Mennonite Brethren in Christ

  • Flossie Willison and the rest: Loving the Brothers and Sisters

    Pursuing some history project, I came across an Ontario Conference Journal record that a certain “F. Willison” was “conditional” at the time the Conference needed to know who was available for stationing (assigning to ministry locations) in September 1932.1 My… Continue reading

    Flossie Willison and the rest: Loving the Brothers and Sisters
  • Fundamentalism and the EMCC 1

    This is my trouble–/These were my fathers/ So how am I supposed to feel?/ Way out on the rim of the broken wheel. from Bruce Cockburn, “Broken Wheel” (1981) When Presiding Elder Alvin Traub of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ… Continue reading

    Fundamentalism and the EMCC 1
  • Blessed Assurance Part 2

    I wrote a lot about John Wesley (1703-1791) and his theology of assurance in EMCC History, “Blessed Assurance Part 1.” But the forebears of the Missionary Churches and the EMCC in the 19th century did not learn of Wesley’s teaching… Continue reading

    Blessed Assurance Part 2
  • The Alexander Sisters: Overlooked Women Preachers

    Forgotten Women Preachers series 5. Muriel Isabelle and Annie G Alexander were women in the City Mission Workers Society,1 and their younger sister Irene married a pastor of the Ontario Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church. That is… Continue reading

    The Alexander Sisters: Overlooked Women Preachers
  • 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

    The Sherkston field: Forgotten MBiC believers
  • 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

    Mennonite Brethren in Christ Public Worship and
  • 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

    We Worship Part 3
  • 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

    We Worship Part 2
  • Self-Denial Days

    Years ago, researching other things in the Gospel Banner, I noted letters to the editor about “self-denial.” It sounded like a Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church institution of some sort which had not survived by that name into the era… Continue reading

    Self-Denial Days
  • How Sunday Schools Progressed in the Ontario Conference

    As I mentioned in the previous blog about EMCC Sunday Schools, the United Mennonite merging conference in Bloomingdale, Waterloo County, Canada, in 1875, resolved “That Sunday schools shall be organized and supported by all our power.”1 As early as the… Continue reading

    How Sunday Schools Progressed in the Ontario Conference