COVID is getting smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror, yet we experience its lingering effects. One effect is that some people haven’t returned to the life of the church. We may have expected a “Great Return of Exiles.” That didn’t happen. Why not?

There seems to be an increase lately of Christians who are deconstructing their faith and moving on from it. In fact, some reports say that 60 percent of people born in the church deconstruct and lose their faith after high school. But I’m not convinced deconstruction needs to end up there.

At the beginning of March 2023, a group of 90-plus young adults met together at Red Rock Bible Camp in the Whiteshell region of Manitoba for a weekend of connecting with God and other EMC young adults.

You may find some aspects of this issue of The Messenger ironic. There are a lot of pictures in this issue of great worship, laughter, hilarious games, meaningful conversations, prayer times and messages and presentations. But you will see that while we celebrate so much that is great, we’re also concerned.

What good does it do to plant one tree, I asked myself, as I visited with farmers in Mwenezi District, in south central Zimbabwe last September. Everywhere our Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Communications team went, farmers were sure to tell us they planted a tree that year.

Straffordville EMC celebrated its first service in their new building on December 23, 2018, and held a grand opening celebration on June 9, 2019.

Last summer, driving through the roads of the province of Jaen in the south of Spain I was struck by the number of hills full of olive trees everywhere I turned. The first thought that came to mind was, when is time of harvest?

I occasionally hear myself make this mistake in an argument: When I describe my own view, I describe an ideal, a vision for how we should think and live. But when I describe my opponent’s view, I describe how that view is lived out in real life.

SBC Leadership Conference 2023 speakers respond to questions such as, “How do we go about determining the essentials versus the non-essentials? The gospel is to unite us, but how do we define the gospel?“

Our special Tenebrae service on the eve of Good Friday was planned and performed by a team of believers in Jesus working together to create an atmosphere of worship and remembrance. They took us step by anguished step through the last week of Jesus’ life during Holy Week.

We walked down the metal steps of the small jet in Tabatinga, Brazil, and were hit by heat and the smell of the rainforest. There was beauty in nature, but the buildings and streets were well-worn and plain.

My son recently started a coin collection. My husband, Zach, who has collected coins since he was a little boy spent time explaining to Creedence how to grade his coins. They flipped through a coin reference book. “That one is almost enough to buy a house!” I exclaimed, hearing the value of a tiny piece of metal.