“Like all true believers, he was deeply skeptical,” writes Malcolm Muggeridge in tribute to Blaise Pascal (The End of Christendom).
James Toews
James Toews
James Toews is senior pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
I heard the bells on Christmas day
by James ToewsFew phrases echo as persistently through the Christmas season as the song of the angels with its blessing of peace in a dark and troubled world. Two thousand years ago, …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Don’t you wish it were true?
by James ToewsI just realized that most of my music is purchased at truck stops. There’s something about settling in for a long drive that brings out a craving for musical nostalgia.
On the one hand, Celebration 2010 was about rediscovering that we are family. I left humming, “We are fam-i-ly…”
It wasn’t long after arriving at Celebration 2010 that I felt like one of the blind men in the famous Indian parable inserted into my childhood brain by a 19th-century …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Our extraordinarily ordinary age
by James ToewsWe are seduced by the language of the “superlative degree.” Our own noisy authorities know that this gets our attention, and so it is a rare social commentary that fails …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Taking on Mars Hill, again
by James ToewsAs a climbing challenge, Mars Hill doesn’t look like much. It’s a rough stone bump in Athens and even has an ancient set of stairs carved into its side.
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Bringing light to the valley of shadows
by James ToewsThere is nothing like a newborn to light up a room – and we entered with twins. Four months old and in all their identical glory. With three children of …
You’d be hard pressed to find more contrasting views of the same subject than Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen and The Naked Anabaptist by Stuart Murray.
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Mennonite Disaster Service – Very special good neighbours
by James ToewsThe picture was in an old album of photographs laid out on the table in the church foyer at the MDS all-unit meeting in Saskatoon. Pictures from the early years …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Of foot-washing fountains and a drink of water
by James ToewsHe was still wandering through the world for the first time. As a matter of fact, at 16 months, even the tricky business of maintaining his balance while perched on …
The Wisdom of Crowds. It’s a great title for the display racks on the mega-bookstores, a brassy counterintuitive challenge that touches the perfect raw nerve of the crowds milling past.
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Sustaining the mighty oaks
by James ToewsLord Nelson is known as Britain’s greatest naval commander. His victories over the French and Spanish in the late 18th and early 19th centuries fueled the motto: “Britannia rules the …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
“What is my purpose?”
by James ToewsThey had been three good days of sitting with the brothers and sisters of our conference and wrestling together about the language of our common faith. How do we confess …
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
A mind for the poor, revisted: Caritas In Veritate
by James Toews“Caritas in veritate [charity in truth] is the principle around which the Church’s social doctrine turns…” writes Pope Benedict XVI. The title of this, his most recent encyclical, is taken …