Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 22
November 12, 2007
Making peace with the land
The state of Mennonite farming today
Five years after a special church conference met to examine issues facing Mennonite food producers and consumers, how are our farmers faring? In this feature report, Canadian Mennonite interviewed farmers across the country as well as going back to several people involved in that conference to ask what has changed since then. We also asked Cam Harder and Elaine Froese to write for us on these issues and report on how they were addressed at the recent J.J. Thiessen Lectures at Canadian Mennonite University. Ed.
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A few weeks ago, I visited the farm of Reg and Bev Stow, bean growers from Graysville, Man., to buy a bag of beans for our 100 Mile Diet (an initiative to limit consumption for 100 days to food that has been grown and produced within a 100-mile radius). I was not the first 100-miler to request some of their beans and the owners were delighted to market right from their bins to a local buyer. In the last five years, though, they went from processing beans for 30 growers to processing only their own crops. Free trade, they claim, “has pretty well shut us down and much of the Canadian food-processing industry.”
Southern Ontario dairy farmer Mark Erb, member of Steinmann Mennonite Church in Baden, Ont., sits down with his extended family every two weeks to talk about the issues, fears and dreams running their family-owned farm engenders. They do this to fend off the crises that have put too many of their neighbours under.
The Mennonite community was once a largely agrarian community, but today farmers represent a rapidly diminishing segment of our membership. What is happening to that group, to those whose agricultural roots are in the present instead of a generation or two removed, as with many of us?
The changing agricultural landscape
Just prior to the 2002 annual delegate sessions in Saskatoon, Mennonite Church Canada held a two-day conference at Osler (Sask.) Mennonite Church, on agriculture and farming issues entitled “Making Peace with the Land.” It was an opportunity for rural and urban people to come together and learn more about the rural situation, and it led delegates at the national church assembly to pass a motion instructing the MC Canada General Board to further pursue these issues. (See “Whatever happened to ‘Making Peace with the Land,’” page 6).
Has anything changed since then? Conversations with farmers across the country indicate that the issues continue to be myriad and complicated.
Stu Clark, senior policy advisor at Canadian Foodgrains Bank, says, “We are coming out of a period from 1999 to 2005 where we had the lowest prices in 70 years, since the Depression. All over the world grain was selling for less than cost.” As a result, people have been pushed off the land.
Recently, though, that downward spiral has begun to reverse in some sectors. New cereal crop prices, in particular, have strengthened. Clark credits this to two changes:
• An increase in meat consumption in China and India, resulting in the growth of feed lots and intensive meat production; and,
• A surge in bio-fuel production.
Rodney Wiens, 45, and a member of Herschel Ebenfeld Mennonite Church, farms 607 hectares near Herschel, Sask. He recalls, “2002 was one of the worst years. That’s the year I am going to be telling my grandchildren about. I had written off my entire crop by the beginning of July and, as a grain farmer, I basically shut down my farm because of drought.”
Out of a membership of about 150 at their church . . . only 10 are still involved in agriculture.
Rain came later that summer, which turned despair into hope for the following year. In 2003, he harvested a reasonable crop, but prices were low. When he harvested his biggest crop ever in 2005, it became one of the worst years for cash flow. “Nobody wanted it,” he says. “Piles of grain stood outside in the middle of fields, rotting. World markets were not there to ship the grain to.”
Wiens, too, has felt the momentum shift. “Because of world events, such as the drought in Australia, demand for wheat and cereal crops has outstripped supply for the last three or four years,” he says, noting, though, “The flip side is that it cost me more to put the crop in. Costs of fertilizer and diesel have, in some cases, almost doubled.”
Harold Penner, a member of Arnaud Mennonite Church, has a grain and oil seed farm with a small herd of beef cattle near Arnaud, Man. “I am more discouraged than five years ago. The treadmill is getting worse and we don’t know what the solution is,” he says.
He feels the weight of the issues with which rural farmers and communities struggle. “We are being forced into greater and greater efficiency, with the margins getting increasingly tighter, squeezing out smaller farmers,” he says. “We are forced to expand and to keep pace, but this is killing rural communities.”
Penner points out that Arnaud, like many farming communities across Canada, has been critically impacted. “We can barely get a hockey team together,” he says. “Our children have to go to cities. The quality of life in rural Canada has really deteriorated.”
