A Conversation with John Schuurman

“Shalom is the first thing that comes to mind,” he says, in between bites of potato leek soup. “When I think of justice, I think of the Lord’s shalom, especially as it relates to those who are oppressed—including creation.” John Schuurman says these words with a quiet confidence, not realizing how profound they sound off…

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LGBTQ+ Christians and Your Church: 5 Steps Towards Hospitality

The above photo, “Reykjavik Pride”, is copyright (c) 2009 Lars Lundqvist and made available under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. “Responses to the question ‘Do you ever hear comments from church members that you believe would be offensive to people in your congregation who are attracted to the same sex?’ were . . . alarming: 61…

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Resources for Deacons: “Guidelines for Benevolence”

In the charge to the deacons, it states that “benevolence is a quality of our life in Christ, and not merely a matter of financial assistance.” Benevolence involves a lifestyle of love,  respect and compassion. To that end, Diaconal Ministries Canada (DMC) has developed “Guidelines for Benevolence” to help address attitudes and behaviors that deacons…

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Too Young?

Deacons are normally known to be older and more experienced people in life. You won’t think of, nor even associate a 22 year old journalism student who is still trying to figure out what to do in life with the position of a deacon. I was asked to think about taking the position earlier this…

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Visualizing Restorative Justice (Part Two): An Infographic

While brainstorming for my next post on restorative justice, I ended up taking some time to create this infographic based on an appendix in Howard Zehr’s The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Take some time to look through it, and feel free to print it off. I think that this list provides some excellent reminders on…

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The Freedom Climb: Getting Uncomfortable for God’s Precious Children

In July 2014 I had the privilege of travelling to Colorado from my home province of Saskatchewan. There I joined about 70 other women, from 6 different countries, for “The Freedom Climb”!  We summited 7 mountains, each of them over 14,000 feet elevation, in 4 days. We were dizzy from the altitude, with aching muscles…

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