Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Articles

God’s Good News on the Move

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by Noel Santiago, Leadership Minister for Missional Transformation

People have always been on the move, leaving small towns for big cities, crossing borders for a better life, or fleeing war with little more than hope. We don’t always think of these journeys as spiritual stories. But throughout Scripture, the movement of people has been one of the main ways God’s love spreads and communities are knit together in surprising ways.

The book of Acts makes this clear. By chapter 8, the early church, formed in Jerusalem and full of the Holy Spirit, has been scattered by persecution. Believers have fled in every direction. And yet, as Acts 8:4 tells us: “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” The pressure meant to silence the church instead sent the Good News outward. God’s movement could not be stopped.

This is where we meet Philip. He has been sharing the Good News in Samaria with great results when an angel gives him a strange instruction: head south down a desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza, at noon, with no explanation. Just: go.

Philip listens and goes.

On that road he finds a man in a chariot, reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah. The man is an Ethiopian official in charge of the queen’s treasury (the queen was called the Kandake). He has been to Jerusalem to worship and is now heading home.

The Spirit nudges Philip: “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Philip runs up, hears the man reading, and asks a simple question: “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

“How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” the man replies. He invites Philip in. They travel together, Philip shares the Good News about Jesus, the man believes and is baptized, and continues home rejoicing. Philip is then sent by the Spirit to share elsewhere.

Many scholars believe this Ethiopian official may be the first non-Jewish person baptized in the early church, even before Cornelius in Acts 10. Yet this story has received far less attention throughout history.

That’s worth pausing on. This man carried many layers of being on the outside: he was a dark-skinned Nubian man, a eunuch, a servant of a foreign queen. Society placed him at the edges of multiple worlds. And yet he was the one searching the Scriptures. He was the one who had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. He was the one in whom God was already at work.

Luke’s choice to highlight this man is not by accident. God’s kingdom is not built around human ideas of status, race, or belonging. God’s grace reaches everyone, no matter how the world labels or overlooks them.

The question this story asks us: Who is being overlooked today? Where is the Spirit inviting us to notice, welcome, and walk alongside those who are hungry for hope?

Notice what Philip does not do. He doesn’t push his way in or arrive with a prepared speech. He was sent by God, and yet he starts with a question, a genuinely curious one: Do you understand what you’re reading?

Philip came with curiosity and respect, knowing that God was already at work in this man’s life. The Ethiopian had been seeking. He was ready. He was waiting for someone to show up, not to fix him, but to walk with him.

That is a model for us. Who in our daily lives, at work, at school, in the neighborhood, might be quietly searching? What might happen if, instead of rushing to give answers, we slowed down enough to ask a good question and really listen?

One of the most hopeful truths in this story is that God was at work on both sides of the encounter. The Spirit sent Philip south. And the Spirit had been preparing the Ethiopian’s heart long before the chariot came into view.

This is a pattern throughout Scripture. God shares his love through people in motion, Abraham and Sarah leaving home, Ruth crossing into a foreign land, Paul being redirected across the ancient world. Ordinary people, willing to go where God leads. And in every case, God was already at work ahead of their arrival.

This still happens today. People move for work, for safety, for hope. And in those movements, God keeps weaving stories together. Faith travels with people, carried in quiet conversations, in cultural traditions, in simple acts of kindness. The Ethiopian official went home rejoicing, carrying the Good News to a place Philip would never go.

Philip’s story shows us something important: mission and discipleship are not two separate programs. They are the same life. Following Jesus shows up in how we listen, what questions we ask, how we care for people, and how we show up in unexpected places.

God’s Good News is still on the move. It travels through people who are paying attention, people willing to follow a nudge, ask a question, sit with someone on their journey, and trust that God was already there before they arrived.

What if that person is you? What if the road ahead, familiar or unfamiliar, is exactly where God is at work? What if the in-between seasons of life, the transitions, the uncertain stretches, are not gaps in God’s plan, but the very road God is using?

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To contact Noel Santiago, please email nsantiago@mosaicmennonites.org.