Penner has taken on half-time work with Canadian Foodgrains Bank to supplement his farming income. Without it, he says, “we wouldn’t be able to sustain ourselves at this point,” adding, “I do not enjoy farming as much as I did in the ’70s and ’80s. We have no control over the input prices and sales, and I don’t see it changing much.”
In central Alberta, Lyle and Betty Brown have a livestock and feedlot operation that they are in the process of transferring to their daughter and son-in-law. Like Penner and Wiens, Brown reports that “the margins have continually gotten tighter [and] fuel and fertilizer costs have gotten out of proportion with grain prices. If you have a bumper crop it works, but otherwise it doesn’t meet expenses.” And with the rise in the loonie, they have lost any advantage they had in cattle sales.
Other issues facing farmers
As a farmer, Lyle Brown feels a sense of isolation. Out of a membership of about 150 at their church, Bergthal Mennonite in Didsbury, only 10 are still involved in agriculture. Many have retired off the farm. “There are not that many from the younger generation that are farming,” he says resignedly. “The only one is from our family.”
Having just turned 60, Brown is farming the land his grandfather homesteaded. Regarding the farming transition to the next generation, he says, “We need them as much as they need us. . . . In a way it is far easier to sell the farm, but the financial aspect is not the only thing. It is an honourable way to make a living.”
He faces other issues as well. “When I started in agriculture, even 25 years ago, there was no GM [genetically modified] canola, but now you have to go with GM canola to come out with the same margin,” he says. “You won’t stay in agriculture if you don’t go with it. Monsanto and other large corporations have such power. You can’t grow your own seed, and eventually this will be the case with other grains.”
Working on Sunday also presents issues for Brown. “We have to have so many [hectares] to survive and then you have the pressure to work on Sunday to get the harvest in,” he says. “This year we worked two Sundays. It’s our own struggle.”
Banding together
Mark Erb’s dairy farm has been in the family for generations, ever since it was Crown land. But increasingly he and his siblings are finding it hard to survive on their own, so he founded Gathering the Farm Community in Hope group several years ago, in an effort to pull farmers together to seek solutions.
“Farmers don’t know how to talk about these issues within their families,” Erb says. “There is a lack of trust, a fear of not being able to share our dreams. We keep putting it off until there is a crisis. Very often the crisis happens,” he adds, listing the outbreak of mad cow disease, inflation and dropping commodity prices as just three of many problems they have faced in the past generation.
“Who is there for us?” he asks. “It is very lonely.”
The litany of discouraging factors may be long, but Erb says, “if it wasn’t for the faith ingredient, we wouldn’t have made it.” Faith is central to the organization’s work, which has engaged churches, as well as politicians and the agriculture industry, for support. “Out of our deep pain and faith we have made some inroads. We hear each other’s stories. Families are learning to talk about their pain and also about their dreams. I have a tremendous passion for the land, but also for the family unit on the land,” says Erb.
“We desperately need interaction,” says Manitoba’s Harold Penner. “This is a societal issue, not just for farmers. We need to recognize that we need to change our lifestyles. Our society as a whole needs to address this, not just the farmers.”
Laura Rance, editor of Manitoba Cooperator, a provincial agriculture publication, and one of the speakers at the 2002 conference, says, “We are a long way from making peace with the land. Farmers understand our connection to the land and the broader environment, but as society becomes more urbanized there is less of a connection. We see the world as not able to sustain our lifestyle and so we come up with short term fix-its.”
Like the farmers across the country, she would argue that Canadians have to renew the conversation between rural and urban folks, and that the church has a critical role in these issues. “The church and church institutions are one of the few places that we can still transcend the rural/urban culture,” Rance says. “It can move across those boundaries. It can provide a stronger leadership role. We need to take a hard look at how we live. The process of renewal doesn’t need to be a process of denial.”
Whatever happened to ‘Making Peace with the Land’
In July 2002, a two-day conference, “Making Peace with the Land: A Country Mouse and a City Mouse Talk about the Pantry,” focused on Canada’s food system from a faith-based perspective. A number of speakers, along with about 300 other participants, gathered at Osler (Sask.) Mennonite Church to help begin what would hopefully be an ongoing dialogue.
The conference was planned by the Peace and Justice Office of Mennonite Church Canada after consulting with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Manitoba Agricultural Committee, the Mennonite Environmental Task Force and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. It was a response to the farm crisis and to the decision by the 2000 Lethbridge annual assembly to make agriculture and the food system a theme of the 2002 assembly.
