One Friday afternoon, five of us met around a table: four representatives of our neighborhood organization and the South Bend, Ind., mayor’s deputy chief of staff. Those of us from the neighborhood had been...
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“I did not give you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” So wrote Paul to Timothy (2 Tim. 1:7). The church doesn’t believe this, or so it seems. It rarely talks about...
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In early October, Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a Democratic presidential hopeful, took the stage at a Peacemaker Summit organized by the St. Joseph County chapter of Faith in Indiana. The...
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When I joined the pastoral team of a Mennonite congregation after seminary, I asked myself: What does it mean to be a pastor of a predominantly white church in America in the 1990s? After pondering this...
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Mennonites are good at service. That’s how we love our neighbors. We address direct human need: providing shelter, food, education. Sometimes we ask about policies and institutions that impact the needs of...
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In 1957 in Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, communion was only served when a bishop was present. The bread and cup were reserved for church members who were deemed in good standing. This practice of...
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The book Christian. Muslim. Friend. Twelve Paths to Real Relationship by long-term Mennonite missionary David W. Shenk recently received the Christianity Today best book award in the category of Missions/ The...
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We sometimes think that we are the church on our own — whether that’s our local congregation, our area conference or our denomination. But every time we pick up our hymnal, it connects us to brothers and...
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It was a miracle. Jun Yamada, suffering from an aggressive leukemia, was on his death bed. He lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest. The doctors told the family he was unlikely to live more than half...
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What are we learning from interchurch relations that might help in our intrachurch relations? What are we learning from relationships with Lutherans and Pentecostals that can help us be church together in our...
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In 1985, black South African theologians released the Kairos Document, a condemnation of Christian support for apartheid policies. In December 2009, Palestinian Christian leaders issued Kairos Palestine. The...
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Clarence Jordan once reportedly quipped in his typical salty fashion that many Christian preachers will preach the hind legs off of Jesus but rarely pay attention to what Jesus himself preached. Jordan was a...
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The adult Sunday school “homework assignment” was to find out how many immigrant congregations were located in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area. Using the Yellow Pages and a Google search, the class...
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“You’re going to talk about tonight for a long time,” Kenneth Copeland told a large crowd of Pentecostal pastors at a conference he hosted in January. Copeland is a prominent televangelist and...
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What do Mennonites say when Lutherans ask whether we see them as fully part of the body of Christ? The question was posed during informal conversations at the edge of meetings in recent years. The Mennonite...
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For years there was an easy alliance in America between God and country. The Christian church held a privileged place in our culture. As this is breaking down, people who take Jesus and the Bible seriously are...
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This is how I think about the way of the cross. Compassion, curiosity, humility and grace linked with courageous opposition to sin, injustice and evil. Jesus held these things together. That is a rare...
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American evangelicals are wrestling with Jesus’ way of peace in new ways. There is evidence of this at Intervarsity Press, Youth With A Mission, Willow Creek Community Church and elsewhere. Various factors...
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