Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 21
October 29, 2007


Focus on Books and Resources

A debt repayment milestone

Ron Rempel

On Aug. 2, Mennonite Publishing Network (MPN) made the final payment on long-term debt which stood at $5.1 million five years earlier. The debt is now paid!

With principal and interest, the total payout for debt over the past five years has been around $6 million—20 percent from donations, 27 percent from operational earnings and 53 percent from the sale of bookstore assets.

When the final payment was wired, a conference leader sent this note: “What a tremendous accomplishment. . . . I admit that I did not think it possible.” This comment provides a small glimpse into the journey that ended in this debt repayment milestone. The journey continues in the ongoing challenge of nurturing a robust and financially viable publishing ministry.

The credit for this significant accomplishment goes to many people. Thank you to the denominational leaders who formed a “publishing transformation team” to set overall direction, and initiated a variety of emergency measures back in 2001-02 to keep the publishing program from sliding into insolvency. Invoking the long tradition of mutual aid, they called for a “barn-raising campaign” to help repay the debt.

I was still editor of Canadian Mennonite, and I expressed editorial concern about encumbering the church with these loans.

Further, on behalf of the wider church, they took a considerable risk in backing several large loans used to consolidate debt and repay debenture notes. At the time the loans were announced, I was still editor of Canadian Mennonite, and I expressed editorial concern about encumbering the church with these loans.

Thank you to the many congregations and individuals that contributed to the campaign in 2002-03 and that have continued to donate since then. Will donations still be needed now that long-term debt has been repaid? Yes. The current business plan calls for 5 to 6 percent of revenue—about $200,000 in the current year—to come from donations to the Resource Development Fund. The fund helps pay for the development cost of core church resources that do not fully pay their own way.

Thank you to interim executive directors who implemented new directions, and to publishing and bookstore staff who remained resilient in a time of painful restructuring. The fact that operational earnings accounted for 27 percent of overall debt repayment speaks for itself. Amidst all the turmoil of change, staff continued to serve with distinction and creativity both in the stores and in publishing.

Thank you to congregations and individuals that are buying curricula, periodicals and books produced by MPN. Unlike some other programs of the church that depend almost solely on donations, the publishing program is funded primarily by sales. Many of our books and other resources sell beyond our denomination. However, the primary test of whether we are doing our job is whether our own churches are buying what we publish.

Overall, it’s exciting to see the strong sales of so many MPN materials. For example, we were pleased at the enthusiastic response and higher-than-expected sales at the MC Canada assembly in Abbotsford, B.C. Similar display and sale venues at area church meetings have been well received.

One challenge we face is how to produce Sunday school curricula in an increasingly diverse church with a declining Sunday school attendance. For example, when the new Gather ’Round curriculum was released in the fall of 2006, the percentage of churches ordering the material was slightly lower than when the previous curriculum was released in the early 1990s. Along with other denominational publishers, we are trying to learn what we can do, and what the church can do, to reverse the trend. Historically, strong curriculum sales have been one cornerstone of a viable publishing program.

Finally, thanks be to God for the publishing mission entrusted to us, and for grace and strength to do what was needed in recent years. In the more than 100 years of publishing in our denomination, the past five years have not been the first time that our church has worked its way out of debt. May God grant us wisdom as we apply our best business skills to the mission of publishing resources “that equip the church to experience and share the gospel of Jesus Christ from an Anabaptist perspective.”

Ron Rempel is executive director of Mennonite Publishing Network, the publishing agency of Mennonite Church Canada and MC USA.

Chrysalis Crucible

Street evangelism fallout the focus of new Wayne Northey novel

By Amy Dueckman

B.C. Correspondent

ABBOTSFORD, B.C.

Author Wayne Northey holds a copy of his first novel, Chrysalis Crucible, based on his experiences as a street evangelist in Europe during the Vietnam War years.

For Wayne Northey, the experience of street evangelism and handing out Christian literature in Germany in the early 1970s left an indelible impression. So when he tried his hand at writing a novel, the subject matter came naturally.