As a result of the conference, Saskatoon church assembly delegates passed the following resolution: “Whereas food and the food system involve all of us, not only producers; whereas food is an important question not only for us, but for all people; whereas ‘Making Peace with the Land’ was strongly affirmed as a good beginning; and whereas there is need for faith-based initiative and leadership in these areas; be it resolved [that] the General Board of MC Canada find ongoing ways to encourage and facilitate reflection and action, and the creation of new models, about the production and distribution of food, with a view to strengthening community and well-being.”
However, things have changed since then. The national church’s Peace and Justice Office was closed, and peace and justice work is now handled by the Christian Formation Council. There is no longer an MCC Manitoba Agricultural Committee and no other provincial or national MCC programs are working on these issues other than through Canadian Foodgrains Bank, according to MCC Canada executive director Don Peters. The Mennonite Environmental Task Force no longer exists and, instead, MC Canada is involved with the Creation Care Network, a bi-national group that began in January 2006.
MC Canada general secretary Robert J. Suderman says that agriculture and food issues “have not been front and centre on our agenda,” noting, though, that “Creation Care has come out with a book that we helped to publish and we have two representatives on that network.”
Christian Formation Council executive secretary Dave Bergen acknowledges, “There has not been anything specifically that has come out of that [resolution] except the discussions this summer on creation care.”
This deeply frustrates Harold Penner, one of the organizers of the conference and a farmer from Arnaud, Man. “We pass a motion and no one has to deal with it. I don’t understand that,” he says of the lack of action.
“People remember that conference,” says Marilyn Houser Hamm, another organizer and member at Altona (Man.) Mennonite Church. “With the farming crisis several years ago we had a moment when we were pulled together, felt empowered, impassioned. Now we have to rekindle that passion.”
Canadian Foodgrains Bank senior policy advisor Stu Clark also points to the larger picture of how all of us live. “The fact that we refuse to reduce our consumption is hugely important,” he says. “Humans will do whatever we can to not change things.”
In the words of Arthur Wiens, a retired farmer from Herschel, Sask., and former pastor at Herschel Ebenfeld Mennonite Church, “The Bible is loaded with agricultural references. Maybe it is time for the church to sit up, take note and help us get on with this important work.”
Fragile vessels
Rural communities are loved by a God who has the power to raise them from the dead
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I spent a week with rural folks from around the world this past summer. It was invigorating. Their love for small places, open spaces, natural beauty and close community was infectious. It left me with lots of hope. I’ve spent a good deal of time the last few years helping rural communities work through struggles, but I am increasingly convinced that rural Canada has a strong future.
First, Canada’s rural population overall is slowly increasing. The baby boomers are beginning to retire and a growing number are interested in a lifestyle that is not defined by smog and concrete. For younger families, rural communities
continue to be a good place to raise children. In fact, the 2006 Government of Canada’s “The Well-being of Canada’s Young Children” report consistently found that young rural children had better emotional, social and, in some cases, physical development than their urban counterparts.
Second, almost all of Canada’s natural resources are located in rural areas. There is increasing demand for them as vast Asian populations industrialize. Resource-based communities have the opportunity, the experience and the responsibility to ensure that our national treasures are managed responsibly.
Third, rural communities are still Canada’s best source of spiritual life. They form people who understand responsibility to their neighbours. They export young people for whom faith is not a private personal preference, but a shared way of life. They disproportionately send out Christian leaders to serve churches in cities and towns in Canada and around the world. And rural congregations don’t easily forget what God has done through their ancestors because that history is engraved on the tombstones that surround their churches.
Finally, rural communities are loved by a God who has the power to raise them from the dead.
A dwindling vision
In spite of the hope, I am angry that there seems to be little vision for the future of Canada’s rural community in government chambers. Federal and provincial governments, exclusively headquartered in urban settings, have systematically chipped away at rural infrastructure that has taken decades to build. In Saskatchewan alone, agrologists and community development officers have been pulled out of rural communities. Post offices, grain elevators, rail service and schools have been closed in large numbers.
Life isn’t always easy in rural Canada, but it can be very good. And our churches can help make it so.
It reflects a deep prejudice. If all of the health care or educational institutions were suddenly ripped out of one of our cities, the outcry would be deafening. But simply because the numbers affected are smaller, legislators regard such damage in rural areas as acceptable.
