A Sip of Scripture

Here's a little ad for any of you who are still wondering what you might do for your devotions this year. If you got this far into the MCBC website, then you will have passed by a tab on the homepage called Links. If you click on Links there's lots of good stuff, but go right to the bottom and you will find A Sip of Scripture. This is a daily Scripture reading. This year the Sip of Scripture is going through the book pictured above. If you are not familiar with this book, it is a collection of the primary Scripture texts that the early Anabaptists leaned on most heavily. You can buy the book from Pandora Press. But, you can also be challenged and blessed by going to the MCBC website every day and making this your daily Scripture reading. If you go to the source of this webpage, you will be at Thirdway Cafe. At Thirdway there is lots of good stuff about Anabaptists, but at Thirdway you can also get this daily devotional sent to your email address and have it pop up for you every morning! You can even go back to January 1st and get the full-meal-deal from the beginning of the book.  

And, a bonus - this is not just a Scripture reading, but a devotional. When you scroll down you will find a daily blog called A Simple Desire. Every day one of a number of people will write a reflection on the Scripture passage.  

One surprise - the early Anabaptists included the Apocrypha in their Scriptures, so you will find the occasional text that is not from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible that we carry. Blessings.

New Year's Day

The U2 song New Year's Day has been one of my favourites.  It probably has been a real frustration for those who want to start afresh and make all kinds of resolutions to live a better life.  Here are the words of the first verse and the chorus, 

"All is quiet on New Year's Day.  

A world in white gets underway.  

I want to be with you, be with you night and day.  

Nothing changes on New Year's Day.  

On New Year's Day. 

and then the chorus 

I... will be with you again."

This song has always struck me as encouraging.  Bono often intertwines the story of his relation with his wife, with God and the world.  It is heartening to know that we will spend another year together - through the good and the bad, the celebrations and the frustrations.  To celebrate that the first day of the new year is not miraculously different that the last day of the year before is encouraging.  God is with us and we will find him when we seek him.  

May 2009 be filled with the hope of the God who was, and is, and is to come.

Life in the Fast Lane

There have been a few people who have suggested that breaking my leg just before Christmas might be just what I needed to cause me to stop working and be with my family at Christmas. Some have suggested that it may have even been God's intervention.  I do not disagree.  I did cancel one speaking engagement due to my injury.  I also missed the celebration at Camp Squeah of Dan Friesen's 20 years of service there. Certainly, being unable to drive a car kept me at home much more.  I did slow down.  While it has caused me to reorganise my schedule to travel less and work more from my home, it has also been very frustrating.  But, it has caused much reflection on what life is like for those who do not have full mobility and for those who must rely on the assistance of others for some very basic activities. Trying to bring down the swelling in the lower leg and ankle has resulted in the possibility photos like the one above.  

I have deeply appreciated the assistance offered by my family and so many others.  I have also appreciated the privilege of being able to laugh at myself as others laugh at me.  I am thankful that my travel schedule took a break at this time.  I am thankful for every time that God speaks to me about having too much on my plate.  This has probably been the most obvious one.  But there have been others, such as physical signs of stress.  The one I like the most is when someone cancels an assignment to which I have said yes, and I have known all along that I should not have taken it on.  If I have ever felt freed up, it has been when one of these happens.  

I would welcome any of your stories about what God has done in your lives to help you to slow down or to show you a better pathway.

Blessings.

A White Vancouver Christmas

Okay, so we live in Ladner, but I just thought I would show you a photo of our picnic table on Boxing Day 2008.  It is apparently the most snow that Metro Vancouver has ever had at Christmas!  The snow is changing to rain, so please pray that our neighbourhoods would be spared serious flooding.  

It's Broken

I broke my leg playing hockey on Monday, December 15th.  That sounds pretty bad.  The fibula is the thinner bone in the lower leg.  It broke a couple of inches above the angle.  It didn't go out of place, so I just have one of these big plastic boots to walk around in.  My doctor said that the boot is not needed to hold it in place, but to protect it and allow me to get around without hurting myself.  I told my doctor that "God is good," because God gives us pain.  I'm telling you, if I accidentally put any weight on it (such as when a crutch slips on the smooth, polished floor in a mall - not because the floor has water on it, but because the crutch is still a little wet on the bottom from trudging through the snow outside), the shock of pain I get is an instant message of protection!  It's too bad its the right leg, because that keeps me from driving.  Yeah, I could use my left foot, but in our car, I can't get my right leg out of the way to do that.  

