Teen Challenge

It's so windy in Saskatchewan today that my studio door won't stay shut unless I lock it! This will be very inconvenient later when music students start coming every half hour.

But the wind is not my topic today: Teen Challenge is. A group of 12 men from Teen Challenge Saskatchewan visited my church, Strasbourg Alliance, on Sunday. They sang and spoke about their experiences and how they are being transformed.

After the presentation the men visited in the foyer awhile. I talked to John, who has been in the program for 5 months with 7 left. His addictions were alcohol and work and they were ruining his marriage. He said he used to work hard (up to 100 hours a week!) and play hard (i.e., party). Interestingly, his drinking never interfered with his performance as an employee. He made enough money that he could give his wife anything she wanted, but he didn’t realize that she and the kids would trade it all for 10 minutes of his time. Then last spring she left him.

This was a real wake up call, so John applied for Teen Challenge. He was accepted in May and had one week to get ready. When he asked for a year off from his job they were understandably shocked and asked why. He told them, “You know my wife has left me. My drinking is a problem and I need to get it under control.” His employers asked, “Why do you need a year? Take 2 weeks, see a counselor and you’ll be fine.” But John was resolute: “No, I need a year.” So his employers said, “Okay, you’ve given us 10 good years, we can give you one year.” Not only did they give him a year’s leave, they also paid his income IN FULL until disability insurance kicked in! So his wife is completely cared for. In fact, without John at home drinking their money, his wife is actually getting ahead on some of their debts! 

Not only is John’s family in a better financial position, his marriage is being healed. “We never really dated,” he says. They lived together for 2 years and have been married for 6, but now with occasional visits, weekly phone calls, and lots of letters, they are discovering each other in brand new ways and the newfound intimacy amazes them. John was given a one day leave for his anniversary and says he and his wife connected better in 6 hours than they had in 6 years.

They are also discovering God together. In June, John’s wife came for a visit and he told her Jesus’ words, that if a man leaves mother and father and houses and lands and even wife and children for Jesus’ sake, it will be returned to him 100 fold. His wife responded, “You can come home, but you won’t be bringing any of that with you!” Well, since then she has become a Christian and she’s excited about John “bringing that” with him.

“I’m a new man,” says John. When he finishes the program, he and his wife are going to renew their vows. They are not the same and their family is getting a brand new start.

Teen Challenge was started 50 years ago by David Wilkerson in New York City. The story has been told in the movie The Cross and the Switchblade (1970) starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada.

riding the rails to share songs from new CD

Bryan Moyer Suderman rides the rails over 9,000 km to share songs from new CD\

What better way to celebrate the release of a new CD than to ride the rails for a month, covering over 9,000 km from Toronto to Vancouver and back, with plenty of singing stops in between?

That’s what Bryan Moyer Suderman is doing from September 15 to October 15, eager to share the songs from his new CD “A New Heart: songs of faith for small and tall.”

Moyer Suderman describes his newest CD, the 4th released on his SmallTall Music label, as the most “playful” and “ambitious” of any recording he’s done so far. With original songs that are evocative, engaging, and simple without being simplistic, Bryan sings from Genesis to the Gospels, Esther to Ephesians with a top-flight crew of backing musicians in styles ranging from folk and bluegrass to zydeco, bossa nova, and New Orleans jazz.

It’s easy to see why Moyer Suderman has become known for his unique gift of crafting songs and performances that draw from the deep wells of biblical vision and wisdom while being accessible and fun for young and old alike. Since the release of his first CD in 2002, Bryan’s “songs of faith for small and tall” have become favourites with families and churches across North America and beyond, and have been published in various hymnal, songbook, curriculum and other resources.

But why travel by train?

While travel and performing is an important part of Moyer Suderman’s work (he recently returned from Paraguay, where he was part of the song leading team at the Mennonite World Conference Assembly), he also struggles with how to carry out this vocation in a way that is sustainable economically and ecologically as well as sustainable in terms of healthy relationships with his family and local community (he attends Community Mennonite Church of Stouffville Ontario).

As a result, Moyer Suderman works to keep his long-distance travel schedule confined to a limited number of weeks per year, and then to “make hay while the sun shines” and perform as much as possible while he is on the road. The CanRail Pass offers a way to do that at a low cost and in a way that reduces the carbon emissions that would result from more “one-off” flights to long-distance engagements. Moyer Suderman completed a coast-to-coast USA railroad tour last spring, and has begun planning for the next one as well. “Besides,” Moyer Suderman says, “I love to travel by train!”