Decision-makers often justify their actions by claiming that rural decline is inevitable, as if history travels in straight lines, which it doesn’t. In fact, there is nothing inevitable about the depopulation of a rural community. It has been the result of human decisions and it can be reversed.
Decision-makers also tend to operate with the hidden assumption that only the fittest—usually meaning powerful and numerous—have the right to survive. Even church leaders fall into this mindset. They often close churches when the number of worshippers drops below an arbitrary limit, rather than look for alternative ways to be church with small numbers.
God cares for rural communities
Ripping out the blood and bones of rural communities is offensive to me as a Christian because I am convinced of three things:
• God’s mission in the world is to build communities that reflect the life of the Trinity. In I Corinthians 15:28, Paul says that God ultimately intends to be “all in all.” The Christian experience of God is that of three divine persons in a deep unity. And it seems that God wants to extend that community to us. In John 17:21 Jesus prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
If this is so, then God’s mission—and, by extension, the church’s mission—is not simply to rescue individual souls, but to build healthy communities. God saves us for community. God saves us by the healing, faith-building work of commu-nities, in communities.
• Communities are loved by God as much as individual people are. Because communities are God’s creation and reflect God’s own communal nature, God loves them. God places a high value on them. Their worth is not determined by their numbers or economic power.
• Communities live by the grace of God, who is much greater than market or demographic trends. For that reason their future is not bound to the past. Past failures and losses, or present weakness and bondage to greater powers, do not determine a community’s future. In fact, Paul suggests in I Corinthians 1 and 2 that the Spirit tends to work most mightily through the weak. God’s reason is simple: Entrusting the mission to fragile vessels—as many rural communities have become—makes it clear to the world that when something really good is done, God has been at work.
A shared responsibility
That being said, our churches have a responsibility to share this hope with their communities. They are called to help them creatively imagine how to re-invent themselves and rebuild the infrastructure they need to be healthy and to attract newcomers.
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Unfortunately, it’s easy for rural congregations to fall into survival mode. They may no longer recognize the wonderful resources that the Spirit brings—and they can bring—to God’s community-building enterprise. Some look back with longing on the happy days of the 1950s and ’60s, when boomer youths filled their pews. They long to be young again, but they feel old and impoverished, not realizing there are many things that they can do better because they are small—like caring for members, celebrating life passages, training leaders and so on.
Erwin McManus, in An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God had in Mind, notes that there is no promise in the Bible that ensures the survival of churches. Their purpose is to witness to and serve their communities. “Witness,” he points out, is the same word as “martyr” in New Testament Greek: “Christian families, tribes and communities have been persecuted and brutally killed for their faith. They didn’t survive. Yet they left a witness. The purpose of the church cannot be to survive or even to thrive, but to serve. And sometimes servants die in the process.”
Perhaps then, the task of rural Christian leadership is to lead our churches out of palliative care and back into the world. Strong enough or not, we are called to serve as long as God gives us life. And I know that in the power of God’s Spirit, that service will be a public challenge to the forces that are disman-tling rural life.
Gifts to the community
Let me briefly suggest three gifts small rural congregations can bring to their communities:
• Hope. Churches have a powerful narrative, a word of hope and blessing that challenges survival-of-the-fittest and inevitability thinking. Our community might be small but, we have a big God.
• Relationship-building tools. Churches are places where people from various walks of life can get to know each other and build trust. Churches have resources for reconciliation and forgiveness. They are safe, neutral spaces to talk about important community issues, where quiet voices can be lifted up.
• Healing. Churches offer rituals for healing community hurts and dealing with crises. Confidential care, prayer, the gracious presence of God and acceptance in the face of shame are what we major in.
Strangers in their own land
Lutheran professor explores food and faith at CMU’s J.J. Thiessen Lectures
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If people knew how to value the land and how hard it is to grow food on it, farming would not be the most fragile sector of today’s economy.
That was one of the messages shared by Ellen Davis, professor of Bible and practical theology at Duke Divinity School, at the annual J.J. Thiessen Lectures at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg last month.
Speaking to the theme, “Live long on the land: Food and farming in biblical perspective,” Davis stated that “from an Old Testament perspective, the health of the land is the best index of the health or sickness of our covenant relationship with God.” Looking at North American culture’s violent relationship to the earth, she suggested they are failing to take this covenant seriously.