Learning from Being Uncomfortable

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by Marta Castillo, Associate Executive Minister

“Mosaic seeks to hold together both gracious hospitality and high expectations, creating space where people are welcomed but also challenged to grow in faith.”

— A Mosaic Identity: Clarifying Our Center (Mosaic’s “Centering Document) 

Gracious hospitality, high expectations, creating space, and growing in faith all require a willingness to be uncomfortable. This is my story of what I have learned from discomfort.

The author reading on a boat as a child in Kalimantan.

When I was a child, I lived in Kalimantan, Indonesia. I was orang kulit putih (a white-skinned person) and stood out with my rambut kuning (blond hair). I was easily identified as bule (foreigner). I learned to adapt to fit in, and make myself as small and unobtrusive as possible. It was always uncomfortable, but I made friends, enjoyed life there, and tried to be as Indonesian as I could.

From Indonesian villages, I attended three different North American Christian boarding schools. It was hard to be separated from my parents (although my brother was with me), and to adapt to different styles of discipline and Christian theology. Again, I adapted. I learned about North American culture, made friends, and followed the rules of the dorm parents and schools.

The author with her mom Dorothy Beidler and her dad, Luke Beidler, driving the boat.

When I returned to the United States (a place my parents called home), I expected to fit in. Instead, I often felt uncomfortable. Although I spoke the language, I didn’t understand the culture or know the songs, movies, and stories my peers had grown up with. When I tried to share my story, it was too weird for others to connect with and understand. So I stopped telling it and continued trying to escape notice and fit in.

Over the years, discomfort has made me adaptable. I learned to pay attention to situational clues, figure out the rules so I wouldn’t make mistakes, and wait to speak until I had built rapport and trust. In each new setting, including college, voluntary service, and eventually Norristown, Pennsylvania, I learned to present myself in ways that would help me fit in and be accepted.

The thirty years in Norristown were the first time I settled and became comfortable. I became a member, and then pastor, of Nueva Vida Norristown New Life. We bought a house, collected stuff, raised children, and built deep relationships. I learned the Spanish language and culture and was welcomed into the Spanish-speaking community. I walked the streets of Norristown, prayed, and learned to know the people, schools, churches, and community.

A Sister Care Group (from left: Maria Hart, Sandy Drescher Lehman, Lisa Quinones, Marta Castillo, Angelia Susanto, and Leticia Cortes)

During that time, an uncomfortable anti-racism training helped me identify myself as a white person. I began to understand that my ability to adapt and be interculturally aware could be a gift to myself and others. It didn’t have to be a way of hiding or making myself small and inconsequential.

I share my story because in my ten years of ministry with Mosaic, I have often felt uncomfortable. I have been an unknown entity showing up simply as myself to be present in congregations, in relationships with pastors and leaders, in meetings, and in changing leadership roles. I have felt uncomfortable listening, caring, and conversing with people who are different from me culturally and theologically, people who might be excited, angry, or confused. I have felt uncomfortable with the responsibility of leadership.

The discomfort has helped me to be more honest with God, with myself, and with others. It has helped me to grow and be mutually transformed by my Mosaic siblings.

The author preaching.
At the ordination of Melky Tirtasaputra.

In Mosaic Mennonite Conference, we will all feel discomfort at one time or another. We are too diverse to feel comfortable in every situation, conversation, meeting, and relationship. I believe the spaces that make us uncomfortable can teach us to hold ambiguity more loosely.

We can feel accepted by a group even when we feel different and set apart. We can be enough for the ministry at hand while still seeking to learn and grow in competence. We can make space for grace for ourselves and others even when we are anxious and uncertain. We can step into the space God has created for us by offering our presence without overflowing into or taking the space of others.

May God bless us with a willingness to be uncomfortable, that we might be obedient to God’s invitation to extend gracious hospitality, meet high expectations, and grow in our capacity to create space for the work of the Holy Spirit and our siblings. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To contact Marta Castillo, please email mcastillo@mosaicmennonites.org.

