For the latest Assembly news, please see http://www.mennonitechurch.ca/events/vancouver2012/index.htm

For a summary of the workshop that I led on Three Views of the Atonement and Why They Matter, please see my personal blog http://aprilyamasaki.com/2012/07/16/three-views-of-the-atonement-and-why-they-matter/

I look forward to sharing more later!

The plan is for our new site to be up and running in the next couple of weeks, but even then it will be a work in progress as we get used to the new site and its features. The move itself is planned for early in the week (Mon, Tues, Wed) when our traffic tends to be less, but work on the site will be on-going. We appreciate your patience!

For our new site, I'm looking forward to:
- a more welcoming and up-dated look
- adding an audio sermon feature
- turning this blog from a pastor's blog into more of a church blog with posts from other staff and church members
- more up to date photos - for this, we really need the help of you photographers!

If you have ideas for new features or different ways of doing things, please leave a comment or let me know!

There's still a lot to do before that happens--revising my draft, filling out my author form, meeting with my editor, etc., but I'm very glad for this stage in the process.  I don't have a publication timeline yet, but Time Out: A Daily Personal Retreat is one more step closer to publication!

In the meantime, I've started a personal website on spiritual practice that I hope you'll check out if you haven't already: http://www.aprilyamasaki.com  And I'm planning for the next part of my study leave for the month of October--I'll be away for the entire month with the exception of Missions Weekend Oct. 26-28, since we're planning to have the Residential School Healing Pole here, and I really can't see myself missing that! I'll try to swap that weekend for the last weekend in September instead.....

The easiest way to find us is to visit our homepage and click on our Facebook profile icon there. Please like our Facebook page for the latest news and pictures. We also hope to update our church website too, so please stay tuned!

It was a very well prepared event--no registration fee, advance on-line registration, held in the Best Western conference room with a great buffet breakfast, a gift bag of books and cds for all attendees, a dvd on the history of RBC (which began as a radio ministry, but has expanded in many other areas over the years), staff who were knowledgeable and friendly. I didn't see any of my Mennonite Church BC colleagues there, and just one person I knew from the Mennonite Brethren conference.

One staff member described their theology as "conservative evangelical" which isn't quite the same as "Anabaptist"--in fact, one of the books in my gift bag seemed more in keeping with the  elder-driven church than our congregational form of being the church together, so I won't be passing that one on to our church library. But as the staff member went on to explain, the focus of Our Daily Bread is on a personal relationship with God, not on any particular denomination, and I haven't seen anything in Our Daily Bread that I would be particularly concerned about.

Anyway, I did bring back enough samples to share with all of our council members, deacons, and church staff (RBC staff really didn't want to take everything back to Windsor/Grand Rapids/Singapore where they have offices). If you'd like a sample to review, or are already a regular reader, please let me know.  I'd be interested in your review and responses.   

Oh, are you still here?? Please check out the list of other blogs on our homepage....

- several people asked for a copy of the prayer, Come, Holy Spirit

- one person who is not part of our congregation heard about the sermon and asked for a copy, because Pentecost was not mentioned in his own congregation

- Hans Hofenk shared with me that Pentecost is actually an official holiday in the Netherlands

- Amanda wrote an amazing blog post at http://www.twotiredsoles.blogspot.ca

I'd like to list our Emmanuel bloggers on our home page, so our sense of community can be fostered that way as well. I hope to get that up next week.

Too bad we couldn't get a picture of everyone, but here's some of  the group that was able to crowd onto the stage:

I don't have a rhythm yet for when I'll be on or for how long, but I hope to expand my connections with people this way as a supplement to getting together in person, by phone, email, blog, snail mail, skype, and other ways. Hope to "talk" with you soon!

We won't be using all of the worship materials and stories related to this Many Peoples Sunday, but I was struck by something shared by Derek Cook. He writes:

"In one local store I frequent, there is one aisle in the store labeled and devoted to 'ethnic food'. This is a wonderful aisle full of spices, rice, curries and exotic sounding canned fruits from many parts of the world. Yet, every food in fact carries an ethnicity. Who decides what is 'ethnic' and what is not, and what makes rice any more 'ethnic' than sausage?

"In the other store I frequent, there is no 'ethnic' aisle. All the multiple types and flavours of food are all mixed up together on the shelves side by side. None is more 'ethnic' than other, for we all bear an ethnicity of equal value.

"So how do we come to understand the diversity inherent in the global church? Are we in fact all worshipping equally together side by side? Or are we stuck in our ethnic aisles? And who decides which worship practice or church belongs in which aisle? Do we occasionally wander down the ethnic aisle to sample the interesting items there and then return to the safety of what is familiar? Or do we open oureslves to the exciting possibility of living and worshipping equally with the humlity of being just one of the many, many patterns that make up our diverse community and global church?"  Thanks Derek!

That first question did not actually come from the Mennonite Church Canada "Being a Faithful Church" material. In fact, all of the questions on last Sunday's Feedback Sheet were our own re-working of the material that we had received, based on our discussions at council and with pastors and deacons with Arny Froese as an additional resource.

For me, this first question was an important starting point. After all, if we don't read the Bible, how much impact can it have on our faith and life as a church and as individuals? Besides, to interpret Scripture, we need to read it.

So how did we do? Here's the question again: Apart from Sunday Worship, how often do you read the Bible? Out of 114 completed responses:
Daily: 65
Weekly: 19
Monthly: 0
Other: 9
No Response: 11

When he introduced the Feedback Time, Arny said that this wasn't a test--and he's right, we're not assigning marks in any way, but on another level, I find this question is a kind of test, a kind of challenge. How often do I read the Bible? Most days. And not enough.

For those who want to get on to the discussion of sexuality, I can recommend Sexuality: God's Gift,  first published in 1999, then re-worked and released in 2010 by Herald Press.

The book covers many different aspects of sexuality including intimacy, singleness, marriage, same-sex orientation, cross-gender friendships, aging, arts, celibacy, and much more. As a collection of articles by different authors, the book is somewhat uneven, but remarkably consistent in its biblical/theological approach and overall extremely helpful. I don't see it in our church library, but I'll check with our librarians on this, since I think it's an excellent resource. In the meantime, it's available at the Columbia Bible College library and through House of James.

Here's a preview of my seminar:

Three Views of the Atonement and Why They Matter:
a case study in reading and understanding Scripture
In some circles, the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross has been the subject of much debate. Why does this matter? And what might that debate have to say about the way we read and understand Scripture when it comes to other matters?

This seminar is based on one of my sermons that was also published in Vision. It was recently reprinted in The Community Well which is a newsletter of First Mennonite Church of Winnipeg. I'm not sure that I have anything new to add, but I look forward to the interaction.

I know there'll be eggs at our Easter breakfast on Sunday, and someone gave me two chocolate Easter eggs this morning that I quite enjoyed. But I see Easter eggs more as fun things than as  profound Christian symbols. The Bible actually says nothing about Easter eggs, and I find an egg a rather weak symbol of Jesus' resurrection and the new life we have in him. Jesus wasn't hatched--he was raised from the dead!

So what's the significance of Jesus' resurrection for our lives today? Well, that's my no-egg sermon for this Sunday. I hope to see you there!