♪Loneliness can be a time of being depressed and feeling sorry for oneself or it can be regarded as a gift from the Lord to get closer to him. So much of life is in the attitude we have.

♪“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

♪“What do you think about Donald Trump?”

♪ “There’s a level of tribal knowledge that we assume people have about being a minister.” Conference Pastor Andy Woodworth began the first session of the Ministerial Day, on November 22, 2024, explaining the Board of Leadership and Outreach (BLO) choice to devote the day to the final sessions of the Minister Credentialing Program.

♪ Every Christmas Eve my children look forward to my purple plum torte. Along with roasted turkey and Walter C. Scott’s A Christmas Carol, the simple yellow cake crowned with plums and sprinkled in cinnamon sugar is tradition. Every year the challenge remains the same—in December plums are not grown in northern climes.

♪ Either my pantry is shrinking or my kids are growing. I’m not referring to their caloric intake (though that does involve a pantry shrinkage of a different sort). I’m talking about the tiny pantry space itself, which multi-tasks as our official glow-in-the-dark testing station.

♪ On November 23, 2024, Conference Council members approved a budget of nearly $2.1M for 2025—the first budget over $2M since 2015. Delegates gathered at Evangelical Fellowship Church (EFC) in Steinbach, Man., and virtually over Zoom.

♪ An era is ending. See if this agrees with what you’re seeing. For the last several generations, when our churches needed a new pastor, we assumed there was a group of moveable pastors “out there” looking for a church. “Out there” were unknown pastors trained, experienced, and ready to move their families across the continent to pastor our church.

♪ I read the Sept/Oct 2024 issue at one sitting. From the early articles’ discouragement to the last three pages of inspiration, I felt I concluded on a high note.

♪ In my neighbourhood they call me Abd al-Haqq. It started because some of my friends couldn’t remember my name; others couldn’t pronounce it. One guy was calling me “Android” and another was calling me “Mustafa.” It was finally settled one morning when the guard from my son’s preschool definitively stated that I should be called “Abd al-Haqq.”

♪ My daughter, Noelle, is a wonderful seven-year-old who loves Pokemon, drawing, and hockey. Noelle is also autistic, and like many people who are autistic, church when done “as regular” can seem overwhelming or even at times unwelcoming.

♪ Book Review: ‘Flyover Church’

By: Mike Vanderzwaag