Chrysalis Crucible, just published by Fresh Wind Press, tells the fictional story of Andy Norton, an idealistic young Canadian fresh out of university who goes to Europe to evangelize during the height of the Vietnam War. But the experience will change him, becoming a crucible that forces him to re-evaluate virtually everything he believes.

The character of Andy, according to Northey, is good at argument and apologetics, and is confident in his language skills: “He goes over self-assured and then cracks start to appear. His Christian faith was about certainty and giving answers, then he discovers questions [that are] simply overwhelming.”

Today a member of Langley (B.C.) Mennonite Fellowship, Northey grew up in the Plymouth Brethren denomination. After his own university graduation he joined a group of short-term missionaries in West Berlin through Literature Crusades. He experienced first-hand what promoting a formulaic approach to Christian evangelism can do to a person. Of the 12 in his original group, he says only seven remained to the end of the two-year term; five left early in varying states of “disarray.” In writing the novel, Northey says, “I felt I needed to come to terms with the fallout of that experience.”

As co-director of the Abbotsford-based Christian restorative justice organization M2/W2, Northey is firmly dedicated to the way of peace, and he hopes the theme of violence/non-violence comes through clearly in Chrysalis Crucible. “Set in the Vietnam War years, the novel speaks to anytime years, including War on Terror years,” explains Northey. “The present should be lived out according to the already impinging, but not yet fully come, peaceable kingdom.”

Despite the inner personal conflicts he experienced that are the basis for the novel, Northey says, “I didn’t want the book to be bitter and angry. This is a coming-of-age novel, a catharsis story. It’s a novel full of questions and question marks; it’s not an easy book about faith.”

To order Chrysalis Crucible, visit chrysaliscrucible.blogspot.com.

Fall 2007 Listing of Books&Resources

Theology, Spirituality

Beyond the Law: Living the Sermon on the Mount. Philip K. Clemens. Herald Press, 2007, 223 pages.

Clemens reflects on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and what it means for Christians today. Discussion questions are included for each of the 12 chapters.

Christ in our Midst: Incarnation, Church and Discipleship in the Theology of Pilgram Marpeck. Neal Blough. Pandora Press, 2007, 275 pages.

Blough, director of the Mennonite Centre in Paris and professor of church history, has translated and updated his dissertation on Marpeck.

Creed and Conscience: Essays in Honour of A. James Reimer. Jeremy M. Bergen, Paul G. Doerksen, Karl Koop, eds. Pandora Press, 2007, 301 pages.

The essays in this collection, written by friends and colleagues of Jim Reimer, show the wide range of theological issues that he is enthusiastic about discussing.

Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope. Brian D. McLaren. Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2007, 362 pages.

McLaren declares that Christianity cannot only focus on spiritual needs; it must deal with economic injustice and take Jesus’ words about peace seriously.

Forgiveness: A Legacy of the West Nickel Mines Amish School. John L. Ruth. Herald Press, 2007, 152 pages.

In this little book, Ruth gives an inside perspective on the Amish response to the shooting at West Nickel Mines. (See excerpt on page 25. Ed.)

Jim and Casper go to Church: Frank Conversations About Faith, Churches and Well-Meaning Christians. Jim Henderson and Matt Casper. Tyndale House Publishers, 2007, 169 pages.

Jim Henderson hired an atheist to join him in evaluating 12 American churches in the summer of 2006.

Martyrdom in an Ecumenical Perspective: A Mennonite-Catholic Conversation. Peter C. Erb, ed. Pandora Press, 2007, 211 pages.

The papers and responses from this collection come from a Mennonite-Catholic conversation about 16th century Anabaptist martyrs.

The Mennonite Handbook. Herald Press, 2007, 208 pages.

This Mennonite guidebook combines practical information about church life and historical and theological information, with some fun facts scattered throughout.

Mennonite Perspectives on Pastoral Counseling. Daniel Schipani, ed. Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2007, 258 pages.

