Mennonite Brethren in Christ
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Forming the Ministry: The Probationer’s Reading Course Part 2
Theology really matters. Like a worldview, of which it is a major part, one’s theology, what you really believe about God, Jesus, the universe and everything, will direct your life choices, your love-life with God and creation. So this examination… Continue reading
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Forming the Ministry: The Probationer’s Reading Course Part 1
Sarah Pool applied to be a “probationer” in the Canada Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church in March 1894. She was from Markham, ON, and was hoping to be a preacher in the MBiC.1 The first interview she… Continue reading
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The Pandemic of 1918-1920 and the MBiC: Part 2
The Ontario Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ faced the “Spanish” Flu with impatience to be back at public worship and prayed it would end soon. Published response in other Conferences was fairly similar. Did they have other concerns… Continue reading
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The Pandemic of 1918-1920 and the MBiC: Part 1
Spanish Flu. The COVID-19 pandemic is fading from memory already, but before it does, we should look back at North American Christian churches’ response to an earlier pandemic in 1918-1920. The pandemic affected nearly every country in the world and… Continue reading
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The Sherkston field: Forgotten MBiC believers
Not only have there been forgotten workers, men and women, in the EMCC, there are forgotten communities of believers that flourished for a while but have died out. Jesus in the book of Revelation warned a church their lamp stand… Continue reading
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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 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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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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We Worship Part 1
When I was a church-planting pastor under the Home Mission Board, I planned and led many worship services, generally imitating the patterns in the Missionary Churches I knew (mainly Lakeshore in North Bay, Evangel in Kitchener and Riverside in Toronto).… Continue reading
EMCC History 