Last spring I blogged about a first of its kind gathering of Mennonites and Jews at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) called “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust.” We covered topics ranging from New Testament scholarship, shared historic experience, the dangers of emphasizing common ground in dialogue, Mennonites and the Holocaust, and Israel and the land.
Less than half a year later, members of Hamas crossed into southern Israel and slaughtered around...
A while back Joel preached a sermon where he talked about a theory originated by Phyllis Tickle that the Christian Church goes through a great shift or reformation approximately every 500 years. Tickle (and Joel) used the metaphor of the 500-year rummage sale as a way to think about how every once in a while the Church needs to reevaluate the things it is holding on to and what needs to be let go.
If this theory holds any water, it means we are in the midst of another great shift. Do you feel it?
Author and Mennonite pastor Meghan Larissa Good picks up on these ideas in her...
Sub.sti.tu.tion – the action of replacing someone or something with another person or thing.
Sol.i.dar.i.ty – union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests.
It’s Holy Week, a time dense with memory and meaning. Within this short span, the gospels speak of the betrayal by Judas, Jesus’ final meal with his friends, prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter’s denial, the rushed trial before Pilate, the walk to Golgotha, the state execution of Jesus and burial of his body.
At the risk of vast...
Tomorrow morning I’ll be driving up to Goshen for three days of meetings with the Mennonite Church USA Constituency Leaders Council. The CLC is an advisory and listening group – rather than decision-making body — made up of representatives of area conferences and constituency groups. As the President-elect of Central District Conference, I’m one of our three attendees. I’m pleased that one of the newest groups to be represented is the Queer Constituency Council, a result of...
What if the majority of the world’s 8 billion people could share in a season of spiritual grounding? What if over half of humanity would focus, all at the same time, on the practices that lead to harmony within oneself and justice in society?
Well…
The Muslim month of Ramadan began on Sunday. Because the Islamic calendar is based on lunar cycles, Ramadan slowly migrates within our solar calendar, appearing a little earlier each year. We’re in a window of years when it overlaps with our Christian observation of Lent. Both Ramadan and Lent contain calls for searching one’s...