The writers of this collection of essays evaluate why and how pastoral counselling can be a ministry of the church.

Neglected Voices: Peace in the Old Testament. David A. Leiter. Herald Press, 2007, 188 pages.

Leiter, a pastor in the Church of the Brethren, examines the theme of peace in the Old Testament.

Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts. Reta Halteman Finger. Eerdmans, 2007, 320 pages.

Finger explores the agape-meal tradition of the Jerusalem church and encourages the church today to do more sharing in community.

Practicing the Politics of Jesus: The Origin and Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics. Earl Zimmerman. Cascadia Publishing House and Herald Press, 2007, 273 pages.

Part of the C. Henry Smith series, this book describes how John Howard Yoder’s experiences in post-war Europe influenced him and shaped his theology.

Recovering Jesus: The Witness of the New Testament. Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Mich., 2007, 352 pages.

The author, a professor at Conrad Grebel University College, wrote this New Testament examination of Jesus to be used in his undergraduate course on Jesus.

Roman House Churches for Today: A Practical Guide for Small Groups. Reta Halteman Finger. Eerdmans, 2007, 224 pages.

In a series of nine lessons from Romans, the writer guides readers in recreating the early church in Rome to compare their issues with the church today.

The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary. Harper-Collins, Toronto, 2007, 368 pages.

A neuroscientist explains how our brains process religious, mystical and spiritual experiences.

Seeking Peace in Africa: Stories From African Peacemakers. Donald E. Miller, Scott Holland, Lon Fendall and Dean Johnson, eds. Cascadia Publishing and Herald Press, 2007, 246 pages.

This collection comes from presentations made at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2004, when peace church leaders in Africa met to share stories.

To Live is to Worship: Bioethics and the Body of Christ. Joel James Shuman. CMU Press, 2007, 86 pages.

In the 2006 J. J. Thiessen Lectures at Canadian Mennonite University, Shuman examines the intersection between medicine and faith.

Viviendo las Primicias: Dando a Dios lo Mejor de Nosotros. Lynn A. Miller. Herald Press, 2007, 100 pages.

In this Spanish language book, Miller describes first-fruits living as returning to God the best parts of God’s gifts to us.

History

Building Communities: The Changing Face of Manitoba Mennonites. John J. Friesen. CMU Press, 2007, 240 pages.

This history of Manitoba Mennonites, with its many illustrations and maps, describes the developments and challenges of various Mennonite groups from 1870 to the present.

Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities. Hans Werner. U. of Manitoba Press, 2007, 300 pages.

Werner compares the experiences of Soviet German immigrants to Winnipeg and Bielefeld, Germany, after World War II. The author teaches Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Out of the Jungle: The True Story of a Young Mennonite Boy in the Paraguayan Chaco. Peter Boldt. Privately published, 2007, 147 pages.

Boldt describes what life was like growing up in the Paraguayan Chaco in the 1940s and ’50s. He moved to Canada at age 14.

Under Vine and Fig Tree: Biblical Theologies of Land and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Alain Epp Weaver, ed. Cascadia Publishing and Herald Press, 2007, 204 pages.

Several writers reflect on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over land.

Fiction/Literature/Poetry

Chrysalis Crucible. Wayne Northey. Fresh Wind Press, 2007.

This is the story of a young man who comes of age on a short-term mission assignment in West Berlin. The experience forces him to re-evaluate his beliefs.

Domain. Barbara Nickel. House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 2007, 94 pages.

This is Nickel’s second collection of poetry. The poems, arranged as rooms in a house, explore the places in which we live.

Jakob, Out of the Village. William Driedger. Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing, Regina, 2007, 208 pages.

Set in an Old Colony Mennonite village in Saskatchewan between 1922-44, these stories about Jakob’s growing-up years provide a window into this Low German community.

Watermelon Syrup. Annie Jacobsen, Jane Finlay-Young and Di Brandt. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007, 280 pages.

