HESSTON, Kan. — Mennonite congregations and the wider community turned to God and each other for comfort and healing Feb. 28. They gathered on Sunday morning and at an evening community worship service three days after a mass shooting at Excel Industries left four dead.
Mennonite Church USA’s Youth Ministry Council worked to make implicit Anabaptist values more explicit Jan. 29-Feb. 1 in Orlando, Fla. Forty-two youth workers attended “The Gathering” to network, encourage, worship and explore faith formation through real-life scenarios.
An Idaho man has brought a lawsuit against the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, alleging a culture of excommunication and quick forgiveness allows sexual abusers to avoid the court system.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Three people were killed and more than a dozen injured in a series of shootings Feb. 25 in Newton and Hesston, Kan., that culminated at a Mennonite-owned business in Hesston. Hesston police chief Doug Schroeder, a member of Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in Goessel, confronted the shooter and killed him when he returned fire.
HESSTON, Kan. — For today’s Good Samaritans, lifting the wounded traveler out of the ditch is not enough, Shane Claiborne believes. They also need to fix the road.
PHOENIX — When Copper Hills Church dedicated its new facility Jan. 10, it marked a significant step in meeting needs of both the congregation and the community. The congregation, the first to be planted in the Mennonite Brethren Mission USA initiative in 1997, has completed a 500-seat auditorium that will be a performing arts center for the community. It includes classrooms that can double as practice studios or dressing rooms.
CHICAGO — The Mennonite Church USA Executive Board sought to clarify the meaning of forbearance while focusing on the future at its Feb. 11-13 meeting. Other actions included rejection of a proposal asking for an LGBTQ advocacy group to join a denominational counsel body and discussion of a proposal to modify MC USA’s racial-ethnic group structures.
NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — When professor of communication arts John McCabe-Juhnke put his former “pilot project” into Bethel College’s interterm curriculum, he knew his students would learn things that surprised them.
Almost a century ago, Mennonite missionaries T.K. Hershey and J.W. Shank undertook a dangerous 27-day sea journey during World War I with their families, facing the threat of submarines and floating mines from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
NEUWIED, Germany — The leader of MB Mission’s Oasis team had never seen anything like it before: a large crowd of Arabic speakers responding to the gospel in Germany. “I saw the Holy Spirit like an athlete running around among the people, and he was very excited,” he said.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Fort Collins Mennonite Fellowship’s sanctuary is just that for the community’s homeless. The city has 150,000 people yet only two homeless shelters. Its homeless population is twice as great as the number of shelter beds. Sixty percent of the homeless are families.
