A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

oduce. For more than thirty years now North Americans have enjoyed a growing prosperity without any serious economic recession. Mennonite Brethren have shared fully in this material progress. Since World War II, and coinciding with their rapid urbanization, Mennonite Brethren have been climbing steadily upward on the economic ladder, so that today the majority of them have achieved the status of a comfortable middle class society. Although this fact is generally admitted, it has not been properly documented thus far. One of the indices of material prosperity in the life of a church body is the amount of financial investment in church buildings. The total value of all church properties of the Mennonite Brethren Conference of North America in 1951 was estimated at $2, 678,920. 31 Seventeen years later, in 1968, the investments in church properties for that one year alone amounted to $1,304,000. In the fifties and sixties several congregations erected magnificent and spacious church edifices costing from a quarter to half a million dollars. Fortunately, there was also a substantial increase in the giving for the work of the church. Total contributions for all phases of conference work in 1938 amounted to $195,678. By 1959 this figure had risen to $3,203,904, an increase of over 1600 percent in twenty-one years. Average per-member-giving during the same period increased from $13.41 to $125.50. 32 Although absolute giving has increased sharply, it is doubtful whether relative giving (in proportion to income) is higher today than thirty years ago. Faithfulness in stewardship apparently has 338 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH not kept pace with growing affluence. Luxurious homes, expensive cars, summer cottages, vacation travel, and a hundred and one other things consume an increasing part of the budget in many Mennonite Brethren homes. A keen analyst of present developments among Mennonite Brethren confirms the "upward trend" alluded to above: . . . in the last ten years the M.B.'s really have moved. There are Mennonite Brethren — not Mennonites as such, mind you, but members of our church — who are presidents of universities or provincial cabinet members; whose stocks are listed (and going up) on the Toronto Stock Exchange; who must choose between Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford or Woodrow Wilsons to Harvard; who conduct major symphony orchestras or sing in opera productions; who are listed in The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. The list could be multiplied, and, with variations, mirrored in the U.S.A. " Material progress and prosperity in the life of a brotherhood has the potential for either blessing or curse. Money invested in the salvation of man, wealth dedicated to the expansion of Christ's kingdom, material means used for the alleviation of human need and suffering — all this can be a great blessing. But when wealth is used for self-indulgence and self-glory, i