Behind the scenes

Welcome to a special “share the mic” issue

Who do you mentor? Who mentors you? You might have an easy answer for at least one of these questions. Or you might be struggling to answer both – and maybe starting to wonder why.

Mentoring is important to a healthy society and to the Church, and a topic for some future articles in Faith Today. But in this issue, instead of an article for you, we have some live examples of mentoring in action.

We asked all our regular columnists to invite an up-and-coming person to take their place in this issue.

So, first of all, bravo to our writers who did not cling to their columns, but freely handed them over. In some cases our regular columnists also worked closely with their guest replacement, editing and encouraging and helping them to get into the Faith Today world a little more easily.

We loved that. Thank you to everyone, and we hope you will enjoy hearing from these fresh voices. We sure did.

We also have some extra help with editorial tasks this summer thanks to Bethany Brown, a student intern from the University of Ottawa. Thanks, Bethany!

Have you watched The Chosen yet? We felt we had to try a few episodes based on all the talk we’ve been hearing, and we’re intrigued. Even more so after reading our cover story. Christian film expert Peter Chattaway interviewed the director of The Chosen for a behind-the-story look at how the show became the phenomenon it is quickly growing to be.

Our interview with Holly Fortier, a filmmaker and educator, whose mother is a residential school survivor, was God’s good timing. The interview was recorded before the deeply disturbing confirmation from Kamloops about the remains of the 215 children found in a mass burial site or we would have certainly talked to her about that. But what she shares could not be more relevant, given where we are right now.

She is a deeply committed Christian, willing to speak frankly. “Honestly, the Church was the oppressor,” she says. “There is that separated relationship with the Church and so, honestly, the Church has to do something different.”

We pray you will read much in this issue to move, disturb, reconcile and motivate you as we move ever more deeply into what it means to be the Church in Canada.

We hope you will enjoy hearing from these fresh voices.