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Who are the leaders who’ve shaped us?

In 2010, Mennonite Brethren worldwide  mark a century and a half since their beginnings in a small village in what is now Ukraine. The year also marks the centennial of the MB conference in Canada.

In late June 1910, at a meeting in Herbert, Sask., what was known for decades as the Northern District of Mennonite Brethren came together for the first time as a Canadian group of churches. Winkler MB Church and a small starting group in Winnipeg soon joined – and the Canadian Mennonite Brethren fellowship of churches began its sturdy movement to what we see today.

To mark these 150 years, Kindred Productions is publishing Leaders Who Shaped Us, biographies of 25 men and women who have deeply influenced as well as reflected what Mennonite Brethren in Canada are today. Their spiritual DNA is all over us, whether we know of them or not.

The biographies go back to the very beginnings, to people like David Dyck, one of the first to come to Manitoba to witness to salvation in Christ and renewal. He later became a church planter in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the first moderator.

The book includes potato king and Sunday school promoter Abram A. Kroeker, Bible scholar David Ewert, gifted preacher/college teacher/university president Frank C. Peters, and fathers of church growth for Canadian MBs, G.W. Peters, Herb Neufeld, and Nick Dyck.

And it has a number of women, including trailblazing speaker and prolific author Katie Funk Wiebe, who opened the way for acceptance of women in ministry, and missionary nurse Katy Penner, who created a nursing program for the Congo at the government’s invitation.

The 25 biographies are authored by many of the best-known MB writers, including Dora Dueck, Rudy Wiebe, Sarah Klassen, Ingrid Koss, Vic Froese, James Toews, Wally Kroeker, and Dan Unrau.

The book is scheduled for release in early spring and will greatly enrich our understanding of who we are. Former MB Herald editor and founder of ChristianWeek, Harold Jantz is the book’s editor, and contributes a half dozen biographies. Contact Kindred Productions (www.kindredproductions.com) to obtain copies at a pre-publication price.

—Kindred Productions

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