By focusing particularly on agricultural practices in North America, Davis revealed the diseased state of the environment through a biblical lens. She compared the laments of prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah to the writings of contemporary environmentalists like Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, people who are working at “meeting the expectations of the land,” suggesting that they believe the way people treat the land has global, even cosmic, consequences.
The Old Testament writers, she said, speak to the ingrained immoral habits of society both then and now. In North America, people have access to “the cheapest food in human history,” she noted, but at what cost?
Among the costs she listed was the decline of traditional family farms, which have been taken over by agribusinesses all over North America. Davis compared modern farmers to Jeremiah and his fellow exiles: they are strangers in their own land.
[T]he land people inhabit is not ‘real estate, but a fellow creature that should expect something from us.’
But, she said, the Old Testament offers a solution—if people realize that the mutual destruction between creatures and the environment is a product of a severed relationship with God. From an agrarian perspective, the land people inhabit is not “real estate, but a fellow creature that should expect something from us,” she said. Quoting Wendell Berry, Davis said that “economies begin to lie when they assign a fixed value to the land.”
Davis noted that the temptation to take ownership of creation begins in Genesis, where Eve’s first sin was “an eating violation.” Internal to Eve’s thinking, she said, was the idea that “consumption leads to enlightenment.” In eating from the forbidden tree, Eve took food and ate without tending the ground or remembering that God’s gifts carry with them a special obligation.
In her closing lecture, Davis traced the relationship between a modern understanding of work and the current state of the earth’s environment. The agricultural industry “has convinced many that food production is a simple matter,” she said, noting that Genesis says that eating adequately and responsibly outside of Eden will be hard work. Drawing on the image of the “valorous woman” from Proverbs 31:10-31, Davis explained that biblical wisdom is never abstract from practice. Only through hard work and ongoing interaction with creation will people begin to see the world properly, she said.
She added that people could address issues related to the land by building up local communities and home-based economies, and by “learning from the land in all our particular places.” University staff and students can keep this in mind by refusing the tendency to reduce—or remove—theology from the sciences or separate ecology from agriculture. By tending to the needs of the land, she said people can begin to see how everything we receive from God is interconnected.
Communicate, connect, celebrate
The three Cs of ministering to farm families
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Communicate love, hope and support in practical ways to farm families. Connect with agricultural issues and meet to pray, listen and talk about practical supports for farm families. Celebrate with an attitude of gratitude for the people who put food on your table, toiling and taking risks so we all can enjoy daily bread.
Communicate, connect, celebrate. These three words are all people have to grasp and act on in order to support their brothers and sisters who till the soil, according to Dr. Nikki Gerrard, a Saskatoon-based psychologist. Her study, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger!” is based on decades of studying the people who daily are making peace with the land.
If a farmer is forced to let go of the farm, who is he?
My passion as a farmer and farm family business coach is to encourage families to communicate, connect and celebrate. I want farmers bounding back from the bumps of life to be resilient and thrive, not just strive to survive. Farmers are an independent entrepreneurial lot who are hesitant to ask for help. When they do ask, people should recognize the courage it took them. There are many underlying fears of failure: disappointing the legacy of the past farming generations and role confusion among them. If a farmer is forced to let go of the farm, who is he?
How to help
Here are practical ways to minister to our farm families:
• Respect: Don’t judge farmers as simple-minded plaid-clad folks. They take huge risks every day to put food on our tables here in Canada and around the world. Communicate your respect and your care for farmers through the media, by writing letters to the editor or calling in to talk shows. Europeans revere farmers because they still remember what it was like to go hungry.
• Encourage: Connect with words of encouragement. If you see a media report about a farm family, track them down on canada411.ca and send them some words of encouragement and pray for them.
• Visit: Visit us on our farms. One of the signs of high stress is farm families pulling back into more isolation. Take care to see who is showing up in your circle of community, and find out if or why the farm families have withdrawn from fellowship. You can simply be a caring church member who wants to share coffee and courageous conversation. Create support groups for people to voice their pain and frustration. The Gathering the Farm Community in Hope group connected with Cassel Mennonite Church and other churches near Tavistock, Ont. (see page 6) has reached out to encourage farmers for years now with annual gatherings. Have you ever been to a rural fair or a small town reunion? Come visit!
