James Clare Fuller
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Family Bibles and the early EMCC
Somehow I inherited through my grandfather, William James Oliver, a family Bible set of two volumes, printed in Boston in 1856. He inherited them from one of his great-grandparents, Philip Wade and his second wife, Susan. The spines have gone,… Continue reading
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EMCC church buildings Part 3: the Living Room or the Theatre
When the 1960s opened, EMCC congregations started building worship spaces that firmly turned away from the Gothic ideal that had dominated Canadian church buildings since the 1850s. I should mention that in Ontario, the EMCC almost never used the white… Continue reading
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Church Plates
I was eating my lunch off a commemorative plate when a thought struck me. Commemorative church plates were not exactly meant to be used to hold my beans and greens, but to commemorate and be displayed. The Canadian Presbyterian Church… Continue reading
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EMCC Church Buildings: Part 2: Built, Bought, Rented
The Mennonite Brethren in Christ Discipline had instructions about how church buildings were to be constructed. They were to be “plain” (Mennonite language) and, borrowing an idea from the Free Methodists, pew rents were not allowed: “Let all our buildings… Continue reading
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EMCC Church buildings Part 1: Beliefs and Early Practices
The Church exists whether we use buildings or not! Our heavenly Father knows when we need them. Nevertheless, the “medium is the message,” as Canadian media theoretician Marshall McLuhan said. Worship spaces convey meanings in addition to the words spoken… Continue reading
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Nelson Kiteley’s Ministry Journey
Official records can be so misleading. Not intentionally, it’s just that organizations do not feel obliged to document the careers of personnel when the person was not in the organization. Early MBiC preacher Nelson Kiteley’s story is lopsided with only… Continue reading
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United Missionary Church of Africa and the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Part 2
16. MBiC worship patterns. The leaders of what became the MBiC in Ontario were converted in testimony, prayer or protracted meetings (later called revivals), not in their Sunday Mennonite worship services. When they had to organize their own Sunday worship… Continue reading
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Mennonite Brethren in Christ Public Worship and
the United Missionary Church of Africa Part 1 This background to UMCA worship patterns is excerpted from an essay I wrote for a conference in Ilorin, Nigeria, in November 2019. The convener, Rev Professor Samuel Ango, a UMCA scholar and… Continue reading
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We Worship Part 3
What is worship, after all? Much has been written and preached in the last generation or two about worship. I have heard many talks and books recall the etymology of the English word: Old English “weorth-shipe,” ascribing worth or honour… Continue reading
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We Worship Part 2
The first members of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church in the very end of 1883, were practically all from the Mennonite Conferences, and had therefore grown up worshiping in the North American/ Pennsylvania Swiss-South German style.1 John C Wenger… Continue reading
EMCC History 