People & events

Regina Chinese Community Church held its last service August 31. For 17 years, meeting at Parliament Community Church, the congregation ministered to Chinese immigrants and students. Many became Christians, but numbers declined as people moved elsewhere. It was an emotional day for the small group that met formally for the last time.

—Sask. MB Conference

Zimbabwe was “the right place” to hold the Mennonite World Conference assembly for a church “serious about taking God’s healing and hope where it is needed most,” states The Mennonite editor Everett J. Thomas. The event significantly boosted business for local hotels and taxi drivers, and benefited Zimbabwean women, who comprised the majority of the 5000 local participants, through two large meals daily at minimal cost.

—The Mennonite

Women in the persecuted church suffer for their faith more than men, according to Open Doors USA, an organization that supports Christians in 80 countries hostile to Christianity. Being both female and Christian exposes women to more violence; they are “often barely recognized as human beings.”

—Evangelical Press News

Hip-Hop and Jesus: Christian musician Eddie DeGarmo wrote “!Hero: The Rock Opera” to show what it might be like if Christ (played by a black actor) came into the world today. It contrasts Jesus’ message of love with others’ desires for revolution against the oppression they face. The ideas of “!Hero” have already been expressed in recorded and book form, and will tour as drama beginning Nov. 1 in Wabash, Ind.

—Evangelical Press News

Eight Christian women facing abuse from someone close to them formed a support group last spring that met in a New Westminster, B.C. church. Several churches will be working with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) this fall to organize similar groups in the Fraser Valley. Contact Elsie Wiebe Klinger at 604-850-6639 for more information.

—MCC BC

Mennonite and Catholic youth marched together Aug. 31 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras to celebrate “peace with the risen Christ” and call for an end to gang violence. Held in an atmosphere of growing panic over violence by gangs and government alike, the procession of some 300 people was augmented by hundreds of residents as it passed. A former gang member helped by the Peace and Justice Project of the Honduran Mennonite Church had the idea.

—Mennonite Central Committee release

The Central District (U.S.) Convention, representing 27 Mennonite Brethren congregations in Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, met June 26–29 in Omaha, Neb. The 27-congregation CDC has a strong church planting focus; it welcomed new Ethiopian and Slavic congregations (in Sioux Fall, S.D. and Lincoln, Neb. respectively), discussed ongoing church planting efforts, and approved a budget of $220,050.

—Christian Leader

The dream of a medical science lab for Congo’s Université Chrétienne de Kinshasa is closer to reality. Jonathan Paxon and Kim Siemens of Trinity Western University (TWU) recently visited Kinshasa to assess the project, which was initiated by the Congolese through Dr. Murray Nickel, who works in Congo with MB Missions and Services International. Their proposal has now gone to Fresno (Cal.) Pacific University for further consideration and fundraising.

—TWU release

A New Delhi court sentenced one man to death and 12 to life in prison late Sept. for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in a mob attack January 1999. The killers set the Staines’s jeep on fire and watched the occupants burn; they were provoked, they said, by the Christians’ “corruption of tribal culture.” The 4-year case, with its several bizarre twists, has highlighted the difficulties Christians face in India.

—Evangelical Press News

“Worship wars” moving east? More than 400 Baptists of Eastern Europe met in Kiev, Ukraine late August for a “Baptists in Worship Conference,” sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance to revitalize Baptist worship worldwide. There was little disagreement on spiritual issues, but worship styles, praise choruses, and the use of guitar and drums provoked lively debate. Ukrainian Baptists have grown from 900 to 2,700 churches since 1989.

—Evangelical Press News

Medieval musical manuscripts, in a collection of 40 sheets and 5 books, were donated to Canadian Mennonite University and the Mennonite Heritage Centre Sept. 27 by Walter Loewen, founder of Yamaha Canada Music Ltd. One book of Gregorian chants with colour illuminations, nearly a metre by a metre, is about 500 years old. Loewen and his wife Elly began collecting in 1970 when a cancelled bullfight in Barcelona prompted a stroll that led into an antique store and their first manuscript purchase.

—Winnipeg Free Press

Prison Fellowship Ministries, working to reduce high recidivism in American prisons by “attacking the problem at the heart,” faced a challenge to one of its programs recently by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed a complaint that Christian groups were being given preference. A prison spokesperson countered that a variety of religious programming is offered and attendance is completely voluntary.

—Evangelical Press News

Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers (PK), resigned as head of the ministry to men Oct. 1 to spend more time with his family and care for his ill wife. PK says it has reached some 5 million men since its founding in 1990; its 2004 conference season will visit 17 cities with the theme “Uprising: The Revolution of a Man’s Soul.”

—Evangelical Press News

A modest proposal: a group of teenage girls in Tucson, Arizona has already collected more than 1300 signatures petitioning stores to carry a greater choice of clothing “that shows respect for the body.” Similar petitions across the United States have provoked several retailers to involve the protesters in fashion consulting or to stage a fashion show highlighting modest outfits for prom.

—Evangelical Press News

New CD for Christmas! Following upon the huge success of the lullabies CD, To Such as These, Calgary vocalist Kim Thiessen (left) and musicians Darryl Neustaedter Barg, John Guenter and Ben Regier have just released The Light Shines, featuring Christmas songs. This CD, as the previous, is a benefit project for Mennonite Central Committee’s Generations at Risk (GAR) program, which provides help to AIDS/HIV sufferers through the African Mennonite Church. To Such as These has already raised over $ 100,000 for GAR, selling more than 7,000 copies. The Light Shines, dedicated to Alana Fife and Hannah Showaker, two MCCers tragically killed in a flash flood in Indonesia this year, is available through MCC provincial offices, most Ten Thousand Village stores, some Thrift stores and the MCC website.