• Profitable returns: Don’t rejoice in our high Canadian dollar; that really hurts our export markets. We spend less than 10 percent of our disposable income on food, and the farmer gets the smallest portion of our food dollar. Each sector of the industry has cycles of highs and lows. The cattle hog producers are really struggling with high input costs and low returns right now. Don’t be fooled by the announcements of large government payments to farmers; on a per-farm basis, it’s not a cure-all for the farm financial crunch.
• Financial awareness: We need to take the shame out of rural bankruptcy. The church family needs to recognize feelings of hopelessness, depression, anger and shame, watching that people don’t withdraw into themselves. As a farm debt mediator, I am familiar with the courage it takes for a farmer to admit that his or her debt has become a monster. The large expensive equipment used can be the brunt of jokes, but the truth that there is no cash flow is a sad reality for many. We don’t appreciate the paycheque mentality or jokes about double overtime. There are some new business models appearing on the Prairies whereby urban-based partners put venture capital into the farm corporation. The use of the term “factory farm” is a hurtful misnomer for larger family farm corporations.
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• Pray and read the Bible: Thank God for the daily bread and the rich resources of this awesome peaceful country we are privileged to live in. Read the Psalms as your praise for the wonderful way God provides for you, and notice the agricultural metaphors throughout the Bible: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously” (II Corinthians 9:6), or “How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (I Corinthians 15:36).
• Counselling: Help is needed for those struggling with past issues that are affecting their mental health. Unfortunately, two out of three people do not seek treatment for mental health issues. In North Dakota, Dr. Sean Brotherson’s study discovered that 51 percent of that state’s farmers would not seek out mental health professionals. Pride is a huge factor, as is the culture of independence. Some think, “I should be able to fix things by myself.” Unfortunately, people are a lot more complex than machines. God needs to be part of the healing also.
• Appreciate the weather: Weather is a really big deal to rural folks; we measure our rain, and pray for swathed crops to stay dry. It was heartening to receive calls from urban friends in Toronto who wanted to know how we were coping during the flood of l997, which drew lots of media attention. The same thing happened with a devastating hailstorm in l994 and tornados in 2007.
• Unique culture: Value the fact that farmers are very special people, comprising only 2 percent of the Canadian population.
• Transition issues: The average age of a farmer in Canada today is 52. There is a huge backlog of farmers in their late 60s and 70s who are still hanging on to the founder’s role, and not transitioning ownership and management. This means that many families will be experiencing huge change in the next 10 years. There are not enough young people embrac-ing farming, although the ones who are passionate about agriculture are the best role models around. We need to see more of this commitment from the under-35 crowd.
• Buy local: You’ve heard about the 100 Mile Diet, and eating locally grown foods. I smile when I realize that as a farm kid, and now farm woman, I’ve eaten local for more than 50 years. Buying food products from local farm families is another way to develop relationships and boost farm gate receipts. Also encourage the food manager at your grocery store to do more to buy from local food suppliers.
• Recognize overload: Many farmers work 80- to 100-hour weeks and more than 50 percent of farm women have off-farm income, making them susceptible to burn-out. These women are extremely busy managing the home, family and off-farm job, while contributing to the farm operation. There is a huge degree of tiredness among rural woman who commute long distances to perform tasks. The distance factor can be shortened with caring phone calls, e-mails and words of encouragement.
There are many farm families who would rejoice if they knew urbanites really wanted to communicate, connect and celebrate God’s goodness with them. Find contacts and publications to help you understand how you can help bring about peace on the land. Have an attitude of gratitude, and bless the food you eat with a thankful heart. Words kindly spoken are “like apples of gold in settings of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). What are you waiting for? We won’t be giving you a formal city-like invitation. Use your phone, call us, and then drop in.
For Discussion
1. What type of farming is most predominant in your geographical area? How has it changed over the past 20 years? What challenges do your rural neighbours face?
2. How connected are urban and non-farming Mennonites to the issues faced by farmers? Do urban Canadians play a role in the challenges farmers face? Is there anything the larger Mennonite Church should do?
3. Cam Harder sees much hope for rural Canada. Do you share his sense of hope? What government policies would you like to see benefit rural areas?
4. How important is the role of the church in a rural community? How do you know when it’s time for a small church to close its doors?
5. Which of Elaine Froese’s suggestions do you believe are most helpful to farm families? Why?