Latest Posts
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One Hundred and Thirty-Three Women
Banner: City Mission women early 1930s. Back: L to R: Annie Srigley, Martha Doner, Edith Raymer, unknown, unknown, Front: Rosie Sargeant, unknown, unknown, Annie Yeo, unknown, Winnie Barfoot? From a reader-friendly-blog point of view, I am going to do something… Continue reading
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Music in the Early EMCC Part 5: Hymns for Worship
This blog brings us to a hymnbook, Hymns for Worship (1963), not produced in the early EMCC, but it is still separated from us by several changing fashions in congregational music. This is a book of which I have personal… Continue reading
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Nonconformity to the World Part 4: What about today?
I have to admit “nonconformity,” as a negative term, is subject to the same weaknesses as other negatives (eg non-resistance instead of peacemaking, anti-abortion instead of pro-life, prohibition instead of temperance) even if the cause is good and even though… Continue reading
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Nonconformity to the World Part 3, Mennonite Brethren in Christ Experience
When I was a young preacher in the Missionary Church of Canada, before the 1993 merger produced the EMCC, I attended a conference promoting a simple lifestyle. I signed a promise to live a simple lifestyle as much as possible.… Continue reading
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Nonconformity to the world Part 2, Wesleyan holiness Background
The EMCC today may seem like a generic evangelical church to some attenders, perhaps teaching therapeutic techniques, listening to non-denominational evangelical podcasts and singing pop evangelical worship songs, but it did not seem so to its first generations. The early… Continue reading
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Nonconformity to the world Part 1, The Anabaptist Background
Practically all Christian traditions recognize the importance of holiness. For the EMCC, the Anabaptist/Mennonite, Pietist,1 and Wesleyan holiness traditions all encouraged their communities to turn away from enticements by the world. The Mennonites who were expelled from the Mennonite Conferences… Continue reading
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Mrs Elizabeth Risdon: Mystery Woman, Part 2
This is the second part of my account of a zealous Christian lady from Michigan (ca 1850-ca 1915) who in widowhood devoted herself to holiness causes in Ontario. Where she began life and where she ended is unknown to me.… Continue reading
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Mrs Elizabeth Risdon: Mystery Woman, Part 1
I am writing this blog to record what I know about Mrs Risdon and to honour her. I don’t know exactly where she came from and when or where she died or where she fits in the life of the… Continue reading
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High Bright Buggy Wheels: a Stouffville Story, Sort of
Browsing one day in the United Missionary Church of Africa Theological College library in Ilorin, Nigeria, I came across a curious book in the fiction section, a 1951 dark red hard cover novel called High Bright Buggy Wheels. It was… Continue reading
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Peace and War and the EMCC Part 2
The remoter wars of the USA and Canada in the second half of the 19th century did not greatly disturb the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church, but the outbreak of a Great War in Europe in 1914 did. By 1917,… Continue reading
EMCC History 