Tag: Elaine Enns

“DEEP DIVES” – the 2024 Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute

BCM Online
BKI2024 image logo

BKI2024 will focus on two longstanding commitments of BCM:

Building capacity for Decolonizing Discipleship
and
Sabbath Economics. 

These four days offer an opportunity for deep dives into both themes for educator/practitioners.  Two tracks will unfold in parallel: 

  • a Healing Haunted Histories track facilitated by Elaine, who will be joined by Cree Elder Harry Lafond, Muskeg Lake First Nation (limit 12), and
  • a Sabbath Economics track examining the Gospel of Luke and contemporary problems of Affluenza and Plutocracy facilitated by Ched and team (limit 25).

Because these themes speak to each other deeply, we will weave them together in plenary sessions to open and close each day. 

Preliminary registration opens Dec 1, 2023. Information and registration at www.bcm-net.org/study/bki2024 

Eco-Lent Resources

Eco-Lent Resources

Cherice Bock

Lent is a meaningful time in the church calendar to focus on watershed discipleship: How will you be a more faithful disciple within your watershed this season?

We suggest below a number of Lenten devotionals focused on care for creation and environmental justice. A member of the watershed discipleship community, C. John Hildebrand, put together a daily reading schedule for Elaine Enns and Ched Myers’ new book, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization, so you can read through it during Lent, knowing others are doing the same. Here are some of our suggestions for focusing your Lenten practice on watershed discipleship:

Image: “Sunset through Horatio N. May Chapel,” Tim Nafziger

Pre-order “Healing Haunted Histories” | Discount code

Pre-order “Healing Haunted Histories” | Discount code

Cherice Bock

In Healing Haunted Histories, Elaine Enns and Ched Myers invite readers to consider how the call to follow Jesus is also a summons to racial justice and decolonization. They chart a path for how we can dig into our family histories to face our own “ghosts” of settler colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and white supremacy.

This 400-page book is equal parts: memoir (mostly focusing on Enns’ Mennonite family and community, who endured the Russian Civil War, fled the Soviet aftermath, and settled on Indigenous land in Saskatchewan in the 1920s);  social analysis; theological reflection, and workbook for those ready to “do their own work.”

For a limited time, friends of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries are eligible for a special discount off the softcover edition of Healing Haunted Histories $38 USD retail price. Get the coupon code and learn more>

Read more →
Indigenous Justice & Christian Faith: Land, Law, Language | February 18–22, 2019

Indigenous Justice & Christian Faith: Land, Law, Language | February 18–22, 2019

WD Editors

[Artwork: Wowasake kin slolyapo wowahwala he e: Know the Power of Peace, Diptych icon of Black Elk by Robert Two Bulls, artist-in-residence at this year’s Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute.]

This year’s Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute will consider the topic, “Indigenous Justice & Christian Faith: Land, Law, Language.” Held February 18–22, 2019 at Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (BCM) in Oak View, CA (unceded Chumash Territory, Ventura River Watershed). Regular registration is open through January 27, and late registration will be available through February 3 (with a 10% extra fee). Read more →

Elaine Enns & Ched Myers teaching at Ghost Ranch retreat on watershed discipleship June 24-30

Elaine Enns & Ched Myers teaching at Ghost Ranch retreat on watershed discipleship June 24-30

WD Editors

Join Elaine Enns and Ched Myers at Ghost Ranch June 24-30 for a retreat called “Signs of the Times — Watershed Discipleship and Restorative Justice: Mapping Bloodlines, Landlines, and Songlines.”

Ghost Ranch is a beautiful education and retreat center in New Mexico, an excellent location in which to rest, explore, and learn together with others. Read more →

“Becoming Unsettled” by Elaine Enns on Sojourners

Cherice Bock

An article by Elaine Enns is live now on Sojourners called “Becoming Unsettled.” In it, she tells the story of a region in Saskatchewan where she grew up, Stoney Knoll, a land that had been given to her Mennonite forebears by the Canadian government, and which by treaty belonged to the Young Chippewayans and other tribes from the region. She tells about the work toward restorative justice occurring between Mennonites and the Young Chippewayans since 1976. At that time, the Young Chippewayans began visiting their land, talking to the Mennonite farmers about the broken treaty, a situation Enns describes as “unsettling” for the Mennonites. Weaving in stories of Indigenous rights activism, efforts by Mennonites toward reparations, and the work of re-membering all the stories of that land and its people, Enns offers an example of one community working toward reconciliation in the wake of centuries of church-supported colonization. Check out the article, and allow Christ to speak to your heart about how to work toward reconciliation with the land and people in your own region.