February 2013

Overview of February print edition

What would draw more than 100 youth from B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan to Hepburn, Sask., in the middle of winter to talk about giving up control of their lives?…

October Baby
In this film inspired by the story of abortion survivor Gianna Jessen, college freshman Hannah, after discovering her physical and emotional problems stem from her entry into the world through a failed abortion, embarks on a road trip to find her birth mother, and herself…

Furious Love Wanderlust Productions 2010 95 minutes “Jesus loves witches. The problem is sometimes we don’t.” Furious Love is a documentary about miracles, the kind that happen when we pray…

Trade of Innocents writer/director: Christopher Bessette 91 minutes It’s just a movie. I had to keep telling myself that as I watched this thriller about prepubescent girls forced into prostitution.…

What You Get at Home
Author: Dora Dueck
When your last book wins Manitoba Book of the Year, your next work faces significant performance pressure; Dueck’s What You Get at Home lives up to it…

Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation
Authors: Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken
Anyone who has done home renovations knows it’s a messy, disruptive, time-consuming, and often costly process. But, done right, renovation can transform a space into something glorious. Authors Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken tip their hats to Christian thinker and writer Dallas Willard’s use of this metaphor (in Renovation of the Heart) and apply it to their own church in Renovation of the Church. These co-pastors tell the story of the spiritual renovation that occurred at Oaks Hills Church, Folsom, Cal.

Red Quarter Moon: A Search for Family in the Shadow of Stalin
Author: Anne Konrad
Part memoir, part history, and part historiography, Red Quarter Moon details Anne Konrad’s search for Mennonite relatives who remained in Russia through the tumultuous years of revolution, civil war, as well as the rise and fall of the USSR. Her own parents fled in 1929; the author undertakes to find out what happened to family members who remained and subsequently disappeared or were cut off from contact with relatives abroad.

Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems
Author: Rhoda Janzen
Those who pick up Rhoda Janzen’s latest memoir will undoubtedly find the book as warm and funny as the title sounds. It’s written in the same irreverent, conversational style as her previous bestseller, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Readers with strong denominational roots will once again find themselves inwardly howling (or wincing!) at the frequent, nostalgic references. However, it would be a mistake to read too much personal insecurity into the “fat” question.

Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament
Author: Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld
It’s easy to find support for claims that the New Testament endorses violence. Within Mennonite communities, for example, people have suffered abuse, believing that New Testament Scripture requires passive submission, unqualified forgiveness, and compliant obedience. Tom Yoder Neufeld acknowledges that New Testament vocabulary, images, and metaphors can “create space for violence, validating, even enshrining violence,” yet argues that the presence of such language is intended to “subvert and finally ‘murder’ violence.”

Transforming taste through love
Discerning good music is a hornet’s nest if there ever was one. We often declare what we like as good, tying its value to our taste. This is not unreasonable; like attracts like. We call a restaurant good if it produces quality food with flavours we appreciate. Good friends return our affection for them. Why shouldn’t good music be joined together with our taste?

Introducing David Gibson
Changes for Gil Dueck and Rick McCorkindale
Farewell to Paul McIlwraith

Haiti Almost three years after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) continues to address long-term needs for housing and sustainable livelihoods. Housing was in short supply even…

Jordan, Ont. “Once, you and I were the mission,” said New Hope worship pastor, Mandy Kasper at the ONMB special meeting Nov. 15. “Someone else went out and brought us…

Altona, Man. At a Brotherhood meeting in Altona, Man., last November, the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church decided to withdraw as one of the member churches of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). The…