wendy Dunn had long felt a nudge to pursue theological studies, she never did so until COVID lockdowns at the care home where she worked as a nurse practitioner led her to provide spiritual care in ways she had never expected.
For many Latin American colony Mennonites, a life of isolation, farming and family is the fulfilment of God’s will, but for others, it is the destruction of sacred lands.
“An estimated 92 million tons of textile waste is created annually from the fashion industry,” Fashion Revolution reported in 2020, citing Global Fashion Agenda. “Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned globally.”
The most overheard phrase at the 2023 Mennonite Church Alberta annual delegate sessions in Pincher Creek was, “It’s so good to be together again!”
MennoMedia has released The Peace Table, the most ambitious children’s Bible project in its history. Within the book’s 384 pages, readers will find 140 Bible stories and an abundance of full-colour artwork by 30 different illustrators.
B.C. Mennonites enjoyed a global experience on March 25 while gathering for Renewal 2023, a Mennonite World Conference (MWC) event with the theme of “Jesus Christ, our hope.”
The event, held at South Abbotsford Church, was part of Renewal 2028, a decade-long series of local events organized by MWC to commemorate the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement.
Rielly McLaren has seen first hand the effects of the opioid crisis in his community and his congregation.
The pastor of Windsor Mennonite Fellowship, a small urban church near the heart of Windsor, Ont., says, “Families in my congregation have lost loved ones to this crisis. All economic segments of society are affected.”
Like a garden maze with various starting points, the story of how I became connected to the Mennonite community is the sum of several individual stories that all led to the same place. My family’s journey to the Mennonites began with a Mennonite woman extending her compassion to us, and this has become a recurring theme.
Kirsten Hamm-Epp, regional church minister, and Josh Wallace, church engagement minister, lead morning worship. (Photo by Emily Summach)
Sharon Schultz, pastor of Eyebrow Mennonite Church, and Andrea Enns-Gooding, pastor of Rosthern Mennonite Church, engage in conversation. (Photo by Emily Summach)
Audrey Mierau Bechtel plays piano for morning worship with Josh Wallace on guitar. (Photo by Emily Summach)
David Boshart, president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., encouraged Mennonite Church Saskatchewan participants at this year’s annual delegate sessions (ADS) to hold on to a hopeful perspective, even as the challenges of church life after the pandemic grew.
With 100,000 members, the Mennonite church in Vietnam is going strong, reports Nhien Pham. The retired pastor, who came to Canada from Vietnam in 1976, returned to his home country for a month with a group from Mennonite Church Canada earlier this year. Pham is president of the North American Evangelical Vietnamese Fellowship and advisor for Evangelical Church Vietnam.
The buzz of conversation and singing was a welcome sound as people filled Douglas Mennonite Church in Winnipeg for Mennonite Church Manitoba’s first in-person gathering in three years.
This year’s event hosted more than 150 people, including 111 delegates, on March 3 and 4. The theme was “Re-imagining church together.”
Caleb Ratzlaff has always had an interest in theology and politics. After spending time in seminary, he ultimately decided to complete a master’s degree in political philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Last November, he was elected to the St. Catherines city council, at which time he left his position as pastor of Westview Christian Fellowship.
When Colin McCartney of Connect City, a church-planting ministry in Toronto, came to Leamington last month, members of five local congregations in Essex County were taken on a journey from Christendom—where the church used to thrive—to post-Christendom—where it is now struggling.
With choral singing back in full swing, its community-building capacity is even more obvious to composer and Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) student Anna Schwartz. After writing the song “Answers” at the height of the pandemic, she is set to direct the CMU Chamber Choir’s spring performance of the song on April 28.
The affirmation of a new executive minister highlighted the annual meeting of Mennonite Church B.C. at Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond on Feb. 25.
In an effort to strengthen communication and relationships between the nationwide and regional churches, Doug Klassen, Mennonite Church Canada’s executive minister, paid a visit to Saskatchewan last month.
As Roland Sawatzky gives a tour through The Manitoba Museum, his eyes light up and his hands animatedly point out the highlights and features of each gallery. It’s clear he’s passionate about his work.
While parenting can be a struggle, parenting through foster care or adoption has extra challenges, says Jenn Hook in Thriving Families. Her experience as a counsellor with a foster-care agency, and as the founder of a non-profit organization that supports foster and adoptive families gives her a solid understanding of these challenges.
In a meeting on Jan. 30, 2022, Mennonite Church Canada’s governing body, Joint Council, affirmed climate action as a nationwide ministry emphasis.
Two Ohio families with 300 years of history in the U.S. began to consider leaving America when the two brothers and their wives faced workplace transitions in 2021.