Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Articles

Learning to Walk Together

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by Marco Güete

After 36 hours of travel, three flights, and a train ride from Lisbon, we arrived in Porto physically tired but filled with anticipation. We had not even begun walking, yet we were already learning our first spiritual lesson: the Camino requires patience before it asks us for strength.

We began our pilgrimage in Labruge. We soon discovered that the distance would be 247 kilometers—seventeen more than we had calculated. During the first stage, we also took a wrong turn: we walked two kilometers in the wrong direction and then another two to return. Those four extra kilometers taught us that not every effort moves us forward, but even detours can become teachers.

Marco Güete and his wife, Sandra, on the Camino. Photos provided by Marco Güete.

Since then, Sandra and I have crossed beaches, forests, mountains, ancient streets, and modern cities. We have experienced scorching sun, fog, strong breezes, and cold. Our backpacks are already faded by the sun and somewhat worn, as if they too were making their own Camino. Almost every day, when we arrive tired at our lodging, we still have the task of washing our clothes waiting for us. Our bodies ask for a bed, but our clothes ask for water and soap. The pilgrim’s life also has its domestic liturgies.

Our feet have grown tired, and our legs have protested, but we have learned to respect each other’s pace. Walking as a couple does not mean always moving at the same speed; it means waiting, accompanying, encouraging, and recognizing when the other person needs to rest.

We have also discovered that love is expressed through simple gestures: sharing water, adjusting a backpack, offering a word of encouragement, or placing a wildflower in Sandra’s hat. On the Camino, marriage becomes a pilgrimage within another pilgrimage.

God has also spoken to us through strangers. Pilgrims from different countries have shared their stories with us. Some local residents have shown us the way when the yellow arrows disappeared. As we were leaving Vigo, a man walked four blocks beside us to make sure we returned to the correct trail. His gesture reminded us that God’s providence often has the face of someone who chooses to stop and accompany us.

We have crossed the Miño River in a small boat, rested our legs in the cold waters of the Atlantic, and embraced trees while giving thanks for their shade. We have also laughed at our mistakes, because the spirituality of the Camino is not separate from a good sense of humor.

Now we are drawing closer to our goal of reaching Santiago de Compostela. We are walking to support Hispanic Ministries, but also to allow God to continue working in us. We are deeply grateful to those who have been praying for our well-being and for this mission. Their prayers are also traveling the Camino with us, reminding us that we need God, that we need one another, and that we need those who choose to walk alongside us.

Marco Güete

Marco Güete is the Leadership Minister for Florida for Mosaic Conference.

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

Finding Belonging in The God Who Sees by Karen González

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Book Review by Hendy Matahelemual

Editor’s Note: Karen González is the featured speaker at the Friday night gathering on November 6, part of Mosaic Conference’s Fall Delegate Assembly. All are welcome to join this time of small group sharing, dinner (Central American food), worship, fellowship, and an ice cream social. Please register here to attend.  

Karen González’s The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong (2019) is more than a book about immigration. It is a book about people, faith, belonging, and a God who sees those who sometimes feel invisible. González brings together her own story as an immigrant from Guatemala with stories of immigrants, foreigners, and displaced people throughout the Bible. Through people like Abraham, Hagar, Ruth, Joseph, and even Jesus and his family, she reminds us that migration is not something foreign to the biblical story. It is deeply connected to the story of God and God’s people.

One of the most powerful images in the book comes from Hagar, who encounters God in the wilderness and calls God “the God who sees me.” Hagar was a foreigner, a woman without much power, and someone who found herself alone and vulnerable. Yet God saw her. This becomes a beautiful picture of hope for immigrants and others who live on the margins. When society does not see them, God sees them. When systems treat people simply as numbers, cases, or problems to solve, God knows their names and their stories.

As an immigrant from Indonesia, I personally connect with much of what González writes. Immigration is more than moving from one country to another. It affects our identity, our family, our sense of security, and our understanding of where we belong. There are moments when we feel welcomed, but there are also moments when we feel like strangers. There are times of uncertainty, experiences of discrimination, and encounters with systems that can feel oppressive. Yet in the middle of all of this, I have also experienced hope.

For me, one of the places where that hope becomes real is the church. The church is more than a community that gathers for worship on Sunday. The church is home. The church is family. When you are thousands of miles away from the place where you were born, having people who walk with you, pray with you, eat with you, laugh with you, and stand beside you during difficult seasons matters.

