This first edition of the journal for 2026 has a little something for almost everyone: biography/memoir/story, history and theology, practical ideas, and even something for the imagination.
Leading off this edition is part one of Miriam (Mim) Stern’s memoir, Stirrings: Seventy-Plus Years in God’s Service. I have known Mim since I was a young child when she took care of me at her home at Matopo Mission in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) while my mother was in Bulawayo waiting to give birth to my little brother. Later, she gave me my first piano lessons at Youngways Hostel and came with others to the train station in Bulawayo to say goodbye when our family left the Rhodesias for the United States in 1961. We’ve come full circle since then, and we now both live at Messiah Lifeways.
After Mim and her late husband returned from many years of missionary service in Africa, they went to Philadelphia to live and serve among international students in that city. Mim stayed on after Pete passed away. For several years before she moved from Philadelphia to Messiah Lifeways, I and others pestered her about writing her story. Over time, she sent me a collection of individual stories, and more recently her sister-in-law Alvera Stern worked with her to form those stories into a coherent chronological narrative. The first part of that narrative, published here, covers the early years of her life until she and Pete first went to Africa in 1952; watch for the rest of the story at some later time.
Regular readers will know that it is our custom to publish the papers from the annual Sider Institute conference. The 2025 conference was on the theme of “Renewing Our Imaginations for Christian Discipleship.” Keynote speakers were Luke Embree and Jon Carlson, and one of the workshops was led by Christina Embree. Their presentations are published in this edition. We don’t generally feature famous art in the journal, but Carlson’s conference presentation relied so heavily on the use of several classic paintings to spark the audience’s imagination that we had to include images of several of those he referenced that are in the public domain so readers can better understand his point.
Multiple times, the journal has explored the life and writings of H. Frances Davidson, pioneer Brethren in Christ missionary to Africa, including at least two previous articles by Lucille Marr. Morris Sider included a biography of Davidson in Nine Portraits, published in 1978 by the Historical Society. Now Marr, a distant relative of Davidson, is in the process of writing a new biography. In her most recent article about Davidson for the journal, “Ghost Stories,” Marr relates how she came to the decision to write this new biography:
My relationship with Frances Davidson has progressed slowly, over years—and decades—there have been glimmers, then nothing. . . . As I inch my way forward in the attempt to come closer to Frances and my own roots, I return to three moments . . . where I caught a glimpse of Frances: summer 1974, summer 1991, and summer 2015.
The last two articles are more theological but include practical ideas for what others can do in their own settings. Joshua Nolt describes how his congregation at Lancaster (PA) Brethren in Christ Church came to embrace the church calendar and liturgical practice, while Matthew Peterson explores how Jesus’s admonition to care for “the least of these” works itself out in his congregation and community in Lexington, Kentucky.
Finally, the four books reviewed in this edition address the current ills of nationalism and consumerism and all “three streams of our heritage”—as Luke Keefer Jr. aptly named Pietism, Anabaptism, and Wesleyanism thirty years ago this year.
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