Police arrest street preachers in Calgary

Concerned Christians Canada is launching a nationwide awareness campaign in support of Street Church Ministries in Calgary. For several years, the ministry has been in a battle with city authorities over its insistence on publicly preaching the gospel to people on city streets and in city parks. On February 7, members of the ministry were dragged from a preaching platform by police, and three members were arrested, one while he was videotaping police actions. Artur Pawlowski, lead pastor of Street Church Ministries, said the city's "ruthless targeted attacks" threaten freedom of speech as well as the organization's ministry to homeless people. Jim Blake, national chairman of Concerned Christians Canada, said it is ironic and hypocritical that the police were intent on arresting ministry members while ignoring drug dealers operating nearby.

This book is hot

Hot Apple Cider: Words to Stir the Heart and Warm the Soul is this month's featured book on 100 Huntley Street. The book is a 296-page collection of personal experience articles, short stories and poems by 30 Canadian Christian writers, all of whom are members of The Word Guild, an organization with 340 members from more than 20 denominations. The book has sold over 9,000 copies, and an additional 30,000 copies are being given away by World Vision through its FaithLife Financial Girls Night Out events. Book editor N. J. Lindquist and contributors Keith Clemons, Angelina Fast-Vlaar, Denyse O'Leary, Diane Roblin-Lee and Ray Wiseman will appear on 100 Huntley Street at various times throughout February.

For churches that have discovered the computer

International Evangelism Day takes place April 26. The Day is an initiative of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, an umbrella group of online ministries based at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. The coalition offers a variety of resources to help churches use the internet to do evangelism and to interest their members in doing internet evangelism. The resources include a self-assessment tool for church websites and free downloads of video clips, PowerPoint demonstrations, handouts, music and drama that churches can use to highlight the Day in their Sunday services.

Marshall McLuhan was right

Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith (Zondervan, 2009) is a new book by Shane Hipps that argues that it is not true that "The methods change, but the message stays the same." Hipps says that "changing the methods always changes the message" and that "the hidden power of technology [can] shape our faith in unexpected ways."

Old media also still effective

Students at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg read John Milton's Paradise Lost on January 17, starting at 9:00 in the morning and finishing at 9:00 in the evening. Paul Dyck, associate professor of English, called the poem "arguably the greatest long poem in English" and said "it really comes alive when it is read out loud in a group." Most of the reading was done by students in Dyck's 'Studies in 17th Century Literature' class, but other students, staff and community members also participated, taking turns reading for 10 - 15 minutes each.

Best places to work

The Canadian Council of Christian Charities (CCCC) has announced the 2009 finalists for the 'The Best Christian Places to Work in Canada.' The finalists were determined by a survey of employees administered in the fall of 2008 by the Best Christian Workplace Institute. The finalists are: the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (British Columbia); Centre Street Church (Alberta); Linden Christian School (Manitoba); Medeba Adventure Learning Centre (Ontario); Partners International Canada (Ontario); Power to Change Ministries (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, British Columbia); and Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church (Ontario). John Pellowe, CEO of CCCC, says the survey is not only a way to honour good workplaces but is also a means for employers to find ways to improve their workplaces.

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Aid agency needs aid

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), the relief and development arm of Mennonite denominations in North America, has had to cut its international relief, development and peacemaking work by about 10 percent ($2 million) for the coming year. MCC executive director Arli Klassen called the decision "difficult" because it will adversely affect "the hundreds of thousands of people" MCC helps in more than 50 countries around the world, but added: "Our commitment to sharing God's love does not change." The cuts were blamed on a number of financial problems related to the global economic crisis: More people are donating money to MCC, but the size of the average contribution has decreased; the value of the Canadian dollar has dropped relative to the US dollar (nearly half of MCC's funding comes from Canadian contributors); and MCC's financial reserves have been reduced by losses in financial markets. MCC has called on its supporters for prayer and renewed giving.

In some places, even dentistry can be a dangerous occupation

One Free World International has been trying to convince the Canadian government not to deport a Sudanese couple named Wadie and Fifi. Wadie was a member of the ancient but shrinking Coptic Christian community in Sudan's capital city of Khartoum and was a dentist there for several decades, serving both Christians and Muslims. In 2002, he was arrested by the country's Islamic security forces and accused of being anti-Muslim after he said his clinic was not equipped to offer an internship to a Muslim dental student. Wadie subsequently donated his equipment to his church, and the couple fled to Egypt and then Canada. The couple, now in their 70s, have been refused refugee status in Canada and were scheduled to be deported February 11. They have no family in the Sudan, but Fifi has three brothers in Canada. Over the past 25 years, Arab Muslims in northern Sudan, with the support of the Sudanese government, have committed numerous atrocities against Christian, animist and Muslim Africans in southern Sudan, killing and displacing millions.

Two hundred people fall asleep in church

Ten United churches in Vancouver have donated $10,000 to First United Church Mission, which operates an emergency homeless shelter in the city's downtown east side. Every night, more than 200 people sleep on the pews and floors of the church, and on the coldest nights there have been as many as 350 people crammed into the facility. The shelter is open 21 hours a day. It will cost $40,000 to keep the shelter open till the end of March; the effort is also being supported by the city, the provincial government and the Streetohome Foundation. In the long run, the Mission hopes to transform the emergency shelter into a permanent multi-level housing complex.

It's the code of the best

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada's Global Mission Roundtable has updated its Code of Best Practice in Short-Term Mission. This second edition, dated February 2009, is available for free download. A revised guidebook, which includes supplementary materials, is available for $10.

February 12/2009