Mennonite Church USA will face some significant challenges in 2011. At least one will come to a head early in the new year: deciding whether to change the location of the 2013 national convention. But there are other, equally troublesome issues confronting us all …

I would like to think I coined the phrase “church baby.” It’s possible, since I wasn’t able to find the reference when googling it. When I was pregnant with my first child, I told people at church that I wanted my daughter to be a “church baby,” which means, in the simplest form, she would feel comfortable going to any adult in the church …

You won’t find it at the back of Hymnal: A Worship Book, Sing the Journey or even Sing the Story, but Mennonites seem to have an official litany when it comes to young adults. It goes something like this …

Some people have this marvelous ability to navigate their way through unfamiliar territory. They know at any given moment what direction they are facing and seem to have an innate ability to understand the lay of the land, no matter where they are …

For the last year, I’ve been writing about First Things First in this column, a practice fueled by my desire to live by God’s priorities as expressed in Scripture. Although I ostensibly finished that series in the December 2010 column, my theme for the months ahead invites one more look at “firsts” in Scripture …