This week I read an article on gender medicine in Christianity Today, a magazine I appreciate and nearly always agree with. It happens I fully agree with the writer that adolescents should not be receiving gender-altering treatment, but it was disappointing that their argument seemed to have so little sense of the issue either for parents trying to understand or communicate with their “trans” kids or people of any age who experience gender dysphoria/incongruence. Worse, the writer’s use of the biblical text was scant and superficial yet their conclusion allowed no room for discussion.

Award-winning Canadian author Miriam Toews based her 2018 book Women Talking on these events, and in December 2022 a movie from Sarah Polley based on the book was released in theatres to generally positive reviews but also some frustration from those with first-hand knowledge or experience on the colonies. This story, as foreign as it may seem to most of us, is very connected to EMC.

It’s easy to pick on the details a movie gets wrong, like how the colony’s village was laid out wrong or how names were mispronounced, but those details were not particularly important to anyone we spoke to about Women Talking.

This past summer, an Indigenous woman stopped by our office to talk about her work with a sixties scoop foundation. She wanted to talk about the possibility of the EMC offering an official apology to people like her who had been adopted or fostered in non-Indigenous EMC homes. She grew up not far from me and had stories about the abuse she and her Indigenous friends had faced in the area.

“We’re doing quite well” was the initial response we received most often from pastors, youth leaders and a school principal regarding conflict in their setting.

My “group” spans the full spectrum on politics, science, social issues, COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccinations.

Erica Fehr, editor for Growing Together, interviews the Mount Salem leadership team regarding safety in the church.

This weekend—this year—isn’t a time for emotional detachment. It’s been a year of death, of separation and profound misunderstandings. And now it’s the Easter weekend—a time of death, of separation and profound misunderstandings.

Just over a week ago, Myanmar’s military took over the government it already largely controlled.

Unless we’re already too jaded to care, news of sexual abuse by yet another respected Christian leader will be unsettling and discouraging.