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H.O.P.E. Church in Nelson B.C. and church planters Jeff and Marikyn Zak have a new e-mail address: jzak@netidea.com.
Justice Minister Martin Cauchon has announced that the Canadian government will not raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16, saying that there is a lack of consensus among provincial governments on the issue. Only Saskatchewan and Quebec oppose the move, while Ontario and B.C. strongly support it. Instead, Cauchon has said that he will introduce omnibus legislation dealing with the exploitation of children. – cbc.ca, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
Camp Péniel, the Quebec MB Conference camp, has a new Web site: pages.infinit.net/peniel.
Bonnie Penner Witherall, a US missionary in Sidon, Lebanon was killed Nov. 21 when an unknown assailant came to the door of the clinic where she worked and shot her three times in the head. The clinic provided medical care to women in a nearby refugee camp. Witherall and her husband Gary had been missionaries in Lebanon with the Christian and Missionary Alliance and Operation Mercy since 1999. They had received increasing threats from Muslim extremists because of their attempts to evangelize Muslims. Observers say that in Lebanon religious affiliation is a political identity and conversion upsets the political balance. Gary Witherall says that he and his wife believed the gospel was a message worth dying for and that he has forgiven his wife’s killers. – Evangelical Press News Service
A plan for redesigning the financially troubled Mennonite Publishing House (see Editorial, MBH, Nov. 15) has been approved by leaders of Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada. The nine Provident bookstores owned by MPH will operate separately as a “wholly owned subsidiary”. MPH will close its printing house in Scottdale, Pa. and contract its printing needs out to other printers; this will save $75,000-$100,000 in printing costs a year and avoid spending the $750,000 needed to upgrade the printing house. The remainder of MPH will have two divisions, one to publish congregational literature, including curriculum, and the other to publish books. Central to the new plan will be “networking”, meetings with representatives of congregations, conferences and church agencies up to four times a year to identify publishing priorities. MPH may be renamed Mennonite Publishing Network. The MPH staff has already been cut from 91 to 54, and the recent changes will reduce staff to around 30. MPH still needs to raise $5 million over three years to eliminate its debt, including $2.3 million by September 2003. – Canadian Mennonite
Campus Crusade, from its base in Langley, B.C., has operated 15 five-day Oasis retreats to help bring healing and renewal to 184 burned out or wounded pastors and wives over the past several years. The agency is now offering “Wellspring at Barnabas” retreats to offer the same healing to professional and business couples and singles, especially those who have served as lay leaders in their churches. The Oasis program is headed by former Mennonite Brethren pastor couple Pete and Shirley Unrau. The new program will be led by Oasis staff Dr. Radford and Ron Toews. The first retreat will be held March 4-7, 2003. Further information is available from the Web site www.wellspringforlife.com. – Oasis
At the annual convention of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada in Toronto Nov. 4-7, a motion was presented to limit the positions of pastors and elders in the denomination to men. The recommendation was supported by 59% of the 500 delegates, short of the two-thirds approval required to add the limitation to the denomination’s bylaws. The denomination has 65,605 members in 496 congregations. There are fears that the issue could split the denomination. Pastor William Oosterman, one of the organizers of the recommendation, is now asking churches which would allow women to hold such positions to voluntarily withdraw from the denomination. He is also asking Heritage College and Seminary in Cambridge, Ont. to fire professors who hold such a view. – ChristianWeek
The Word Guild is sponsoring a one-day writing seminar called Write! Vancouver Island, March 1 in The Church of Our Lord, Victoria. Keynote speaker is novelist and Word Guild president Nancy Lindquist. Workshop speakers include Cullene Bryant, Mark Buchanan, Grace Fox, Marcia Hollis, Adele Wickett, Herbert O’Driscoll and MB Herald editor Jim Coggins. For further information see the Web site www.thewordguild.com or write to Write! Vancouver island, 1765 McTavish Rd., Sidney, B.C., V8L 5T9. – Write! Vancouver Island
The sixth biennial Women Doing Theology conference will be held May 16-18, 2003 at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va. on the theme “Gifts of the Red Tent: Women Creating”. Presenters include Malinda Barry, a doctoral student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Iris de Leon-Hartshorn, director of MCC US Peace and Justice Ministries, and Reta Halteman Finger, assistant professor of New Testament at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. Further information is available from MCC US Women’s Concerns, phone (717) 859-3889, e-mail tjh@mccus.org. – Mennonite Central Committee
Giving to Mennonite Central Committee is down about $3 million in the US so far in the 2002-2003 fiscal year, which ends March 31. Giving to MCC in Canada is about equal to last year. MCC spent about $94 million last year. – Mennonite Central Committee
A tornado Nov. 10 tore sections of the roof and walls from a Mennonite Disaster Service warehouse in Columbus, Miss; damaging trailers and vehicles inside. It also destroyed a mobile home used to house MDS volunteers. This was just one of a series of tornadoes that hit several US states Nov. 10, destroying dozens of homes. MDS is investigating how it will help clean up and restore some of the areas hit by the storms. – Mennonite Disaster Service
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Last modified January 10, 2003.
© 2003 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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