Advent issue of The Mennonite features cover story on Mary
For Advent this year, the cover story for the December issue of The Mennonite asks how Mennonites should think of Mary as “model and mother.” A related article reflects on Mary’s Magnificat, and two poems portray the role of Joseph and Elizabeth in the drama of Jesus’ birth. Another article, by Bridgefolk board member Darrin Snyder Belousek, recounts his story of returning to faith through friendship with Roman Catholics. The Mennonite is the official denominational magazine of Mennonite Church USA.
Click here to access the December issue of The Mennonite.
Herald Press devotional named “best of best”
by Steve Shenk
Mennonite Church Canada/MennoMedia joint release
WATERLOO, Ont. and HARRISONBURG, Va.—A Herald Press devotional book has been selected as Worship Leader magazine’s “best of the best” in the team devotionals category for 2011. The magazine published the winners list in its Oct. 7 issue.
The devotional is Take Our Moments and Our Days, Volume 2, published in 2010.
Worship Leader’s annual guide for the world of worship includes everything from the best music resources to the ultimate software, visual and presentation technology, worship training, musical instruments, apps, sound and recording equipment, books and devotionals to the leading products in lighting, screens, and projectors.
“The special annual issue has evolved from a general buyer’s guide and bonus issue to one of the year’s central issues for Worship Leader—and the most back-ordered,” said Daniele Kimes, vice president for sales and marketing.
Take Our Moments and Our Days, Volume 2 was compiled by Paul Boers, Barbara Nelson Gingerich, Eleanor Kreider, John Rempel, and Mary Schertz. It is subtitled An Anabaptist Prayer Book, Advent through Pentecost. The thick, hard-cover book is available for $40 in Canada and $34.99 in the U.S.
The devotional can be purchased at www.MennoMedia.org or 800-631-6535 (Canada) and 800-245-7894 (U.S).
Herald Press is the book imprint of MennoMedia, a ministry of Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA
Latest issue of Vision on theme of baptism
The latest issue of Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology is dedicated to the theme of baptism. Vision is published at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana and Canadian Mennonite University in Manitoba, and is edited by Bridgefolk board member Mary Schertz.
The theme of baptism is timely given that representatives of worldwide bodies of Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans will soon be launching a trilateral dialogue on the theme.
Information and two sample articles from the issue are available at http://www.mennovision.org/Volume12-2.htm. One of the two sample articles, “Cultivating a congregational climate of discernment,” is by Bridgefolk co-chair Marlene Kropf.
“In One Voice” (poem)
by Lois Kauffman
The monks at Saint John’s pray the hours with one voice
A difficult task for the untrained and the hurried
The monks at Saint John’s pause between lines
Between stanzas
Between prayers
They speak together
Speak to the unseen
The silence gives space
The space is prayer
Prayer happens Read more
Uncovering ancient rhythms of daily prayer
Day by Day These Things We Pray
WATERLOO, Ont. and SCOTTDALE, Pa. (Herald Press)— When he was a young adult, Arthur Boers’ 17 year-old sister died of leukemia. Torn by grief and unable to understand how God could allow such a terrible thing, he found himself unable to pray.
“At times I had nothing to say to God or did not know how to voice my prayers,” says Boers, author of the new Herald Press book Day by Day These Things We Pray: Uncovering Ancient Rhythms of Prayer.
“Sometimes I could think of things that I wanted to tell God, but was not sure whether they were legitimate or blasphemous,” he says. “So I clamped my mouth and my mind shut when thoughts turned toward God.”
Then a friend introduced him to the practice of using a prayer book for daily prayers.
“I was comforted because that volume gave me words to pray,” he says. “It helped me voice laments and also encouraged me to put my situation into a wider context. Slowly I learned to pray again.”
Today Boers wants to help others who are struggling with prayer find ways to connect with God though the use of set prayers and prayer books. Read more
Bridgefolk 2011 to explore hospitality, forgiveness, common worship
News release
MCC Welcoming Place
Akron, PA (Bridgefolk) – Mennonites and Catholics will join together this summer in prayer and friendship at the tenth annual Bridgefolk summer conference. Entitled “Practices for our Life Together in Christ,” the 2011 summer conference will take place August 4-7 in Akron, Pennsylvania, and focus on the practices of hospitality, forgiveness, and common worship.
This summer’s conference will be the second in a series of summer conferences focusing on nine “key practices” of Bridgefolk. Over the course of three years, Bridgefolk conferences are exploring spiritual practices that sustain the active Christian lives of both Catholics and Mennonites. Mennonite Central Committee’s Welcoming Place will host the gathering. Read more
Basilica website at the University of Notre Dame notes Mennonite visitors
The website for the Basilica at the University of Notre Dame now includes this tidbit:
Mennonites come to pray before the relics of St. Marcellus, whom they honor because he gave his life for refusing to serve in the Roman army.
See http://basilica.nd.edu/museums-and-tours
Receiving grace through countercultural footwashing
By Brian Miller
Mennonite Weekly Review
April 21, 2011
There’s no way around it — washing someone’s feet can be a bit awkward, especially if you are newer to this practice. In a day of vibey church cafes and artsy gathering spaces with sofas and technological whatsits, in a day when every attempt is made to make church appealing to the “spiritual but not religious,” in this day, we gather once again to practice footwashing.
But why? What compels us to continue this practice? Read more
Praying the Bridgefolk prayer – 10 years and counting
Ten years ago this week, a small group of original Bridgefolk participants and leaders met together to talk, pray and discern. How should we follow through on our initial meeting in Pennsylvania in 1999? What kind of community are we becoming? How will participants know if they are “members?” Should we have a common discipline of prayer, the way religious orders do? What will bind our life together when we depart? It would be good to at least have a common prayer that would resonate equally with Mennonites and Catholics, they decided, but what might that be?
In the middle of the night, one of Bridgefolk’s co-founders found the following prayer taking shape, got up, and wrote it down. When he shared it with the others the next day, the group embraced it as a simple answer to many of our questions:
- If someone can pray this prayer with all their heart, he or she is Bridgefolk.
- Our rule would be to pray this prayer daily, and live accordingly.
On this 10th anniversary of the Bridgefolk prayer, therefore, we invite you to pray our common prayer today, to make or renew your commitment to pray it daily, and to live out the groanings we share for a Church of unity, nonviolence, and faithfulness to our Lord Jesus Christ. Read more