When a young Mennonite woman from rural Saskatchewan moves to Waterloo, Ont., to work for a doctor’s family during the Depression, she encounters a whole new world.

Where We Start. Debra Gingerich. Cascadia Publishing and Herald Press, 2007, 89 pages.

This collection of poetry is part of the DreamSeeker Poetry Series, Vol. 4. Gingerich’s poems reflect on life experiences, including the life of traditionalist Mennonites.

Other books

God’s People Now! Face to Face With Mennonite Church Canada. Robert J. Suderman. Herald Press, 2007, 128 pages.

This is the report of Suderman’s “listening tour,” where he visited all congregations of Mennonite Church Canada in 2006.

Doing Good Even Better: How to be an Effective Board Member of a Nonprofit Organization. Edgar Stoesz. Good Books, 2007, 190 pages.

Stoesz offers practical advice for non-profit boards in this revised and updated handbook.

The Joy Factor. Jep Hostetler. Herald Press, 2007, 100 pages.

This easy-to-read book encourages Christians to live their lives with humour and joy. Hostetler enjoys performing magic and has been speaking about joy for 20 years.

Lasting Marriage: The Owners’ Manual. Harvey Yoder. Herald Press, 2007, 160 pages.

Written by a marriage counsellor, this book provides practical suggestions for developing and maintaining a healthy marriage.

Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA. Conrad L. Kanagy. Herald Press, 2007, 208 pages.

Kanagy interprets the data from a 2006 survey of American Mennonites, comparing it to information gathered in 1972 and 1989.

That Amazing Junk-Man: The Agony and Ecstasy of a Pastor’s Life. Truman H. Brunk. Cascadia Publishing and Herald Press, 2007, 215 pages.

This collection of stories comes from Brunk’s family and his life as a pastor.

A Thousand and One Egyptian Nights: An American Christian’s Life Among Muslims. Jennifer Drago. Herald Press, 2007, 304 pages.

In an effort to reach out to Muslims, the writer and her family spent three years in Egypt working with MCC. The stories of their interactions provide a glimpse into Egyptian Muslim culture.

Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting: More Family Life in a Farmhouse. Dorcas Smucker. Good Books, 2007, 168 pages.

The chapters in this collection were originally written as newspaper columns. They are about ordinary rural life, told with a touch of humour.

CDs/DVDs

Celebrating God’s Love. MCC, 2007, DVD.

This 11-minute presentation reports on how MCC has been serving in Congo, Nigeria, Guatemala and Burundi, as well as in Canada and the U.S.

Colombia Churches Call For Peace. MCC, 2007, DVD.

This 11-minute presentation calls on Christians everywhere to assist as Colombian churches respond to the needs of those people displaced within their country.

House Calls and Hitching Posts: Stories from Dr. Elton Lehman’s Career Among the Amish. As told to Dorcas Sharp Hoover. Good Books, 2007, 6 CDs.

Dr. Lehman has been practising medicine among the Amish of Wayne County, Ohio, for 36 years. These are some of his stories in audio-book form.

Plautdietsche: Bibel Jeschichten fa Kjinja. MCC Canada, 2007, cassette.

These 19 Bible stories for children are narrated in Low German.

Sing the Story. Ken Nafziger. Herald Press, 2007, CD.

This CD contains selections from the Sing the Story hymnal supplement.

When Life is the Prize. MCC Canada, 2007, DVD.

Cindy Klassen, Olympic medallist, visits Nigeria and Ethiopia, where she finds stories of suffering and hope. The four segments are from two to 11 minutes each.

The Word of Promise New Testament Audio Bible. Thomas Nelson Inc., 2007, 20 CDs.

This dramatic reading of the New Testament (New King James Version) comes with sound effects and music.