Another key component of Moyer Suderman’s long-term strategy is what he calls his “Community Supported Music” system. This is an innovative online delivery system for music that is patterned after the “Community Supported Agriculture” (CSA) approach, making regular “deliveries” of new songs that are “fresh, home-grown, and always in season.” Since pioneering this alternative business model for the arts which is entering its fourth year, Moyer Suderman has made 12 “deliveries” of new songs - complete with music notation, chords, thoughts and reflections, and activity ideas and tips for using the songs in home, school, and congregational settings. Various other artists have picked up on the idea as well, have been applying this model to their own work.

For more about Bryan Moyer Suderman recordings, downloads, and performances, visit www.smalltallmusic.com, follow his touring adventures on his blog www.smalltallmusings.blogspot.com, and discover more about his “Community Supported Music” system at www.bryanmoyersuderman.com.

Moyer Suderman will be performing an all-ages concert at the Old United Church in Duval, SK on Sunday, October 4th. There will be a potluck at Newschool Arts (the old school) at 5:00 p.m. with concert to follow in the old United Church at 7:00 p.m.

new album, new songs

The artwork files for the Colleen and Dara Minus 40 Tour Live CD are away to Precision Disc!

 

I uploaded several more songs for sale this week. The entire Good Storyline collection is now online for purchase (it’s listed under two albums: Good Storyline and Prairie Soul) plus soundtracks for the Prairie Soul set. I’ve also uploaded a new single, “Maiden Song.” It’s 20 years old but feels timeless to me because of the memories …

 

Listen and order here.

 

Enjoy!

Remembering Jean

Some memorable moments and comments from Jean (nee Whittaker) Rhode Mahn's funeral:

Jean was buried with her husbands' love letters. Only one other person had ever been allowed to read them: her caregiver Wendy, who would read them aloud to Jean.

Joel Rudy:

Jean was a storyteller. "We'll never know if all those stories were true, but they were sure interesting!"

"Jean talked about Briercrest incessantly. That was her life--and Moose Jaw. I did promise one thing: that I would bring her home."

Loved her smile.

It was very important for Jean to have devotions every evening. When she couldn't read them herself, someone else would read them to her.

She was notorious for introducing herself as "Jean Rohde Mahn, Presbyterian, Republican." She introduced her dog, Muffy, the same way.

Jean had very particular tastes, especially Lord and Taylor clothing.

After Jean's second husband Bob proposed, his friend Joel asked, "Are you sure you wan tto marry this woman? She's going to be in charge." Bob replied, "I know."

All four of her caregivers and Joel gathered on the night of Jean's passing. It was a very touching moment as Muffy, her loving dog, licked her hand and said good-bye.

Dwayne Uglem, President, Briercrest College & Seminary:

"She and her family gave us so much zest for life, energy, and enthusiasm."

Like the children of so many founders, Jean was required to set aside so much in this life.

Jean was eager to go places and see things. She had a month-long honeymoon that took her to so many places in Europe.

Jean's Bible surfaced in a remarkable set of events the week of her death. It would have been the Bible she used in her 20s in college. On the title page was a list of special passages:

Philippians 4:19
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Exodus 34:6
And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.

John 14:21
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

John 17:3
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Romans 15:3
For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.

Hebrews 2:14
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.

A remarkable collection of promises. This is our God, this is the God that the Whittakers so eagerly wanted to introduce to Briercrest, to Saskatchewan, to Canada, and to the world.

Money, marriage & the Kingdom

I get these devotional thoughts every day. Sometimes I read them. This one I read and found it helpful, esp. in thinking about marriage. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. Would this marriage be a Kingdom builder?

Builder. Language fails. For so much of my life I’ve had an activist perspective on what it means to seek first God’s Kingdom, but I’m realizing more and more that it’s not just what we do for and in the Kingdom, but who we are. I know that often marriage and parenting, especially stay-at-home mothering, are relentless, a crucible even, and that it can feel like one is stuck and not doing much “for the Kingdom.” But faithfulness in the mundane and laborious leads to holiness, and Kingdom things are birthed in the unlikeliest of places.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Express Email Marketing [mailto:mailer_response@emailcounts.com] On Behalf Of Two Listeners
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2009 3:06 AM
Subject: GC - September 12 - Money Values

God Calling

Money Values

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. - Matthew 6:33

If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. - Matthew 6:22

The eye of the soul is the will. If your one desire is My Kingdom, to find that Kingdom, to serve that Kingdom, then truly shall your whole body be full of light.

When you are told to seek first the Kingdom of God, the first step is to secure that your will is for that Kingdom. A single eye to God's glory. Desiring nothing less than that His Kingdom come. Seeking in all things the advance of His Kingdom.

Know no values but Spiritual values. No profit but that of Spiritual gain. Seek in all things His Kingdom first.

