Sent 2016: The Great Commandment and the Great Commission – Two Sides of a Coin

Sent 2016: A gathering of Mennonites planting Jesus-centered communities, was the first gathering of Anabaptist-Mennonite church planters of its kind. Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Mission Network brought together church planters, groups testing the call, pastors, missiologists and conference leaders March 31-April 2, to explore approaches, best practices and the variety of perspectives that exist […]

Amos Shakya Named one of 20 under 40

5.27. 2016 Written By: Gordon Houser and Hannah Heinzekehr 1454 Times read It’s an old trope: the lament that young adults are falling away from the church and a sense of despair for the church’s future. And it may be true: What church looks like, where church happens and how young adults engage is likely […]

Black Lives Matter

On Sunday morning December 7, 2014, the Living Water congregation walked out of the meetinghouse and into the street. We fell to our knees and lifted our hands, together insisting that Black Lives Matter. Several days earlier, a grand jury in New York City had failed to issue an indictment in the death of Eric […]

Chicago Mennonites join movements for racial justice

  Photo: Alice and Leah Kabira of Lombard (Ill.) Mennonite Church attended the Nov. 27 protest on Michigan Ave. in Chicago. Photo provided.  “16 shots. 13 months. 16 shots. 13 months.” When protesters shut down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on one of the biggest shopping days of the year, several Chicago-area Mennonites were among those […]

Building bridges in Chicago and beyond By Jennifer Steiner

Living Water Community Church, a long-time MCC partner, is committed to developing their youth into leaders within their congregation and in the broader Chicago community. By partnering with several MCC programs, young adults are given the opportunity to explore their gifts while ministering to their diverse neighbors. History According to Pastor Kristin Jackson, the congregation, […]

Celebrating 20 Years!

On the Sunday after Labor Day in September, 1995, a group of about forty adults and as many children gathered for worship in the borrowed upstairs fellowship hall of a church on the north side of Chicago. The air was full of nervous, excited energy. Some of us had been praying and planning for this […]

VBS Rugs to be Auctioned

Look what the kids made at VBS this year! Families were asked to bring socks, VBS volunteers cut them into loops, and the kids knotted them together like rubber bands. A spontaneous contest arose as to who could make the longest chain of sock loops. Then, with the VBS students watching and participating, we wove […]

Nepali Believers Strengthen the Foundation of Living Water Community Church

When the Darjee family arrived in Chicago in January, 2010 from a 17-year sojourn in a Nepali refugee camp, a Nepali-speaking MCC church community worker welcomed them into the local Mennonite Church, Living Water Community Church.  MCC worker Amos Shakya had arrived in the U.S. two years earlier under Youth with a Mission sponsorship, coming […]

Becoming a Visible, Voluntary Contrast Society

Many people have asked what it means to be an Anabaptist Christian. In coming to understand this way of life, I have been grateful for the wisdom and life example of Sally Schreiner Youngquist. Sally leads LWCC’s Fellowship of Rogers Park cell group, which is also a part of Reba Place Fellowship.  She currently serves […]

Don’t worry. It’s okay.

“Don’t worry. It’s okay.” These are the words that I most associate with my colleague, Pastor Samrach Nuth. I’ve lost count of the times he’s said this after I’ve brought up some issue that troubled me. “We are the sons and daughters of the Living God,” he added yesterday, by way of explanation. Other times, […]