I have always had to discern how to talk about my context in a way that enables a healthy conversation and a call to action. This discernment does not only consider the familiarity of the listener with the Israeli-Palestinian context, but also their familiarity with...
Thank you to Ray Aldred for his words of invitation and challenge to the Christian church in Canada. In the wake of the Kamloops discovery and the painful reality that more such discoveries are to come, Ray summons all Settler Canadian Christians to take this...
The news of the finding of the unmarked graves of what is estimated to be 215 children from the Kamloops Indian Residential School has produced all kinds of emotions. A Nisga’a friend put it best for me: “It feels like losing a relative.” All the emotions, all of the...
Four years ago I stepped off a plane, arriving at YVR after a year of living abroad. There at the airport to greet me was Loren Balisky, co-founder of Kinbrace, a community in East Vancouver where refugee claimants and their hosts live side-by-side. I lowered my...
During the COVID pandemic, “non-essential travel” is being restricted both within and between many countries, but what does this mean for asylum seekers? What does it mean for those whose “essential travel” means fleeing civil war or gang violence? And what does a...
I still remember my last in-person communion as if it happened yesterday. It was mid-March 2020 just before the pandemic restrictions started. My church had organized a farewell dinner for a few members who were travelling back to their countries and, as customary for...
The pandemic has given us all pause to reflect on the meaning and value of a great many things we took for granted. Chief among these for Christians should be the Eucharist, specifically, how it guides us to do life with our most vulnerable neighbours and forms us...
Reverend Joshua Koh recently wrote an op-ed in Church for Vancouver’s weekly editorial column in which he encouraged the Christian community in Vancouver to actively engage in conversations about race and racism. After briefly sharing his journey in anti-racism and...
As a pastor serving in Vancouver, I invite you to join an ongoing conversation. It’s a messy conversation. It can be an exhausting conversation. Sometimes it requires confrontation and conflict. I know that doesn’t sound like a very Canadian thing to do. But as a...
In a letter dated August 3, 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sketched an outline for a book he never wrote. The outline concludes with a description of a ‘church for others’ – a consistent theme throughout Bonhoeffer’s theology. He wrote, The church is church only when it is...