Best Practices

Editor's note: This is the second post in our new series How to Stay in Conversation with "the Other Side". During this series, we hope to learn together how to communicate about contentious issues in ways that build up the Body of Christ. Above all, we hope that this series will help you stay in conversation in constructive ways that honor and respect the image of God in those you disagree with and in the people affected by the issues about which you are talking.

And that brings us to Lent. These public schools offer an opportunity, a door, to reach out past our comfort zone and meet our neighbor.

Over the years, God has placed ministry to and with the First Nations peoples on the hearts of several people in our congregation (Emo Christian Reformed Church). As a direct result of our involvement with God’s Great Outdoors, three men from our congregation asked the question, “How can we have a shared ministry with the First Nations people living all around us?” Last winter, Larry, Richard, and Dan contacted Adrian Snowball, one of the Elders of the Naicatchewenin people, living at Northwest Bay Reserve.

I first began volunteering as a mentor to refugees because I wanted to be involved in some kind of ministry that reached beyond the boundaries of my everyday life at home and through my church. Being a mentor fit well because I could work it around my schedule and it gave me opportunity to connect with needy people from different places in the world. I enjoyed helping those first families, and still call them my friends, but much of the blessing for me at that time came from the sense of accomplishment I felt about having helped someone. 

My kindergartener came home excited this weekend -- he’d gotten a free book, one that he could keep! He wanted to read it right away.

As soon as I saw the book, I tried to deflect. “Maybe later, honey.” Nope! Now!

“Wouldn’t you like to find a different book? There a whole bunch of new ones from the library on the table.” Nope! This one! The Indian one.

It’s Thanksgiving season in the United States -- when many of our kids will come home with construction paper head-dresses and mythology about a peaceful dinner between "Pilgrims and Indians."

“I am pro-life.” I hear those words frequently, but have come to realize that people who say them often mean different things.

After noticing that some of the books we grew up reading were less than inclusive and made for attitudes about our neighbors that had to be unlearned, we started wondering...how do parents and educators find books that both explicitly and implicitly support a cornerstone of our theology--that all people are made in the image of God? We've asked a number of justice-minded parents and educators for their thoughts. Today we hear from Laura Veenema, a literacy tutor and mom in Chicago. 

Books that are imaginative and creative also help our kids develop a sense of wonder, curiosity, and possibility. These are helpful traits when imagining what a world that is different than the status quo could be like, an important aspect of working for justice.

As I read the article my heart sank as I realized that the cruise ship line industry has begun to promote volunteerism cruises in order to attract millennials, a younger customer base who have a bent for social justice causes.

How can Canadian Christians celebrate Canada Day this year in a way that rightly honours a great country without falling into either idolatrous patriotism or divisive nationalism? It all comes down to the story we tell ourselves and others in our celebrations around the BBQ and the fireworks.