Over the past few years, a group of Region 8 leaders have been planning and hosting a retreat for young adults. This year that continued with a retreat on the theme “Together.”

The first phase of the Anabaptist Dictionary of the Bible (ADB) is nearing completion. This free online project at the centre of biblical interpretation and Anabaptist thought is adding article 49 toward a goal to cover all 66 books in the Bible.

For three days and three nights, Mary Laat ran and hid from members of her own family. The goal of their pursuit? To bring her to the altar to marry a man she didn’t know who’d paid his dowry and expected a wife in return.

As a generation of experienced pastors enter retirement age, many churches around the world are seeing a shortage of trained leaders. Pastoral candidates who have studied Anabaptist theology are even more rare.

Book Review: ‘The New Anabaptists’
by Lisa Dyck

Winter’s first semester was warm, erring on the side of balmy. Albertans tentatively accepted the lingering fall weather, painfully aware they’d been fooled before by the sudden arrival of a tsunamic dump of snow or a frigid pop quiz.

Imagine an EMC time-traveller from the 1920s visiting us today. Would they find any clue that, of all the churches in town, this was their descendant?

One of the many gifts children give us adults is the freedom to be childlike again. There is nothing more freeing than running in a gym playing pool noodle tag. (The fact that I couldn’t keep up is neither here nor there.)

On behalf of the Personnel Committee, I am happy to announce the appointment of Gerald Reimer to the post of Director of Global Outreach.

On the one hand, there is this great need—so many heartbreaking situations and so many lonely people. On the other hand, according to a 2019 Angus Reid poll, (A Portrait of Social Isolation and Loneliness in Canada today - Angus Reid Institute), 71 percent of Canadians are introverts, meaning most of us find it difficult to reach out to other people. That’s a tall hurdle, but let’s break it down a bit.

Genesis 2:15 records work as it was meant to be—getting into the soil, dirt under the fingernails, and tending to the animals, all with satisfaction and joy. God, as part of his good and perfect plan for his creation, tasked Adam to “cultivate and tend” the Garden of Eden. Eve was given as a companion and partner in this calling. How glorious! But then comes Genesis 3—the fall—with its resultant “weeds and thistles” and “hard labour.” Work perfectly designed had become work pretty disfigured. Now it seems that creation itself militates against us in our calling to “tend.” And yet, the calling and blessing of work has not changed.

Conference Council delegates gathered on November 25, 2023, in a hybrid meeting. While 22 participated on Zoom from various locations across Canada, 92 met in person at Blumenort Community Church (BCC) in Blumenort, Man.