It’s Saturday morning: What should we do? For a family like mine, with young children, there are many options on a weekend. But one Saturday, we decided to try something different after a train whistle reminded us of what God calls us to do.

Always first were the grade ones and twos who did the Christmas acrostic. Margaret was first and she boldly held out the C. “C is for the Christ child, born that morn so long ago,” she said crisply. The concert was off to a fine start. Harold was next, and during practice, he had had some difficulties with his line which was simply, “H is for King Herod who slew the Hebrew boys.” Harold looked confident.

“Sometimes when there’s something new, everyone looks at it to see if it can work, [but] all sorts of churches … have done well [or] have failed with single pastor hires or multi-team hires.… Things go wrong all the time.… If [co-pastoring] fails, it doesn’t mean it always is going to fail, and if it works, it doesn’t mean it’s always going to work.”

The Pax Romana was a phrase coined by perhaps the most successful authority figure in world history. Directly translated it means the “Roman peace,” and it was a phrase dreamt up and made common by Caesar Augustus, the first and by most considered the greatest Augustan emperor of the renowned Roman Empire.

♪ “We came in 1875,” my father tells me. Dad is 94, and a trip to the ER is giving him a sense of urgency to pass on the stories his mother shared.

♪ You’ve been back in this country for a little less than three months and you’re just wrapping up another talk at one of your sponsoring churches. People walk up to you after the service and shake your hand to welcome you. “You must be so happy to be home!” they proclaim earnestly as they insert words into your mouth before you can even open it in protest.

♪ “I still use it,” Anicka Fast says of the brownish knitted potholder she received at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) orientation in Akron, Pennsylvania, in 2009. Fast and her husband John Clarke were en route to their first MCC assignment at the time.

♪ Dwylla Zacharias’s life was upended in a moment. It was early 2021. She, husband Jared, and their four children had recently returned from the mission field of Hungary and were sorting out how to report to supporting churches despite pandemic restrictions.

♪ You may think this is a bit of an exaggeration—but let me assure you, reading through the Bible in under 100 days was seriously fun! Trust me, I was just as surprised as you might be. Let me take you through my adventure.

♪ It is a privilege to speak at this EMC conference. I am not a Mennonite, but most of my best friends are, and my ancestors were Scottish, so I am cheap. I once said to my wife, “You are only getting one cup of tea from a teabag; you can do better.” So, I am an honorary Mennonite. Better yet, I am with brothers and sisters who love and serve Jesus.

♪ … the Roman empire had perfected the art of conquest. They controlled the vast majority of the known and civilized world, and no nation or group posed any serious threat to their authority. Rome clung to power through military might, rigid bureaucracy, and good old-fashioned fear. But Jesus was subversive; he taught differently on what true power looked like. Instead of power to conquer and dominate, Christ spoke and modelled power to submit and serve.

♪ In the last few months, over 90 EMC youth leaders attended one of the Youth Worker Community (YWC) Conferences (sixty-plus in Winnipeg and thirty-plus in Calgary). There were many great workshops on a variety of themes which gave attendees a lot to think about and process: helping students discover and grow spiritual discipline, how to lead teenagers to Christ, managing small groups and making the most of events and experiences, among others.