And just like any family, sometimes we have disagreements and conflicts. We do not always see things the same way, and sometimes relationships can be difficult. But that is part of life together as a family. We learn to listen, forgive, reconcile, and continue walking together. For me, that is also what belonging means—not that everything is always perfect, but that we still choose to be family.

The God Who Sees reminds me that God does not overlook immigrants, strangers, or anyone searching for a place to belong. God sees us, and the church is called to see people as God sees them and create a place where everyone can belong. I am looking forward to hearing González in person at the Mosaic Conference Fall Assembly this November at the Friday night gathering, and continuing this important conversation about immigration, faith, and belonging.

Book Author, Karen Gonzales.

Hendy Matahelemual

Hendy Matahelemual is the lead pastor of Indonesian Light Church in South Philadelphia, PA. He and his wife, Marina, will lead worship at this year’s Assembly.

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.   

God Continues to Surprise Us in South Texas

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by Javier Márquez

(from left) Michael Howes, Danilo Sanchez, Marco Güete, and Rigoberto Negrón at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On August 29, pastors and leaders from churches in South Texas and northern Mexico gathered at Iglesia Menonita Fuente de Agua Viva in Los Fresnos, Texas, for a gathering of these congregations with Mosaic Conference staff.

The day began with a time of welcome and introductions led by Marco Güete. Participants talked about their lives, their prayer needs, and what is happening in their churches and communities. They then prayed for one another.

Michael Howes, a member of the Mosaic Board, led the morning devotional. His reflection invited the group to recognize the ways God continues to work and surprise God’s people.

“I was deeply impressed with the lay leadership of the congregations, complementing their wonderful pastors and spouses. I was moved by the account of how they had cared for the flow of immigrants arriving in the area,” Howes later reflected.

The conversation continued around several topics connected to the life of the conference. Participants received updates about the upcoming year-long Preaching Institute cohort; the new opportunity to study through the Mosaic Academy; Mosaic’s Annual Assembly, scheduled for November 6-7, and the next South Texas pastors’ gathering, which will take place February 5-7, 2027.

There was also time to talk about the Mosaic Priorities Guide and Vibrant Mosaic, presented by Danilo Sanchez. These conversations helped connect the work of the conference with the needs and hopes each congregation is experiencing in its own context.

Lay leaders and pastors from three congregations gathered for listening, equipping, and sharing.

One of the most meaningful moments was a time of prayer for Mosaic Conference and those serving on its team. Pastors and leaders prayed for Güete, Sanchez, and Howes, expressing the care and trust that continues to grow between these congregations and the conference.

The following day, Howes and Sanchez worshiped with Iglesia Menonita del Cordero, where Sanchez preached. Güete accompanied Fuente de Agua Viva during worship and shared the message.

There was also time to share a meal. Iglesia del Cordero invited the group to lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant, while Pastor Rigoberto and his spouse Sonia, accompanied the group on a tour of the area including seeing the border between Texas and Mexico.

Those gathered pray for Mosaic staff and board guests.

These moments offered a glimpse into the context in which these congregations serve, a reality shaped by geographic proximity, cultural diversity, and a border that is part of everyday life.

Beyond the topics and updates, discussed, the focus of the time was to get to know one another, listen, and walk together. Each intercultural gathering reminds us that a conference is more than a structure connecting churches. It is also a network of relationships that grows stronger when we share our stories, our concerns, our faith, and our tables.

In South Texas and northern Mexico, Mosaic continues to discover that God is doing new things. Those surprises begin by sitting together and listening to one another’s stories.

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 contact Javier Márquez, please email jmarquez@mosaicmennonites.org.

Don’t believe the poverty narrative

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by Joe Paparone

Editor’s Note: This column was originally published in Anabaptist World and is reprinted with permission.

If you walked the Albany, N.Y., river­front park in the summer, you would not be surprised to find people enjoying cookouts and the playground. Once a month, you’d come across a larger cookout with banners that read “National Union of the Homeless” and “Homeless, Not Helpless.” On the surface this looks no different than any other group using the public park. You could stop for a burger, chat a little and be on your way. Everyone is welcome.

Stay a few minutes, and you’ll notice unusual details: people’s belongings in shopping carts, a familiar face you’ve seen panhandling at the exit ramp, someone else making sure the redeemable bottles are collected. There will be someone wearing a button or shirt reading “National Union of the Homeless” who will ask you about housing, healthcare and food insecurity. Someone might make a speech about housing as a human right.

