Announcing our blog

Tim Miller Dyck

Editor/Publisher

Editorial

As a communication ministry, we want to spread God’s good news in every way possible, and an increasingly important way is online. We’ve been posting excerpts from each issue of Canadian Mennonite at our website (canadianmennonite.org) for years, but you’ll now be able to read something else there you won’t find in the print magazine.

We’ve launched a blog that you can find at canadianmennonite.org/blog. This is a new initiative at the magazine to provide a place for online posting and discussion of faith in life from a Mennonite and Canadian perspective. Starting next issue, however, you will see an informational box in each print issue listing topics being addressed in the blog to provide a regular update on what is happening there.

You’ll find multiple new postings each week at the site. I think it’s important that we carry out our mandate in all the formats important to our readers. Online writing is also often different in style than print writing, and a blog provides a place for immediate and frequent publishing that we can’t do in print form.

To start us off, I’ve commissioned four perceptive writers to author our blog. Here are the voices you’ll be hearing using the words they wrote to describe themselves:

• David Driedger is a pastor at Hillcrest Mennonite Church in New Hamburg, Ont. Before coming to Hillcrest Mennonite, he attended The Welcome Inn Mennonite Church in Hamilton, Ont. He grew up in the Russian Mennonite tradition at Sommerfeld Mennonite Church in Altona, Man.

• Rebecca Janzen grew up in Ottawa, and attended Ottawa Mennonite Church. She spent most of her childhood in Ottawa, except for two years in Cairo, Egypt. She studied history and Spanish at the University of Waterloo, Ont., and, while studying, enjoyed living at Conrad Grebel University College’s Mennonite residence. Last year, she participated in the Mennonite Central Committee Serving and Learning Together (SALT) service program and lived in Managua, Nicaragua. She is currently studying Spanish at the University of Toronto. Currently, she spends her time reading, writing essays and drinking coffee.

• Will Loewen has at different times been a playwright, a pastor, and a pontificator. He got the idea to write his second play when he realized it would allow him to spend more time with a certain young lady. He served for three years in youth ministry at Tavistock (Ont.) Mennonite Church. One of the things he enjoyed the most about that job, besides the overnight pizza parties and early morning donut making sessions, was the regular challenge of preaching sermons that pleased seniors, inspired parents and didn’t put teenagers to sleep.

He is currently working in South Korea as a Mission Partnership worker with Mennonite Church Canada Witness and Jesus Village Church, serving in an education and resource development role.

He and his wife (the aforementioned young lady) are eagerly anticipating the arrival of their first child literally any day.

• Cheryl Woelk grew up in Swift Current, Sask., and graduated with a BA in English from Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. She spent six years serving with MC Canada Witness as a peace educator at the Korea Anabaptist Center in Seoul, South Korea. She is now on a “sabbatical year” adjusting to living between cultures. Her interests include eating fair trade chocolate, learning languages and running marathons.

• Other Canadian Mennonites, such as yourself

I mention this last item because the blog site also provides for immediate reader/author interaction through discussion comments. Your feedback and discussions on topics of our Christian faith in Canadian society are important and this is a place where they can happen in a more immediate way than is possible in our print letters section. (Going further, I’d like to add commenting to any Canadian Mennonite article posted online in the future.)

Blogging is also occurring in other places in the church. Just last month, we carried a news story about a new online blog being launched to connect women in Mennonite congregations in British Columbia (the link is at our blog page). A number of our churches also have blogs. I’ve added the ones I know about so far to our blog page; if your congregation hosts one, please drop me a note and I will add this to our online listing.

I hope this online venture is another place that helps all of us reflect on our faith and discover ways to live more faithfully to God’s calling together.