Goals/Purposes:
- Cultivate young leaders
- Deepen intercultural partnerships
- Nurture new congregations and faith communities
- Produce and ensure fresh, clear, responsive and responsible communication in print and web formats
The work of leadership cultivation and communication is a unique mashing of skills, questions, gifts and opportunities. We work together in team and gifts, including over the past year: regular staff–Jessica Walter and me, students–Joe Hackman, Tim Moyer and Lora Steiner, congregational staff–Aldo Siahaan, international staff–Dave Landis and summer interns–John Tyson and Emily Graber. We team together–handing off projects, working over and under, between and among each other in ways that span distance and culture, provoke questions and possibilities and hopefully allow each of us to express gifts and hopes while pursing the conference’s vision and glimpses of God’s dream. We work together by web, by phone and in person. We cultivate relationships both within and beyond that bring life and sometimes bring concern. Whether its interacting with students at Goshen College, with struggling church planters in Little Rock or eating Middle Eastern food in Lansdale, we find opportunities to incarnate and invite the Good News to come alive not only in word, but in flesh and blood. Our task together in communication is not only virtual or representational, but also real and requires shoulders for tapping and shoulders to cry on as we equip, empower and embrace according to the mission of God and the way of Christ in the world.
2008 Updates/Activities:
- Worked with nearly 20 interns serving with congregations and ministries within and beyond the Conference constituency
- Developed new, more frequent Intersections publications
- Upgrading the website to provide more complete directorial information as well as new sites for ministries
- Cultivated international partnerships in Indonesia, the UK and the Mediterranean region
- Developed a more coherent system of seminary-level education in collaboration with Eastern Mennonite Seminary to serve new pastors and emerging leaders
- Continuing to cultivate the relationship of immigrant and urban communities with suburban congregations and ministries
- Developed more extensive opportunities for teaching and presenting ideas learned along the way with congregations, Mennonite colleges and Philadelphia area universities
- Continue a young adult ministry listening process, following up the denominational study from Conrad Kanagy
- Working at establishing guidelines and framing for apprenticing/learning congregations
- Campus visits to Bluffton University, Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University
- Assigned articles to tell the stories of over a dozen congregations and initiatives through conference and Mennonite-church publications
- Invested in further development of emergent/Anabaptist dialogue among leaders and practicing communities across the United States
- Partnered with Mennonite Mission Network in the Israel/Palestine Youth Venture this summer
- Sent a listening team to Mexico alongside CIEAMM congregations
- Investigated new church initiatives in Delaware, New Jersey and Arkansas
The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.