You might gather that this isn’t a typical nonprofit.

At the National Union of the Homeless, we call these activities Projects of Survival. While they might look like other food distributions or neighborhood cookouts, there is education and organizing happening around issues of fundamental human rights.

In our organizing, we often partner with agencies that provide desperately needed services. We canvass outside of food pantries or set up tables and mini health clinics at community meals. These partnerships are invaluable: We have conversations about issues facing our community where people are already going to have a need met.

But it is also important to hold actions and organizing events independently. Our society teaches us that poor people are criminals or charity cases, dangerous or helpless. Even the most well-meaning people are susceptible to this deeply ingrained idea.

We must challenge this narrative. Central to our organizing is that we are the poor, organizing the poor. By organizing independently, even something as simple as a summer cookout, we are undermining the idea that poor people are incapable of making change.

Projects of Survival have a long history. The Vigilance Committees of the Abolition Movement are an example. Formerly enslaved Black workers were assisted materially, through daring efforts of Underground Railroad conductors. When they arrived at safehouses, frequently run by leaders of the Vigilance Committees, their stories and experiences were documented and shared. This provided valuable intelligence for the slavery-abolition movement, as well as challenging the racist slaveholder ideologies that insisted Black people were helpless, docile or that they enjoyed enslavement.

In 1969, the Black Panther Party developed a free Breakfast for Children Program, providing meals in poor communities, but most important, using those meals as sites of political education for the children and their families. More than simply offering a meal, the Panthers provoked agitating questions designed to organize for systemic change. Why are our children hungry? Who benefits from this situation? How can we organize together to change this?

The Panthers referred to these programs as “Survival Pending Revolution.” The FBI, intent on destroying the Panthers, recognized the Breakfast for Children Program as one of their most potent organizing tools.

In the late 1980s, chapters of the National Union of the Homeless took over vacant HUD housing, demanding safe and decent housing and an end to homelessness. They politicized the housing crisis and challenged the narrative of helplessness. Breaking into vacant HUD housing amid a homelessness crisis exposed the contradiction of poverty amid plenty and raised questions about the priorities of a society that would let people sleep and die on the street while available housing sat empty.

“People have to get over this being against the law,” said one leader, Ron Casanova. “I’m dying in the street. That should be against the law.”

Our faith communities are well-positioned to develop these kinds of programs. Many congregations have mission or service programs that involve food pantries, community meals or other activities where the poor gather to meet their immediate needs.

Organizing can start small, asking our neighbors questions that get to the root causes of poverty: Why are we poor in the wealthiest country in history? Who benefits from this? What do you think we can do about it?

The care and compassion offered in our congregations is a necessary ingredient in organizing. No amount of charity will end the system that produces poverty. Organizing among the poor can happen over shared food. Our survival depends on it.

Joe Paparone

Joe Paparone is an organizer with the Nonviolent Medicaid Army, National Union of the Homeless, and the New York State Poor People’s Campaign. He is a credentialed leader in Mosaic Mennonite Conference and a member of Bethany Mennonite (Bridgewater, VT).

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.   

Ministerial Committee Update – September 2026

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The Ministerial Committee makes decisions on ministry credentials and policies that promote the support, health, and training of credentialed leaders and safe church practices for congregations. They meet quarterly to act on recommendations from the credentials committee, review and revise current policies around credentialed leaders, and provide leadership in cases of misconduct.

Report from the Sept. 2026 Ministerial Committee Meeting:

Licenses Approved

License Toward Ordination (LTO) – grants the person all the privileges and responsibilities accorded to an ordained person, except to ordain someone else. This license is issued for a three-year period with the purpose of testing the inner and outer call to ministry, further discerning of ministerial gifts, abilities and aptitude and may or may not lead to ordination.

  • Joeven Mesadieu – College Hill Mennonite/North Tampa Christian Fellowship (FL) 
  • Dody Atmajaya  –  Bethany Elevation (NY)

Ordination – grants the person the full range of ministerial privileges and responsibilities. This is a long-term, leadership ministry credential appropriate for all pastors, area conference ministry staff, chaplains, missionaries, evangelists, and those determined by the church to have a continuing ministerial-leadership role in, and on behalf of, the church.

  • Sheri Samuel – College Hill Mennonite/North Tampa Christian Fellowship (FL)
  • Andrew Zetts – Salford  (PA) Mennonite

Reactivation of credentials that were inactive.