Book Excerpt

The legacy of forgiveness

On Oct. 2, 2006, a lone gunman burst into the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, Pa. Before he turned his weapon on himself, Charles Carl Roberts IV shot 10 female students, killing five of them. The world was stunned when the Amish community, in the midst of its grieving, offered words of forgiveness to the dead killer and his family. Author John L. Roth believes that the extraordinary Christian forgiveness shown by the victims remains the legacy of that heartbreaking day. Canadian Mennonite presents a chapter of Roth’s meditation on the incident and its aftermath, Forgiveness: A Legacy of the West Nickel Mines Amish School, as a testimony to that legacy. To learn how the community is coping today and the response of a World Council of Churches’ delegation during a recent visit there, see page 26. Ed.

“The Effect of Community”

Awful as it felt, the Amish grief was not the “unimaginable emptiness” that afflicted the loner who had killed their children. Theirs was a corporate as well as an individual emotion. Their belief, in essence, is that in Christ God has worked a grand reconciliation by which not the enemy, but the enmity, is slain. Without sophisticated articulation of an idea, they live in the logic of that cosmic reconciliation that changes the tone of human connectedness.

The forgiveness that the Amish man told a TV interviewer he felt “in my heart” comes out of a covenanted culture. A corporate pre-commitment to live in such an attitude makes forgiveness a possibility beyond the imagination of individualists. If pressed to explain this, a member of the Plain people might simply say, “The way we are raised, you get used to it.”

This could be regarded as simply the power of group-think, which lessens the need for personal moral courage. But that is a double-edged criticism. Many who wield it justify their own lack of obedience to the Sermon on the Mount by claiming that they simply haven’t been made by their Creator to be what the sermon calls for. They aren’t wired to be pacifists.

It is only fair, though, to ask whether the Amish outlook on forgiveness in a small-scale context is applicable on a broad, international scale as well. For this the commonly cited scheme of German philosopher Ferdinand Tönnies is helpful. He uses the words Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to name what he considers the two basic kinds of relationship:

1. Simple face-to-face communities of home, kinship and village; or

2. City and political or business corporation.

Obviously, Amish society is a classic surviving example of the first type, Gemeinschaft. Its people know each other, eat meals in each other’s homes, share the same memories, lingo and outlook. Family is strong, trust operates by shared covenant, and the individual often places the good of the group above his or her individual freedoms (for example, “Shoot me first”). Not to do so brings shame.

By contrast, notes Tönnies, in Gesellschaft (society), individuals and primary groups pool their self-interests when possible in order to gain what they want. Instead of covenants, there are contracts (which are readily broken if self-interest so dictates and the civil law does not effectively punish). The connection between parties involved is not trust, but “cash.” This is how things work in a nation that is made up of a variety of clans, races and religions.

Simply put, in Gesellschaft the various primary groups average their interests. Though this is done for the benefit of the general welfare, the individual is really acting out of his own interest. His or her identity becomes, in comparison to that of a small-group member, less specific—more generic. He or she is bound less by voluntary covenant than by contracts having legal force. Life looks different than it had on the farm or in the village and clan. Ethical questions, including the meaning of forgiveness, are complicated and less interesting.

When persons raised in the Gemeinschaft-type mindset of the Pennsylvania Plain people tradition move out into the Gesellschaft or larger society, they usually give up—as impractical—the simple applications of the Sermon on the Mount of their heritage. Some who keep on being religious find backing for this in a wholesale accepting of a new interpretive grid in the footnotes of the Scofield Bible, a dispensationalist interpretation that postpones the applicability of the ethic of the sermon to a future era.

Meanwhile, the relatives who have stayed Amish, “having their children to themselves” back a long lane from the road and sending them to a one-room schoolhouse with a 20-year-old Amish teacher, may be able to continue in terms of the Gemeinschaft of their heritage. Sure, say those who have left, but the Amish group is a bounded one that seldom puts its interior drama out in public. This gives fuel to Evangelical Christians who fault the Amish for having “no witness.” Ironically, when their simple Christian ethic is splashed into the mass media, whether by the feature film Witness or the sensation of their forgiveness at Nickel Mines, what they believe and represent can reach the attention of millions.

Copyright © 2007 by Herald Press, Scottdale, PA 15683.  Used by permission.


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