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Letters to the editor
Mennonite Brethren Herald welcomes your letters on issues relevant to the Mennonite Brethren Church, especially in response to material published in the Herald. Please keep your letters courteous, brief and about one subject only. We will edit letters for length and clarity. We will not publish letters sent anonymously, although we may withhold names from publication at the request of the letter writer and at our discretion. Publication is also subject to space limitations. Because the Letters column is a free forum for discussion, it should be understood that letters represent the position of the letter writer, not necessarily the position of the Herald or the Mennonite Brethren Church. Send letters to:
Letters, MB Herald
3-169 Riverton Ave.
Winnipeg, Man. R2L 2E5
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or by e-mail to mbherald@mbconf.ca. (Please ensure that your postal address is included in your e-mail correspondence.) |
Stories are calls to follow Christ
The two articles by Don Klaassen, the testimony of John Sankara Rao and the piece from Deborah Pelletier (Encounter, Feb. 16) are a strong call to follow Christ and a wonderful door into the writers’ faith journeys. It’s particularly good to hear from these Mennonite Brethren, as well as Harriett Kent and James Toews. This is what I personally seek from my MB periodical: an opportunity to learn from and be challenged by others in the MB body of faith. Please continue to share the stories and ideas of Mennonite Brethren from North America and around the world.
Brad Thiessen,
Fresno, CA.
Young men should be mentored
I enjoyed the March 30 editorial. Jim Coggins’s service as editor is greatly appreciated. His heart is often exposed in his writing and in the topics/focus of the Herald. This is something of great value to the Church and is an encouragement to me in my spiritual life.
Re leadership, my voice is that of a 38-year-old partner in a 17-year-marriage and a mother of two daughters. My Christian walk began when I was about 10 and I was baptized in an MB church at age 12. I have worked full-time for most of my adult life, currently as a project manager.
My observation of church life (and mainstream society) is that we have not made as much of a cultural shift as we want to believe. There continues to be a deep-rooted need for male leadership in our organizational lives. As much as we might try, we just can’t wrap ourselves around the concept of women in these roles. At the same time as we (and I) struggle on this ground, we appear to have weakened the fibre of respect for authority in general, and many young men are reluctant to take leadership. I encourage churches to consciously take young men (and boys) where they are at and begin encouraging them and blessing them in their role as spiritual leaders. In this way, they can be trained to be loving shepherds in both family and community life. As a gifted female leader, I am coming to increasingly recognize that my role in empowering my partner by being committed to being his helper is of great value to the Christian and secular community. For me, this is not about right and wrong or about “God’s will” but rather about understanding the social and cultural context in which we live.
Please withhold my name because the views I have expressed could be viewed as embarrassing to the organization I work for.
Name withheld
Goal Setting
Beatrice Klassen (“Goals and desires”, March 2) should have focused more on what good goal setting actual looks like. “Being the best witness you can” is a great value but a poor goal. Goals must be measurable in some objective way. One goal I have set for myself is to pray at least five times a week for three unbelieving friends for all of 2001. A simple look at my prayer journal at the end of the year will show whether I accomplished that goal. What is more, rather than just a pass or fail, I will be able to see what percentage of success I had. When we establish concrete goals, we can feel good about what we did accomplish even if we did not meet all of our objectives. Likewise, objective data helps us to be honest with our real failures and address them for what they are. Vague goals lead to subjective evaluation, which in turn leads to feelings of failure in the person who is inclined toward self-criticism or introspection. I agree that desires and goals are two separate matters, and I appreciate what Ms. Klassen has written. Nevertheless, I believe that if goals are not objective and measurable, many people will continue to feel failure where they could have experienced the satisfaction of accomplishment.
Brent Hudson,
Riverview, N.B.
Good music is out there
I agree with Cameron Stehr (“Love and Music”, March 16) that today’s youth are “totally on music”. What troubles me is the assumption by some Christian leaders that the only music suitable for young Christians is contemporary Christian music. Good music isn’t something that can be neatly packaged. Rather, it can be found in a variety of places both inside and outside the faith. For example, if I go to a concert of classical music, I’m quite hopeful of getting a “life-enhancing experience”. Too many Christian youth are on a poor musical diet. It would do them some good to join a choir and practise for a cantata. In learning the compositions, they might gradually come to appreciate the beauty of such music. There still is some good contemporary music to be discovered as well. Not everything in the world is twisted yet, so stop looking just at the “canteloupe” and try something different.
Roland J. Derksen,
Vancouver, B.C.
Acts 15 still a good model
Re the “Leadership” editorial (March 30):
I agree that both lay and pastoral people may be leaders and that leaders should be visionaries. The statement that leaders should be able to convince people to follow them bears some discussion, specifically with regard to the method(s) used to convince the followers.
Several writers have suggested the following methods of leading or convincing: telling, selling, consulting and joining. The tell method is appropriate in legitimate autocratic settings such as where there is sole ownership or absolute authority. The sell method is frequently used in democratic settings such as churches that claim to follow the congregational governance approach; one person or a committee makes a recommendation and then argues strongly for that recommendation; that is, it attempts to convince the followers to vote in favour of the recommendation. In the consultative approach, the leaders say to the followers, “We have given careful thought to a situation and think it should be resolved in the following way. Please give us some feedback before we make a final decision.” In the join approach, the leaders do not abandon their responsibilities by turning everything over to the followers. Instead, the leaders exercise their visionary gifts by discerning the key issues in their congregation, they set direction by providing background information and by posing key questions to the followers, and then they listen carefully to the responses. In joining situations, the followers commonly do not need to be convinced because they are involved in the process, they are respected, and “it seems good to those assembled” (Acts 15).
Someone has said that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everyone else like a nail. Perhaps we as church leaders could augment our favourite theology of leadership, be it based on Hebrews 13 (obey your leaders) or 1 Peter 5 (not domineering over those in your charge), with some practical leadership training from secular institutions.
Peter Durksen,
Breslau, Ont.
Herald a sacred cow
I am in full agreement with the letter “Is there a better way?” (March 30). As a pastor, I have talked to many people in our congregation who feel exactly as Alma Brown has suggested. They seldom read the whole Herald or every issue of the Herald, and would far rather see their Conference dues be put towards reaching lost people, and building God’s Kingdom. A response card would help define the perceived value and actual readership of the Herald. I also realize that the MB Herald is a “sacred cow” with some folks. Maybe it’s time we honour the Herald’s past and then have a great big barbecue!
Geoff Neufeld,
Kelowna, B.C.
Previous | Next Last modified May 17, 2001.
© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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