Director appointed for Centre for MB Studies

Discipleship Ministries of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches is pleased to announce the appointment of Ken Reddig as director of the Centre for MB Studies, effective August 1. Reddig will fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Heinrich Loewen in June 2004.

The Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies serves the MB Conference in collecting and preserving historical records, developing and maintaining special collections, as well as assisting individuals engaged in research and writing and congregations, institutions and other groups in special celebrations of commemoration.

Most recently Reddig served with Mennonite Central Committee Canada in the role of major gifts/planned giving coordinator. He also has extensive experience in the area of history and archival work, having previously served as the Centre’s director, 1979–1990. He also spent numerous years with the Provincial Archives of Manitoba and the Mennonite Heritage Centre.

He has a BA from Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kan. as well as an MDiv from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., and an MA in Canadian History from the University of Manitoba.

Reddig currently serves as chair of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada, chair of the Jewish–Mennonite–Ukrainian Conference Committee and as member of the Mennonite Studies Advisory Council at the University of Winnipeg.

He has a passion for the Centre. Reddig recently wrote about one aspect of this: “The goal is to move from my story to our story. We need to help congregations incorporate the faith stories of their members into the corporate culture of church and conference life . . . While I am of Lutheran/EMC/MB/1870s extraction, I have incorporated the stories of the 1920s and 1940s immigrants into my self-understanding. How did that happen? In large part it happened because I kept hearing those stories . . .

“They became part of the fabric of our church life. Just so the church needs to hear the stories of the Chinese, the Laotian, the Vietnamese, the Latin Americans, the Africans whose stories of faith and resilience in times of war, disaster and triumph are now part of who I am as a Christian in a Mennonite Brethren church somewhere in Canada. Their story is now our story. Soon it will be my story, the story of my church.”

—Cam Rowland, Discipleship Ministries