Live a Rich Life, CMU Graduates Told

62 Receive Degrees in Arts, Music, Music Therapy, Church Ministries; 78 graduate from Outtatown

“Live a rich life.”

That’s what commencement speaker Arli Klassen, Executive Director of Mennonite Central Committee, told 62 graduates of Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) at the university’s April 20 graduation ceremony.

For Klassen, a rich life is not just about getting a good career and earning a living. It is also one where graduates “joyfully accept the gifts” God has given them and “use them in service to others.” It’s a life that “reaches into all the places where God lives,” reaching out to the “sick, the poor and the outcasts in society.”

The Valedictorian address was given by Jonathan Dyck of Winkler, Man., who received a B.A. with a major in English. He noted that studies at CMU had helped him draw “connections between faith and life,” and “made me see what it means to be the church.”

“Our story does not end with our graduation from CMU,” he said. “It continues on through the life of the church.”

During the ceremony, students received degrees in Arts, Music, Music Therapy and Church Ministries. Of special note was CMU’s very first Hutterite graduate, Jesse Hofer of the Silverwinds Colony near Rosenort, Man. (See story)

The commencement ceremony capped a week of activity at CMU that included the Outtatown graduation on April 13, and the annual Celebration Dinner and Spring Concert.

Prior to the afternoon commencement, Harry Huebner, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, spoke at the morning Baccalaureate service on the theme verse chosen by the graduation class: “Be strong, vigorous, and very courageous. Be not afraid, neither be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Commencement speaker Arli Klassen, Executive Director of Mennonite Central Committee, with CMU President Gerald Gerbrandt.

Noting that many people today live in fear of terrorism, global warming, pandemic and other things, Huebner said that “our ability to overcome our fears rests in God, for God’s way with the world will not be thwarted.”

Huebner, who is retiring from teaching after 37 years at CMU and CMBC, one of the university’s predecessor colleges, went on to wish graduates the “courage of open hands, not clenched fists . . . if God is with us, who can be against us?” Click here to read Huebner’s address.

Also sharing at the Baccalaureate Service was Kimberly Penner of Waterloo, Ont., who received a B.A. with a major in Biblical and Theological Studies. For her, CMU was a place where she could develop her leadership potential, get a university education and get a “more mature and well-rounded understanding of the Bible . . . God has worked through CMU to shape me in so many positive ways.”

At the April 19 Celebration Dinner, part of graduation weekend activities, speaker Dr. John Foerster noted that Christians must strive for excellence in all they do. “If we lose excellence,” he stated, “we lose the right to be heard.”

Foerster, former director of the St. Boniface Hospital Research Foundation and a member of Winnipeg’s McDermot Avenue Baptist Church, went on to say that “loving God with our minds” has sometimes been forgotten by evangelical Christians, resulting in “theological illiteracy” and an emphasis on “feelings rather than ideas.” The result, he said, is that “nobody listens to us anymore.”

“I’m happy to see the advent of institutions of Christian learning that are pledged to loving God with the mind,” he said, adding that “our country is crying out for the kind of leadership you [CMU] are capable of producing.”

A week earlier 78 students graduated from the Outtatown adventure and discipleship program on April 13. Speaker Brian Larmour, pastor of Winnipeg’s Assiniboia-Charleswood Community Church, encouraged the graduates to be like dandelions whose influence, like dandelion seeds “is carried around the world . . . God’s vision for his people is to be like dandelions, spreading His love wherever we go.”

Outtatown Site Leader Heidi Peters of Abbotsford, B.C. noted that during the program that students learned about injustice, homelessness and poverty, but also about ways they could be “part of the circle of giving.”

Student Jennifer Nickel of Delta, B.C. said that the program had “made Christianity real” and that she can now better see how “God reveals Himself in people around me.”

Another student, Adrienne Leitch of Toronto, Ont., spoke about how Outtatown put her in settings that pushed her to her limits, and which showed how much she could do. “Thank-you, Outtatown, for putting me in those situations,” she said. “I learned that God is a steady and reliable source of strength.”

Click here for photos from graduation, 2008.

A special thanks goes out to Winnipeg’s Shelmerdine Garden Centre for providing the plants and flowers for the stage for the graduation ceremony.

Posted April 22, 2008.