The Mennonite provides Anabaptist content and is a publication of Mennonite Church USA.
Daily News
We are Mennonite Church USA
Glen Guyton will be executive director of Mennonite Church USA effective May 1. One of the first emails I received after being named executive director said, “Perhaps you will be one of the persons God will use to help rescue Mennonite Church USA.” My response was, “One thing I promise you is that I won’t […]
Seven questions with…Amy Gingerich
Name: Amy Gingerich Role: Executive director and publisher of MennoMedia and Herald Press, effective Jan. 6 1. What is one fun or interesting fact about yourself? Interstate 80 is my life’s highway. I have lived along the highway in four different states—California, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. 2. Why did you say “yes” to becoming executive director […]
A lament: Life and freedom through violence
For centuries, U.S. civic leaders have told a narrative that violence and warfare are necessary for the flourishing of life. In order to be truly free, people in the United States say, we must be willing to kill. As a society we advocate for the right to bear arms, the justice of our incarceration system […]
Friday roundup: Five things worth paying attention to this week
David and Leann Augsburger are two semi-retired people who co-lead a home base church (Peace Mennonite Church, Claremont, California) and volunteer to welcome, care and connect people in the San Gabriel valley. Here are five things worth paying attention to this week. These are designed to expose you to a perspective you may not normally come […]
April recipe: Pickled eggs and beets
The Hungry Hounds is the food blog of Paul and Rebecca Shetler Fast, country representatives for Mennonite Central Committee in Haiti. Learn more about MCC Haiti at their blog, www.haitimcc.org. Rebecca loves pickles: pickled onions, pickled vegetables, Haitian style pickled cabbage, sauerkraut with juniper and caraway, red cabbage sauerkraut with apples and cloves and of course dill pickles. Whether by nature or nurture, […]
Thank you, Ervin Stutzman
Ervin Stutzman’s last day as executive director of Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) is April 30. I would like to thank him for his years of service to the Mennonite church. Professional. I saw Ervin’s imprint on the Mennonite Educators Conference, which met Feb. 1-3 in Leesburg, Virginia. With hundreds of teachers and administrators in […]
Reflections on unity for MC USA
Ervin Stutzman will end his term as executive director of Mennonite Church USA on April 30. Sometimes I ask myself if it was “worth it” for me to give such a large chunk of my life to the vision of church unity embodied in the group we call Mennonite Church USA? In 1995, I was […]
Digital resources focused on the Bible
When we were in school at what is now Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, my husband sang in a quartet with some of his friends. They had a lot of fun singing gospel and contemporary Christian arrangements. They especially enjoyed a song called “Into the Word.” “I heard you’re into the Word, getting into the […]
Friday roundup: Five things worth paying attention to this week
Here are five things worth paying attention to this week. These are designed to expose you to a perspective you may not normally come across in your daily lives. 1. Easter is not over We are now in the Easter season, one of my favorite liturgical seasons of the year. Last Sunday’s lectionary passage was […]
Applying Christ’s prayer to all of us
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” –Luke 23:34 Some Christians among us have spent years wondering to whom Jesus was offering forgiveness in that situation. Was it being offered to Pilate, the chief priests and scribes, or Herod, who all played a role in Jesus’ sentencing? Perhaps Jesus was forgiving […]
When we blame a child
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States, and we will be featuring content from Dove’s Nest. For more resources – including a bulletin insert, PowerPoint slides and other educational tools – visit this page on their website. Victim blaming is so ingrained in our culture that we do it without realizing it. At least […]
The digital desert: Is technology starving our spiritual discernment?
This article comes from the April issue of The Mennonite, which focuses on technology & faith. Read more reflections online or subscribe to receive more original features in your inbox each month. First came the pagers in the 1990s. I heard them occasionally beep during the Sunday service. Although they were annoying, I still wished I had one. To a young […]
Sexual abuse: We need to talk and listen
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States, and we will be featuring content from Dove’s Nest. For more resources – including a bulletin insert, PowerPoint slides and other educational tools – visit this page on their website. After I graduated high school, I worked in an in-store bakery and would go to work a […]
Child-on-child abuse: How to recognize it and respond
In April, Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States, we will be featuring content from Dove’s Nest. For more resources – including a bulletin insert, PowerPoint slides and other educational tools – click here. Two members of the Dove’s Nest Speaker’s Bureau attended the “Child-on-Child Abuse: Recognizing, Reporting, Preventing” conference, sponsored by the law office Gibbel Kraybill & […]
Spiritual resilience: Cultivating an attitude of gratitude
I could feel it within my bones—that unsettled awareness that something was out of balance. It was more than the cold, single-digit temperatures or the doubts and questions that come with the beginning of a new year. Hoping to lift my spirits, I called a long-time friend who lived far away. I wished her “happy […]
What happens when a congregation dies?
What happens when a congregation dies? In many ways, the experience of closing a congregation is similar to hospice for a loved one during their final season of life. For many of us, a local congregation plays the central role of how we experience faith. A congregation is not just a building Christians visit each […]
Sermons I never heard
Mennonite theology has not prepared us to deal with mass shootings. The faith I grew up with is a religion of victimhood, in which evil resides outside of us—in “the world.” There is no space for thinking about ourselves as part of the problem. I now know I am part of systems that undergird capitalist […]
How Mennonites reckon with our history in the Holocaust
Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, held a “Mennonites and the Holocaust” conference March 16-17. Lisa Schirch wrote this piece, which originally appeared at AnabaptistHistorians.org, in response to attending. Across the street from Bethel College’s campus, the Kauffman Museum portrays a history of Mennonites that illustrates the type of commonly-told, positive narrative of our beliefs, pacifism, martyrdom, […]
Reflections at the end of the year my son, MJ, was killed
Michele Miller Sharp wrote this piece Dec. 22, 2017. Her son, Michael (MJ) Sharp, was killed in March 2017 while working as part of a U.N. panel of experts investigating conflicts that have been ongoing in Congo since the mid-1990s. I vividly remember the moment you were born, my dear son. You weren’t breathing because […]
What might reconciliation in North and South Korea look like?
Karen Spicher is communications coordinator for Northeast Asia Regional Peace Building Institute (NARPI). Jae Young directs the Korea Peacebuilding Institute (KOPI) and provides leadership to NARPI. If you watched the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony, you witnessed athletes from both Koreas walking together under the Korean Unification Flag. The people of Korea, and the international community, melted […]
I (almost) got shot
Dorothy Nickel Friesen is former pastor of Manhattan (Kansas) Mennonite Church and First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, Ohio; former assistant dean at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana; and former conference minister for the Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. Her book, The Pastor Wears a Skirt, is forthcoming from Wipf and Stock. She lives in […]
MCC in Syria: A river of love
Photos provided by Ron Byler. Ron Byler is executive director of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. A delegation from Mennonite Central Committee recently returned from Syria, the first visit of its kind since the start of the civil war there in 2011. MCC’s $34.6 million humanitarian response in Syria and Iraq is the organization’s largest since World […]