Philadelphia Praise Center Launches English Service

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by Cindy Angela

On August 9, Philadelphia (PA) Praise Center (PPC) gathered for its first English Service, welcoming approximately 30 people to worship together in the Upper Hall of the PAX Center. The new service will continue on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month at 9:30 a.m., alongside PPC’s Indonesian first service, which worships in the Main Sanctuary of the PAX Center.

Ushers welcoming people into the English Service

The English Service is not an effort to create something separate from PPC. It grew out of a need already present within the church community.

For many years, PPC has welcomed English speakers into its Indonesian service through Indonesian-to-English interpretation. On some fifth Sundays, PPC has also invited an English-speaking preacher. But as the church grew, English-speaking members—mostly second-generation Indonesians who grew up in the United States—expressed a desire for a space to worship and gather in English.

So, they began by listening.

Senior Pastor Aldo Siahaan and myself, as Associate Pastor, surveyed English speakers who were already attending PPC to hear what they hoped Sunday worship could look like. A recurring theme in the responses was that they wanted the familiar worship experience of PPC—the same spirit, songs, and format—but in a service conducted fully in English.

That listening process eventually led to the new English service, which I will lead and organize.

The first gathering included worship, a message, and a time of fellowship over breakfast. The congregation also took time to pray over Mosaic Ambassador Josiah Yoder as he completed his ministry at PPC.

Praise and Worship 
Cindy Angela shares the message on the first English Service 

The English Service creates a new space for deeper relationships among English-speaking members, and it remains firmly part of PPC Family. PPC continues to encourage everyone to participate in the broader church community, including through interpretation on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Sundays and fellowship at PAX Café after worship.

For PPC, the English Service is one way the church is responding to what God is already doing within our community. Anyone is welcome to join the English Service on the 2nd and 4th Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in the Upper Hall of the PAX Center.

Cindy Angela

Cindy Angela is Director of Communication for Mosaic Conference. She is also an Associate Pastor at Philadelphia (PA) Praise Center.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author, contact her at cangela@mosaicmennonites.org.

Learning on the Path of Becoming Mosaic

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by Stephen Kriss, Executive Minister

As the great-grandson of immigrants from Slovakia, I have glimpses into the desire for autonomy. Many Slovaks fled the Magyarization process in the early 20th century, when Slovakia was absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They longed for autonomy which was granted briefly under the Nazi regime and then after World War II with the (re-)creation of Czechoslovakia under Soviet influence. The Velvet Revolution eventually granted both Slovakia and the Czech Republic their autonomy after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The author’s great grandparents’ village in Slovakia, Spisskie Pohadrie.
Kriss visited his ancestral area for his 50th birthday. Here, pictured with Spiš Castle near the Jewish cemetery.

For better or worse, Slovaks can now chart their own path in the tensions of Central Europe. Yet even as an independent country, Slovakia has chosen to participate in something larger than itself through membership in the European Union. The history of 20th-century Europe was a constant process of absorbing and autonomizing, of forming and reforming identities and relationships. The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is the most recent violent chapter in that long story.

I have described our journey over the last year in Mosaic as one toward autonomy.

Vaclav Havel, the Czech writer who led the Czech Republic in its early years as an independent European nation, suggested that the period after a major transition represents both possibility and danger. When an old system has passed away but a new one has not yet fully emerged, there is a sense of newness and disruption as new forces stake claims about identity and trajectory.

This has also been true for us in Mosaic.

For some of us, this season has felt like breathing space. Others of us are still mourning. Some of us wonder if we really belong. Some of us wish we could return to where we were. Others of us are charting a path toward a bright and hopeful future. As a leader, I have been living in the in-between of all of this.

Pastor John Ortberg writes that leadership is the art of disappointing people at the rate they can absorb. I have felt the weight of that in a new way this past year.

I spent some months mourning that we had not reached a reconciliatory place with Mennonite Church USA. At the same time, I also sensed relief in no longer navigating the tensions that had emerged through our membership. Our posture of partnership takes work and ongoing attention. There are not yet established rhythms or well-worn paths for these relationships. We have to build new paths while also reworking some of the old ones.

