People & events

The “difficult decision” to open their church for a funeral that included a Catholic Mass has built significant bridges into the community, says Dennis Fast, pastor of Reedley (Calif.) MB Church. The family of Joe Fenton Lusk, 25, killed in a military training accident, requested the use of the facilities because their Catholic church was too small. They honoured church council requests that the rosary be said the night before, that Fast be involved in some way, and that the priest conduct the Mass using RMBC furnishings. “It was the right way to go,” Fast says.

—Christian Leader

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is inviting constituents to write a letter to their elected leaders to advocate for a peaceful international solution to the turmoil in the Darfur region of Sudan. A two-year-old conflict there has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and displaced more than 2 million people. A printable copy of the letter is available at MCC Sudan Appeal. The site includes address information for Canadian government officials.

—MCC News

Pro-life Christians are opposed to embryonic stem cell research because the “harvesting” of the stem cells requires the killing of the embryo, but Christian groups such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council have been touting breakthroughs in what is being called “ethical adult stem cell research.” One study, by Dr. Lee Martin of Johns Hopkins University, is using adult stem cells discovered in the nose region in research for the treatment of diseases like ALS.

—Evangelical Press News

A suspicious fire damaged the Mennonite Central Committee Thrift Shop in Mission, B.C. recently, and has forced the closure of the store for an undetermined time. The damage is devastating to staff and volunteers who worked hard to move to their new location less than a year ago. Last year, the MCC Mission Thrift Shop contributed more than $130,000 to the relief and development work of MCC worldwide.

—MCC B.C. release

Marisol Lopez, 21, is one of 21 students from Nicaraguan Anabaptist congregations who are attending university with scholarships from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). The students are often the first members of their families to do so. Each receives $31 Cdn monthly through MCC’s Global Family sponsorship program, which pays for books, food and transportation. In Nicaragua, students struggle to cover basic expenses, evident in a recent student strike to protest a bus fare increase of about 4 cents Cdn. Lopez is studying agricultural economics; she is a member of a Brethren in Christ church in her low-income Managua neighbourhood. A third of Nicaraguan adults cannot read.

—MCC News

Rick Warren’s Saddleback Valley Community Church celebrated its 25th anniversary April 17 by launching P.E.A.C.E., a plan to tackle five “giant problems” facing the world. The acronym stands for Plant churches, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, Educate the next generation. The congregation’s 2,600 small groups will start the movement by each adopting a village to implement the plan. P.E.A.C.E. will focus on Rwanda first.

—Christian Courier

A Mennonite Brethren congregation at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which lost its church to fire last June, has a new building and sense of hope, thanks to volunteers from other MB churches and financial help from an Anabaptist reciprocal insurance company. MutualAid eXchange has insurance programs but also ministries that lend support for the emotional and spiritual needs of others. The project also provided construction training for local people on one of the continent’s poorest reservations.

—Mennonite Weekly Review

A new guest policy for Mennonite Church Manitoba’s (MCM) three Camps with Meaning asks rental groups to respect the “vision, mission statement, purpose and general policies of MCM” rather than defining who will be excluded. MCM revisited the policy after its camps were blacklisted by the Winnipeg School Division for school trips. The school board, which has a strong public stance in support of homosexuality, blacklisted several camps after Camp Arnes refused to rent their facilities to a gay and lesbian choir.

—Canadian Mennonite

Canadian Bible Society (CBS) is planning a coast-to-coast bike ride for its upcoming centennial that will take participating cyclists across Canada July 2 to September 1. The ride honours the spirit of CBS colporteurs who used to travel from community to community offering Bibles to people who had no other means of obtaining them. It is hoped 60 cyclists will ride the entire tour, with others participating part-time.

—CBS release

More than 800 people listened by phone or on the Internet to an hour-long phone discussion April 12, on how to heal congregational divisions over opposing stances on war. The Mennonite Church USA-sponsored discussion looked at how the perceived culture of fear in the U.S. since 9/11 is affecting people in churches. John D. Roth, author of Choosing Against War, says the denomination has become divided on issues of peace. He recently urged Anabaptists to take a 5-year “sabbatical” from political involvement to give churches time to heal these divisions.

—Mennonite Weekly Review

“Acts: the Game” was teacher Gary Yamasaki’s creative response to the challenge of teaching the book of Acts to students at Columbia Bible College (CBC), Abbotsford. The PowerPoint game board shows a map with a starting line in Jerusalem and a finish line in Rome, with 60 spaces to navigate between them. Teams of 5 or 6 worked together to score points through pop quizzes based on daily readings, group quizzes, regular attendance and team challenges.

—CBC release

Trauma healing work sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee continues in Indonesia. Earlier, MCC consultants Karl and Evelyn Bartsch joined a team of Indonesia trauma experts to train some 83 people in trauma healing techniques in Java and Banda Aceh. Now MCC is providing some $376,190 Cdn for healing work in Nias and Aceh. Nias was hit hard by the tsunami, and also devastated by a March 28 earthquake. The project works directly with children and adults, and trains people to work with traumatized children through play therapy. More information, as well as children’s drawings of the tsunamia, is available at MCC Asia Earthquake Response.

—MCC News