Darren's Blog

A couple weeks ago I attended the Kingdom Economy conference put on by Epiphaneia (http://www.epconference.net). If you're wondering why it took me so long to post my responses, it's because the speakers encouraged us to take time to digest the material and not push out sound bytes afterwards. So now that I've had time to reflect on it one thing in particular has stuck with me.

I presented a workshop on creation care this week to the Mennonite Camping Association conference. Bunch of camp directors sharing ideas for furthering camp ministry. Some interesting comments (paraphrased):
- "We have children who are too afraid to come to camp. When shots go off in the city they don't flinch, but the noises of the outdoors leave them fearful. How you can teach appreciation for creation when it scares them to death?"

Today is International Woman’s Day. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need such a day as the rights of women would be a given. But we don’t live in that world, so this day is a great inspiration to women, and a helpful reminder to men of our male privilege granted by a patriarchal society.

An interesting blog post from the folk at Fuller Youth Institute: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2010/02/burned-out-parents-burned-out-ki...

Research shows that parents who feel burned out often influence their families so that their children become burned out as well. It's obvious that youth take after their parents in many ways, but it's interesting to think that our levels of stress are not only noticed by youth, but often contribute to their own stress levels.

We officially unveiled the “Season of Discernment” on Sunday. After much planning and dreaming, our church is poised to spend some intentional time in prayer and discernment.

It’s been an interesting experience organizing this time, especially confirming hosts for these prayer gatherings. A number of people have expressed some discomfort in leading a time of prayer. If you’re one of them, perhaps you’re looking to the pastors for some encouragement and reassurance. Well, I actually have a confession to make…

I don’t feel comfortable leading prayer either.

Just finished preparing for Sunday's sermon. It's a doozy - you won't want to miss it!

This Sunday and for the next few weeks we'll be exploring who exactly this God we worship every Sunday (and everyday of course) is. Some of our Mennonite understanding of God is found in the Confession of Faith from a Mennonite Perspective. Check it out over at Mennolink

Yes, it's that time of year again...time to get inundated with messages of "if you love them you'll buy this" and annoying gimmicky songs. Now before you go and call me a Christmas scrooge, let me defend myself...actually, no, you're right, I am a scrooge.

I was at the 25+ Bible Study last week where we watched Simply Enough. Shane Claiborne challenged us that true Christian community must extend across class lines, for it is in these instances that we understand God's love more deeply.

Tonight our youth will be serving at Out of the Cold again. The guests we serve are clearly in need. They are in need of a warm meal. They are in need of a warm space to sleep. I can help provide these things.

But what do I need? And can the people I serve provide these things to me? These questions will be going through my mind tonight, and I'm not sure of the answers yet. But here's a few of the things I need:

I need to accept I'm human. I don't like this one bit, but I can't do everything, even though society tells me over and over to be "productive" and "efficient" with my time to get the most out of life. Can I learn this from people living in poverty?

I need to reject entitlement. I don't deserve wealth and expensive meals any more than my neighbours deserve poverty and a lack of meals.

I need to learn unconditional love. Do I love people as Jesus did or only when they do things to make me happy?

What do you need?

Yesterday junior youth from MCEC churches met at Rockway for the Junior Youth Breakaway. I think our youth had a really good time - and I did too!

The theme Caring for God's World, and the keynote speaker was yours truly! I hoped to inspire our youth to take their future into their own hands and lead the church in caring for God's creation. I picked up on the song How can we be silent? from Sing the Journey. The final line is "We will shape the future. We will not be silent!"

A brief summary of my message.