We have not navigated any of this perfectly. Yet I have landed in a place where I trust Jesus’ promise that “the gates of hell will not prevail.” Peter is told that the church will be built on people like him, who are passionate, faithful, fickle, and fumbling. Brokenness and beauty exist alongside one another, including within our failures. Peter’s story is one of conversation, progress, and slippage; of missing the point sometimes, yet continuing to strive toward the kingdom.

I am learning that God is with us in the process.

I am learning that the path ahead for Mosaic is to keep moving at the pace God reveals.

Havel once encouraged his people not simply to stare at the steps ahead, but to take the next step. Faith involves trusting that the next step will appear in its time.

For me, this is what becoming Mosaic looks like right now: taking the next step, together. Breathing deeply. Paying attention to where God is leading. Trusting in the way and words of Jesus who is by our side every step of the way.

Get Ready for Mosaic Mennonite Conference Fall Delegate Assembly

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Mosaic Conference’s Fall Delegate Assembly

Saturday, November 7, 2026: 9 AM-4:30 PM
Registration for delegates will take place from 8:30-9 AM
Souderton Mennonite Church (map)
105 W Chestnut St., Souderton, PA 18964 

Delegate Registration

All delegates named by their congregations should have received an email on September 3, 2026, explaining the day-of registration process for delegates and a link to confirm their participation as a delegate.

If you are coming to Assembly as an attendee (all non-delegates), you are most welcome. To help us plan and prepare, please let us know by signing up here starting September 3.

If you are coming from a distance, plan your travel and arrange for your lodging. For more information about lodging and transportation, please click here.

Friday Night Pre-Assembly Gathering

Everyone (delegates and non-delegates) is invited to join us on Friday, November 6 from 4-8pm at Zion Mennonite (Souderton, PA) for a gathering titled “Celebrating the God Who Listens to Us!” The featured worship speaker is Karen González. The event will include small group story sharing, dinner, worship, and an ice cream social.

Delegates should RSVP using the same delegate form they completed to confirm their participation for Assembly. All others (non-delegates) should RSVP using the attendee form, which can be used to register for this event, Assembly, or both.

Delegate Preparation Meetings

What are Assembly Delegate Preparation Meetings?

Mosaic Conference holds a series of delegate preparation meetings in the weeks leading up to our gathered Assembly. This year, Delegate Preparation Meetings will be held in late September and early October. Each gathering will include a light meal and time for conversation with other delegates and conference leaders. Delegates received a link via email to register for these meetings. 

Please pray for Assembly, Mosaic’s Board, delegates, the Mosaic staff planning it, those attending, and God’s leading in the process.

The staff team for planning Fall Assembly is Stacey Mansfield (Credentialing and Assembly Coordinator, Jaye Lindo (Hospitality Coordinator), Cindy Angela (Director of Communication), and Brendan Sagastume (Registrar).

Other Supplemental Documents:

The 2026 Docket will be released in early October and emailed to delegates. Visit MosaicMennonites.org/Assembly for more information.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author(s), contact us at communication@mosaicmennonites.org.   

Motivating Others through Service

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by Javier Márquez

The image that impacted me the most when I visited the Summer Ambassadors from Vida Nueva Church in Mexico City was that of a young couple lying on the ground on a blanket outside the doors of a pediatric hospital in Coyoacán. They rested their heads on a pillow worn down by dust, rain, and sun, and held each other to keep warm. Beside them were a couple of bottles of water and some bananas. They were waiting for the doctors’ assessment of their young son, who was still hospitalized somewhere inside the building and whom they had brought to the hospital the night before.

In an instant, the group accompanying Anna and Eunice surrounded them and asked for their names and about the situation that had led them to sleep on the ground outside the hospital. After sharing their story and receiving the supplies the church had brought to distribute, they prayed for their son together with the church group.

The work continued for another hour that Saturday. They distributed food and other supplies, as well as prayer tracts and information about the church for those who wanted to connect with the group or request further help and prayer. The visits continued for several weeks, at this hospital and another one, seeking to accompany people who were being admitted or those waiting for their family members, facing all kinds of medical circumstances.

