RnBMail 11 June 2006

by Stuart Murray Williams

What is a multi-cultural church? How do you go about planting such a church? These are questions some within Urban Expression are currently pondering.

Most of our church planting teams are working in culturally diverse inner-city communities. Some are intentionally building friendship and partnership links with members of other faith communities. Some have rejoiced to see people from various ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds coming to faith in Jesus Christ. But the teams themselves, though not entirely monochrome, have not been formed as self-consciously multi-cultural.

by Kathy Thiessen

So, there I was. Sitting in a tiny intensive care unit in Northern Manitoba. I was a 23 year old nurse, who had come to Flin Flon to take a job in the Emergency Room of a 100 bed hospital. .“By the way”, I had been told on my first day of work, “all our registered nurses are expected to take their turn in the Intensive Care Unit. And at night, you will be the only one there. A doctor will be sleeping if you need one.”

So I sat, watching a man sleep on the gurney, his heart problems fixed with medications, ready to go home in the morning.

A few minutes later the alarm buzzers broke through the solitude. The monitor was showing heart fibrillation. I hit the panic buzzer for help. The next hour was chaotic. No one was really prepared for an emergency like this, especially me. I had never attended a 911 call before. After the time had passed all that was left to do was to wash the man and listen to the doctor call his family.

The Rediscovering Anabaptism video, produced in 1996, brings together interviews with members of the Anabaptist Network, who talk about central themes in Anabaptism and how these have been significant for them and their churches.

We are pleased to be able to offer segments of the video on-line for free. You will need to install a free copy of Macromedia Flash Player to view the videos here:

www.anabaptistnetwork.com/rediscovering

The full video is available from the Metanoia Book Service.

You are invited to join the LMC for Violent God, Nonviolent Jesus, Violent Christians: The Tragic Legacy of Biblical Violence with Jack Nelson Pallmeyer on Saturday, 24 June 2006, 9:30–4:00 pm

The Bible is diverse and complex but is dominated by violent images of God, violent story lines, violent expectations and explanations of history.

The Gospel writers offer competing and arguably irreconcilable portraits of Jesus: Jesus who loves enemies and calls us to be peacemakers; and Jesus who will return as violent, apocalyptic judge. Violent images of God frame many Christian rituals and have been used by many to justify violence. This seminar will explore alternatives to violent images of God and expectations of history, rooted in the radical non-violence of Jesus.

We are pleased to welcome Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Join us for what promises to be a very stimulating and controversial seminar.

This Cross-Currents Seminar is sponsored by the London Mennonite Centre. Please book in advance by emailing crosscurrents@menno.org.uk or calling 020 8340 8775. Cost of £20 (£10 unwaged) includes lunch.

Members and supporters of Christian Peacemaker Teams in the UK met for two days in Bradford earlier this week to plan the future of their non-violence work.

They were joined for part of the time by Norman Kember, who was freed from four months captivity in Iraq in March 2006 – along with two Canadians, Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden.

Christian Peacemaker Teams – which carries out violence reduction, accompaniment and human rights work in situations of conflict – is based in North America, and started up in 1984 largely on the initiative of the historic peace churches – Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren in Christ.

But CPT is now supported ecumenically by a range of Christian denominations, and it has a growing network of supporters in Britain and Ireland. Several people from these islands have participated in delegations and activities in Palestine and Iraq.

“We obviously received a huge amount of publicity through the Iraq crisis”, CPT UK coordinator Tim Nafziger told Ekklesia. “Now we want to look at how the profile and work of Christian Peacemaker Teams can be developed. That’s the purpose of this gathering.”

You can now purchase your essential reading from www.metanoiabooks.org.uk, our new web shop.We already have over 800 titles available and adding more titles from our back catalogue each week so please come back regularly.

We are happy to be able to offer a coupon to Root and Branch readers for 10% off of orders of more than. Just place an order at www.metanoiabooks.org.uk and enter the coupon code RB09062006 when prompted. The code expires on 30 June, 2006, so don't wait too long to place your order.

Please email us at metanoia@menno.org.uk if you have any problems.

Norman Kember, the 74-year old peace activist whose kidnapping with three colleagues in Baghdad catapulted the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams from obscurity to global media exposure, joined the group’s UK supporters earlier this week to discuss both his experience and the future work of CPT.

Dr Kember, a retired radiation physicist and college professor, attended the second day of a British Christian Peacemaker Teams gathering for members and supporters held at the informal Just Church and Soul Space centre in multi-religious Bradford, northern England, from 4-5 June 2006.

He said that since his release in March 2006, along with Canadians Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, his priority had been to spend time with his wife and family. But he acknowledged the continuing media curiosity, and added that though this sometimes made him uncomfortable, he was trying to balance personal needs with responding to widespread interest in Christian peace work.