WN: This paper was presented in Winnipeg exactly 50 years after 40 men(!) gathered to establish Mennoninte Central Committee Canada: 43 years after its US counterpart had been founded. It was a privilege to have been part of the “story-telling” on that occasion. (If the notice is kept on the website, see: MCCC 50th Anniversary.)
Esther Epp-Tiessen’s book, Mennonite Central Committee in Canada was also launched that weekend. Paul Bramadat, Director of Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, declared the book “magesterial”.
an excerpt:
By God’s quirk and grace, where I went with this initially was to the Student Job Search Office on the UBC campus! There I learned in the spring of 1976 for the first time about this amazing international agency that actually tried to flesh out the politics of Jesus! It was called MCC. I say with deep appreciation: Thank God that MCC was there to model, to shape, and to inspire a continual embrace of the politics of Jesus, just when I was (not knowing even) looking for it! Not perfectly of course, as Esther points out in her book. There are many valid critiques, and there are skeletons not a few… I guess I mean approximately, “stumblingly”, aspiringly. May it ever be so for MCC with this “pearl of great price”!
I was given 8 minutes. The paper highlighted is an expanded version. I could have told so many stories!
Please click on: MCCC 50 – RJ Stories