As Ambassadors, Eunice and Anna had to take on a series of responsibilities they had never had to carry out before: preparing the outreach days, inviting people from the church to accompany them, interviewing people such as their parents and pastor who had done this kind of ministry in the past in order to better understand the work, organizing their personal schedules, and finding times when they could work together. At the same time, they had to face their own shyness and approach people, many of whom were understandably impatient or frustrated, talk and ask questions, invite them to pray, and accept both the good and difficult moments.

Many other members of the congregation joined the Ambassadors in their time of service.
Anna, Eunice, and other young people distribute water and bananas to those waiting for their loved ones in the hospital.

In the past, they had participated in community service, but in a different kind of role. Now they were the ones leading other young people and older members of the church. Their success was somewhat unexpected: not only because of all the people they were able to help during this difficult time outside the hospitals, but because of the team that gradually formed around them to accompany them in this work.

The outcome of leadership should not be measured only by its final impact, but also by the ability to bring people together and motivate others to become part of the work of service. In this case, the photograph makes that reality clear: it shows a congregation surrounding its two ambassadors and accompanying them in their service.

Javier Márquez

Javier Márquez is Associate for Community Cultivation and Leadership Development. He is an Anabaptist Colombian pacifist and poet. He is based in Bogota, Colombia.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to Javier Márquez, contact jmarquez@mosaicmennonites.org.

A Writer’s Dramatic Testimony to God’s Providence

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by Roger Kurtz

A review of Fearless: Living God’s Gift of Faith, by Bonnie Moyer. Covenant Books, 2026.

Testify! Like Mary Magdalene at the tomb, like the liberated Gerasene from around the lake, like the Twelve at their commissioning, we too are advised to tell, recount, announce, and proclaim.

Bonnie Moyer’s new memoir Fearless: Living God’s Gift of Faith is one such testimonial. In these pages she recounts her eventful and dramatic life, driven by a desire to share her experience of God’s presence and provision. Moyer’s book covers her birth and early years in Western Pennsylvania’s coal country, a turbulent young adulthood, diverse and evolving careers, and marriage to a Mennonite pastor. Her motives are clear: to testify to “God’s love, protection, strength, and hope,” thereby blessing and encouraging the rest of us.

Organized into 60 bite-size vignettes, Moyer’s life story is fast-paced and eminently readable. For those of us who know her, the book is full of surprises and anecdotes that may cause a few jaw-drops. For all readers it offers an energetically told tale of personal challenges, spunky resilience, and epiphanies.

At the heart of Moyer’s stories are three dramatic theophanies—moments where she directly hears the voice of God and senses His tangible presence in a time of need. One comes as a five-year-old, a second on her wedding day, and a third during life-threatening surgery. These encounters fill her with a rock-solid conviction of God’s presence, protection, and healing. “You will have the strength for this,” God tells her.

Moyer’s memoir is additionally a testimony to the ways American families were affected by the nation’s changing political economy following World War II. Big Pharma looms large, with its experiments in reproductive medicine. Labor-saving appliances, mail-order catalogs, the freedom and danger of highways, and the astounding achievements of the space race all impact the opportunities and imaginations of intelligent and ambitious girls. Moyer’s childhood in a university town within a regional mining economy becomes a parable for the emerging tensions in America society during this time.

Globalization is also here, particularly when Moyer’s career shifts to retail management for Ten Thousand Villages. She travels the globe to source fair-trade merchandise from developing countries. As a long-serving host for the International Visitor Exchange Program, she welcomes into her home young adults from Nepal, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia, and elsewhere. The sharing of food in international contexts becomes a touchstone.

Moyer’s testimony offers a nuanced meditation on family and its variations. There may be some people with uncomplicated relationships to parents, children, and siblings, but that is probably not the norm anywhere, and it is certainly not her experience. This is a book about creating family in spite of challenges, in the context of the church and supported by deep personal faith.

Moyer is drawn to the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi, a technique of restoring broken pottery with a special lacquer mixed with gold dust. Instead of hiding the breaks and cracks, this technique highlights them, turning brokenness and imperfection into a source of unique beauty and value.