On the second day of my injury, I was walking the short distance from our townhouse to my doctor's office, which is in the mall just across the street.  I stopped six times to rest and catch my breath.  I was amazed that, not only at every stop, but as I was walking, almost everybody had a well-meaning comment.  I was just thinking, "Why?"  Why does everybody feel the impluse to talk with an able-bodied person who is temporarily disabled?  I wonder if people do that with a person who is obviously permanently disabled?  I wonder if it is because when a person is injured, yet otherwise healthy, that they are less intimidating?  This person is now no competition, even though normally they would be.   I don't know.  It is nice getting all the friendly, sympathetic conversation from people.

A few people have suggested that the broken leg might be a gift from God to slow me down a bit during the Christmas season.  I agree.  In my efforts at trying to worship with every congregation in Mennonite Church BC in my first year on the job, I ended up taking on preaching assignments on 3 of 4 Sundays in December.  The injury has caused me to cancel preaching at Vancouver Chinese Mennonite Church on December 28th.   This has actually been just the right break to let me settle into the celebration of the season!  

One commitment I did keep was to preach at Sherbrooke Mennonite Church this past Sunday, December 21st.  Along with preaching, I also had opportunity to do my last set of baptisms before Sherbrooke's new senior pastor starts on January 1st.  The couple that I baptised were attending Sherbrooke most of the years I was pastoring there, and committed their lives to following Jesus during this time.  They just arrived at the decision to go public with their faith in baptism during this past year.  

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

Garry and Diane Janzen

Pastor/Spouse Retreat

It has been a long time since I have put something up on my blog.  Thank you, to all of you who stop by to check every once in awhile, for your patience.

We had a wonderful Mennonite Church BC Pastor/Spouse Retreat on October 6th to 8th.  We were at the Cedar Springs Christian Retreat just across the border from Abbotsford into Washington State.  It is beautifully snuggled into the base of a small mountain.  Take a look at the centre from the viewpoint on the mountain.

We had two special features this year.  One was that the speakers were our own brothers - two pastors from our MCBC congregations.   They spoke about important practices in their spiritual lives.  Tim Kuepfer, pastor at Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond, encouraged us to use The Daily Office for our devotional life - we practiced it in his sessions.  He also talked about his (together with his wife Sandra and their boys) discipline of Scripture memory.  Rob Brown, pastor at Eden Mennonite Church in Chilliwack was the other speaker.  He spoke on the importance of spiritual disciplines and some of his recent experiences.

The second thing that was special about this year's Pastor/Spouse Retreat was having our Pastoral Care Reps with us.  In the new structure of MCBC, the Executive Minister (that's me) gives attention to all the ministries of the conference.  This includes: the Faith and Life Committee, Evangelism and Church Development, Finances, Church Health and Camp Squeah.  Notice that I said "gives attention."  This means that every one of these ministries has its own leadership and a chairperson that sits on the MCBC Leadership Board, yet I attend most of their meetings in order to seek to hold it all together.  So, given this larger mandate, the Executive Minister can't be a pastor to the pastors as the former Conference Minister was.  The Conference Minister served, in essence, as a staff person for the Church Health committee.  Since I give attention to the whole, we need help in caring for the pastors - this is where the Pastoral Care Reps (PCRs) come in.  They are respected people in our conference who can take up no more than six of our pastors and care for them.  They are responsible to the Executive Minister.  Anyway, there were some good relationship building times for the PCRs and the pastors to whom they relate.

This is probably the last time we will cross the border for this event.  Hopefully the new retreat facilities will be ready by next fall - we are already booked for that weekend.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

This morning I had the privilege of preaching at my home church - Sherbrooke Mennonite Church, Vancouver. The text was Psalm 105. The psalmist begins by calling the people of Israel to "Give praise to the LORD and make known among the nations what he has done." Then the psalmist proceeds with a recitation of the story of God's people from the promise of the land of Canaan to Abraham to their entrance into that land, ending with a statement of purpose for this story - "that they might keep his precepts and observe his laws."

When we celebrate God's goodness at Thanksgiving, we cannot be focused only on our own benefits. As with the people of Israel, we are called to make known among the nations what the LORD has done.

God's gift of grace is so generous, that often our only way of saying thankyou is to pass on another gift of kindness to someone else.