  • Maribeth Benner – Blooming Glen (PA) Mennonite
  • Nicolás Sandoval – Iglesia Evangélica Menonita de Oración y Adoración  (Philadelphia, PA)

Withdrawn

  • Carlos Sanchez (Medellín, Colombia)

Other Updates

  • Manuel Garcia (LTO) is working on a new church plant called Esencia
  • Karen Bergey (LTO) began a part-time pastoral role at Perkasie (PA) Mennonite. She is co-pastoring with Samantha Lioi (credentials held by Allegheny Conference) 

Committee Updates and Discussions

  • Mosaic Institute courses: The committee agreed that the courses are valuable to all entering the conference and would like to continue to strongly encourage (but not require) leaders who transfer in or have their licenses reactivated to take at least two of the four courses. 
  • Discussion around asking newly licensed leaders to sign/affirm documents that are currently in place, e.g. Giving and Receiving Counsel.
  • Credentialing Profile – (Form that candidating pastors fill out, and the corresponding reference forms): Discussion on how to revise the profile to encourage thorough responses from candidates that show theological maturity rather than doctrinal conformity.
  • Credentialing Procedure – (Internal working policy for credentialing process for licenses and renewals): Discussion around including pastoral assessment for transfer candidates.  All affirmed to continue to include pastoral assessment for transfer candidates, and to adjust to use the Credentialing Profile instead of or in combination with the Transfer Questionnaire. 
  • Abuse and Misconduct Policy and Procedure – (Policy and procedure for response to allegations of abuse): Discussion framing the revisions and input from various leaders within Mosaic, including the intercultural team. The committee will review and send comments. 
  • Board Update:
    • Michael Howes will serve as Credentialing Committee chair through the end of 2026. 
    • Wayne Nitzsche has agreed to serve as committee chair, pending board approval, beginning in 2027. 

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.   

Make a Friend at Delegate Assembly

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by Javier Márquez

The Fall Delegate Assembly is the time of year when much of Mosaic Conference comes together in the same place. Delegates, pastors, ministry leaders, and friends from different congregations and communities gather for worship, conversation, discernment, and fellowship.

Sometimes the most meaningful moments happen outside the scheduled program.

This year, we want to encourage everyone attending Assembly to make room for those moments. Take time on Friday or Saturday to meet someone you do not know well. Sit with someone new during a meal. Invite a friend—or someone who is becoming a friend—to go out for dinner after Assembly concludes on Saturday.

As new communities continue to join Mosaic, we have an opportunity to learn from one another’s experiences, cultures, and contexts. Assembly gives us a chance to do that because so many of us are in the same place at the same time.

Jaye Lindo, Mosaic’s Hospitality Coordinator, sees hospitality as an important part of what makes Assembly special.

“Once a year Mosaic gives Delegates chosen by their congregations an opportunity to embrace and feel the love of our entire eclectic community,” Lindo says. “The only way we will truly be able to grow together is when barriers are broken down, allowing Jesus to be the connector.”

She continues, “What a better way to connect than over a meal? We all have to eat!”

“Time, distance, and language challenges all go away over a meal,” she says. “We get to hear a voice, see a smile, hear a prayer, and are able to recognize that we are not as different as it seems.”

A meal gives us time to slow down. Conversations that might not happen during a busy Assembly schedule can begin naturally around a table. We hear someone’s story, discover something we have in common, or simply enjoy being together.

Pastor Chidi Ihezuoh offers another simple encouragement for the weekend: “Listen to each other intentionally.”

That may be one of the most important invitations we can offer. Assembly is not only a place to hear presentations or participate in decisions. It is also a place to listen: to the person sitting beside us, to a congregation with a different story, to a pastor we have not seen in a while, or to someone who is attending for the first time.

Some of us may have met others through Mosaic Institute, at the Oasis retreat, or another conference gathering. Assembly can be a chance to reconnect and continue conversations. For those who are new, Assembly can be a chance to see one’s place within the larger Mosaic community.

To make things a little easier, Southeastern Pennsylvania Leadership Ministers have shared some of their favorite local restaurants. Their recommendations have been gathered into a list available here. Use it as an excuse to invite someone to dinner after Assembly on Saturday.

Maybe it will be someone you already know. Perhaps someone whose name you’ve only seen in an email, or maybe it will be someone you’ve never met.

Make room for the conversation.
Make room for the laughter.
Make room at the table.
Make a friend at Delegate Assembly 2026.

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 contact Javier, please email jmarquez@mosaicmennonites.org.

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.