Fearless is a kintsugi memoir, recounting a life that includes both breakage and beautiful repair work. We can be grateful to Moyer for summoning the courage and persistence to share it with us.

Along with two other area authors, Bev Benner Miller and Lisa Stenger, Moyer will be featured at an event on the morning of Saturday, September 12 9:30-11:30am at Zion Mennonite Church in Souderton, PA titled “Your Story Matters.”

Roger Kurtz

Roger Kurtz is a member of Zion Mennonite (Souderton, PA). He heads the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author(s), contact us at communication@mosaicmennonites.org.   

What Three Years with Mosaic Have Taught Me

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by Brendan Sagastume

A little over three years ago, I started my first summer as an Ambassador with Mosaic without fully knowing what I was getting myself into. I didn’t expect it to reshape how I think about discipleship, community, or my own place in the church. I want to share what these past three years at Mosaic have taught me and how they’ve shaped me.

One of the most formative parts of my experience has been the chance to meet, interact, and work alongside people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. What’s struck me most in those moments isn’t the difference itself, but the shared desire to seek God, love others, and build a world with peace at the center. At the same time, I’ve learned to recognize our troubled pasts and difficult histories, and to learn from them, rather than around them, in order to create an intercultural community.

Brendan visits Crossroads Community Center in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Danilo Sanchez.
Brendan visits Redemption Church of Bristol (PA), spending time with their Mosaic Ambassadors this summer. Photo by Danilo Sanchez.

Mosaic has invested in me summer after summer, giving me many opportunities to learn and grow. One of the lessons I learned early on was that I’m not always going to feel ready for everything, and that’s okay. I can take chances and take on the responsibilities in front of me without feeling fully qualified, knowing I have the support of people around me and can trust in God.

I don’t think that kind of trust and support is unique to me. I see it in the many young leaders across the conference who are doing amazing work in their own communities. That, I think, is part of what it means to be discipled in community, not figuring everything out on your own, but growing into who God is calling you to be because others are willing to walk alongside you, trust you, and catch you when you stumble.

Over these past summers, I have really gotten to see what a true mosaic this conference is. Getting to build personal relationships I carry with me—people I still talk to, learn from, and think about—has been one of the most valuable parts of this experience. Those relationships have changed how I see myself and what I hope to become, not just for my own sake, but for the sake of the community around me.

Brendan joins the Mosaic Ambassadors Gathering in Colombia in July 2026.
Brendan joins the Mosaic Ambassadors Gathering in Colombia in July 2026.

I want to be someone who reflects Christ well, and I have learned that I cannot do that alone. I need the people Mosaic has connected me to, and I hope in some small way I have been that kind of person for others too.

If I were to name a challenge that I have faced during my time, it would be realizing that there is a real gap between what I hope the church can be and the slow work of actually becoming it. I have felt and seen that gap in myself, in moments when my first instinct was not the most Christlike one, and I have seen it in the wider community too. Though I do not think that is necessarily a failure, but I think it is what it looks like to be in process, together, and still willing to keep going.

I am sure my time with Mosaic looks different than other staff who will write reflections on what they are learning in their work, and that is the point. Each of us has been shaped differently by this community, and I am looking forward to hearing those stories too.

As I begin my last year of college, I am not sure what comes next for me. There is a part of that uncertainty that is uncomfortable, but these past three years have given me something to carry into whatever comes next. This is who I am becoming. I am grateful for the mosaic I have gotten to be part of, and I look forward to seeing who we all become together.

Brendan Sagastume

Brendan Sagastume has spent three summers serving as a Mosaic Ambassadors, splitting time between Conference-Related Ministry Healthy Niños Honduras and Mosaic Conference. This fall he is serving as Mosaic’s Assembly registrar. He attends Messiah University and is a member of Perkiomenville (PA) Mennonite.

Mosaic values two-way communication and encourages our constituents to respond with feedback, questions, or encouragement. To share your thoughts or send a message to the author, contact them at bsagastume@mosaicmennonites.org.