Only seek material gain when that gain will mean a gain for My Kingdom. Get away from money values altogether. Walk with Me. Learn of Me. Talk to Me. Here lies your true happiness.

But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Luke 12:31

Tribute to Jean (nee Whittaker) Rohde Mahn

A Tribute to Jean (nee Whittaker) Rohde Mahn

September 10, 2009

In his book, Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner writes of the importance of personal history:

Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually (p. 30).

In the fall of 2004 I began to work on keeping track of such stories through a Master’s thesis, collecting oral histories of a handful of women from the early days of Briercrest College & Seminary. Jean Rohde Mahn was one of the five women I interviewed. She invited me to stay overnight in her lovely Athens, Ohio home, which I did in June 2005—an elegant and gracious home, full of antiques and memories. We had nearly 24 hours together. I met her darling dog Muffy, two of her caregivers and one good friend. We went to the gym where she rode a recumbent bike, and she proudly toured me around Athens, especially the university. Meeting Jean was one of the great serendipities of my graduate studies.

Jean’s early life involved many sacrifices in and for Briercrest, while her later life led to unimagined opportunities. She had a career in higher education, followed by two special marriages, first to Tom Rohde, a Wall Street lawyer, and later to Bob Mahn, a faculty member at Ohio University. Keenly interested in matters of historical record, Jean was eager to meet with me. She remained connected with Briercrest throughout her life, as a supporter, an encourager, and sometimes challenger. During one life season, Jean and Bob lived in Moose Jaw and ate frequently at the former Pilgrim Restaurant.

Jean Mahn’s life is a story of reversed fortunes. As a girl in the 1930s involved in a fledgling college, she felt that she suffered and sacrificed many things by someone else’s choosing, yet these things were returned to her and multiplied later in life. She told me her father could have been a millionaire, but that he gave it all away to the school; later in life she would associate with millionaires, naming one as a best friend and, with her second husband, would give a $1 million gift to support Ohio University Libraries. Denied a bicycle in her teens, she flew on the Concorde jet in her seventies. She went from cleaning up Briercrest’s Yale Hotel in the 1930s and working into her 50s to support herself and supplement her parents’ pension, to marrying—for the first time at 53—a husband who, she said, “did not want me to work.” From giving up her bed for countless guests in her teens, to being “able to stay at [New York's] Waldorf Astoria any time, any weekend” because of her first husband’s job. Both husbands took care of her and helped to provide for her parents. Jean Mahn’s life is a great reversal: closed and “governed” at first, but ever expanding.

In spite of marrying so late in life, Jean’s husbands occupy a prominent place in her narrative. During her single years, Jean did some things she had always dreamed of, like learning to dance, but it was after she married that she really felt she began to have “an exciting life.” Near the end of her interview, Jean told me, “I have a lot to be thankful for, that I had such good friends and I don’t suppose anyone’s had the privileges that I’ve had in my later life.” Indeed, few people experience such dramatic shifts in a lifetime.

Jean met her first husband through a chance encounter, meeting Tom Rohde at Le Moal Restaurant in New York City through a stranger who very kindly invited her to share his taxi when she was stranded due to a snowstorm at La Guardia Airport.

She met her second husband through similar happenstance. Jean had always tried to follow her father’s advice: “Anytime you go to a strange city, be sure to take a bus trip if you can.” This is how she met her second husband, Bob Mahn, whom she married twenty years later. She was able to convalesce in her final home in Athens, Ohio thanks to Bob, who had arranged 24-hour live-in care for her after he died.

Jean basked in the companionship and privileges that came with both of her marriages, yet she remained quite independent. For example, refusing to cancel a lunch date when Bob Mahn came from the States to visit her in Moose Jaw, then putting off marriage to him until after a pre-planned trip on the Queen Mary to the British Isles.

Very interested in historical records, Jean referred often to her late husband Bob’s archival work at Ohio University. In fact, because of their separate academic careers they often consulted with each other in the 20 years between meeting and marrying. As you know, together they founded the Robert E. and Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections at the Ohio University Libraries. Jean used our visit very intentionally to provide me with as much material as possible to support my research: letters, newspaper clippings, other writings, and pictures.

I emerged from my research with a sense of wonder at being entrusted with precious memories, living connections to history that enrich the particular story of Briercrest and the wider stories of women in Saskatchewan and North America. Perhaps in Jean Rohde Mahn’s story someone will, as Frederich Buechner hopes, “recognize that in many ways it is also” theirs. Certainly, in Jean’s life we can see the active hand of God. To have known Jean, even for 24 hours, and to have been entrusted with her story has enriched my life.