Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Articles

August 2024 Faith and Life Gathering

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by Andrew Zetts

The Faith and Life Commission of Mosaic Conference provides space for pastors and credentialed leaders to build ties of friendship and support. We convene quarterly to discuss scripture and listen to how we might interpret and apply those scriptures. We pray for each other and our congregations in light of our reflections. We seek to develop relationships of mutual trust and accountability, deepening our convictions and  involvement in the congregations we lead. 

It is common for congregants and community members to ask questions of pastors. So, what happens when pastors get together? Who asks the questions? It turns out, they all do.  

At the most recent in-person Faith and Life Gathering that was hosted on August 28 at Swamp (Quakertown, PA) Mennonite, seven Mosaic pastors from different ministry contexts gathered to be formed by scripture and community with each other. The discussion centered around Matthew 16:13-20 and the foundations of the Church.  

While the discussion and interpretation moved in a variety of directions, it was rooted in an important revelation in the text: Jesus is the Son of Man, God among us. 

In a room of well-trained, highly experienced pastors, there was an air of humility and openness at our gathering. Pastors are famous for being verbose and ready to engage an audience. This wasn’t that kind of meeting.  

Rather, it was a room full of questions, curiosity, and vulnerability. Throughout our hour and a half together, I heard things like: “I don’t know, what do you think?”, “What’s it like for you and your congregation?”, “I used to think about it this way, but my years of ministry have led me to think differently…”, and “I’m not really sure, how has your church handled it?”  

At first, I was hesitant to attend. Life in ministry is busy, and the gathering was one of many color-coded rectangles on my Outlook calendar. I confess, I even arrived late.   

But I left the gathering refreshed and renewed. Something transformative happens when we are in each other’s company, open ourselves up to the Spirit and each other, and prepare to be moved. My peers’ posture toward questions rather than certitude made mutual transformation even more likely.  

In divisive times, gathering is essential. One of the participants reflected at the end of our meeting, “I’m glad I came today; this was a really humanizing experience.”  

I’m grateful that Mosaic makes these Faith and Life gatherings possible, and I hope to do my own part in supporting the effort. I hope to be at the next one on November 6 in person or November 7, 2024, on Zoom. See you there! 

Andrew Zetts

Andrew Zetts is Associate Pastor at Salford Mennonite (Harleysville, PA).

Reflections on Seven Years with Mosaic Conference

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by Mary Nitzche

In the spring of 2017, I was invited to serve as Associate Executive Minister beginning July 1. For nearly five years I served in this role until my successor, Marta Castillo, began in February 2022. Since then, I have been gradually letting go of some responsibilities while assuming new roles. February 2022, I began a two-year administrative role with the Mosaic Board and Executive Committee. In January 2024, I was invited to a one-year interim Leadership Minister role with Hendy Matahelemual for our three Indonesian congregations in California. One role I continued throughout my tenure with Mosaic was serving as Leadership Minister for the Alpha, Fairfield, and Taftsville congregations. At the end of September, I will be fully retiring. (No more asks, Steve!)

As I reflect on my seven years with Mosaic Conference, relationships that formed brought me gratitude, joy, and challenge. 

Gratitude

I am so grateful for the team of colleagues I worked alongside. I value the comradery, and unique gifts, perspectives, and wisdom they each bring to our team.  

Each time I was ready to release responsibilities, one of our staff members was prepared and willing to assume the role. I am so grateful for competent, committed, and younger leaders who are serving well as I let go. The vision for developing younger leaders is bearing much fruit. 

I am grateful for our conference priorities, particularly nurturing intercultural connections. The diversity of our staff and member congregations reflects our intentionality and hard work of welcoming and becoming more culturally sensitive. 

Joys

Relationships with colleagues, pastors, conference and congregational leaders, and leaders within Mennonite Church USA (Conference Ministers and Constituency Leader Council members) has been an invaluable gift. 

Leading two groups, women pastors and leaders and chaplains has been gratifying.  I witnessed the care, support, and encouragement given to each other as they faced opportunities, challenges, and transitions in their ministry settings. 

Assisting new leaders through the credential process was tedious and inspiring, especially hearing their stories of call to ministry. Participating in or attending their licensing and ordination services, reminded me of the Holy Spirit’s mysterious and holy activity in calling, preparing, and empowering leaders to serve in a variety of ministry roles and settings. 

Interviewing women who were first to be credentialed in our conference (Franconia, Eastern District, and Mosaic) and representing different cultural groups has been another holy experience.  

Challenges/laments

As the credentialing process became more complex given the nuances of our growing cultural diversity, I realized it was time for me to make room for someone more gifted and experienced.  

Conflict over theological differences was also beginning to wear on me even though, from our origins as Anabaptists, this has been an ongoing struggle. 

While I cherish all the relationships, new understandings gained, and rich experiences of the last seven years, it is time to retire. In each step of my long discernment process toward retirement, I recognized my priorities were shifting. The demands of the work physically, emotionally, intellectually, and interculturally were beginning to stretch me in body, mind, and spirit. 

Thank you, Mosaic Conference for the privilege of serving in a variety of roles with your trust and support each step of the way. 

Mary Nitzsche

Mary Nitzsche is a Leadership Minister for Mosaic Conference. She and her husband, Wayne, are Midwest natives. They have two adult daughters, Alison and Megan, sons-in-law, Michael and David, and two delightful grandchildren, William and Audrey. Mary enjoys spending time with family and friends, walking, knitting, sewing, and cooking.

Surrendering Our Desires, Becoming Fully Mosaic

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by Danilo Sanchez

September 14 was the start of the series of the 2024 delegate preparation meetings for Assembly delegates to have conversations regarding Mosaic’s Strategic Plan, Pathways Recommendation on Affiliation, and learn about the Vibrant Mosaic Program. Prior to and in these meetings there is a lot of information to absorb.  

In working with our consultant, Grovider, the Pathways Steering Team (PST) created a strategic plan that would guide the work of Mosaic for the next three years. The strategic plan was borne out of the listening tour and Grovider compiled the data from that listening and gave the PST five clear themes which we used to develop the Pillar Statements for the Strategic Plan. Those five pillars are Reconciliation, Relationship Building, Clarity and Identity, Leadership Development, and Communication.  

The PST devoted several months to crafting objectives and activities aligned with them. It was hard to imagine what Mosaic could look like in three years and what was necessary to reach those goals. We recognized that as a conference we are conflict avoidant, so we listed activities that support communication and conflict resolution skills. For clarity and identity, we devised ways to live into our three priorities and help everyone in the conference understand them. We wanted to move the conference to a more “centered-set” model rather than a “bounded-set,” so we included reviewing our conference documents and statements. For leadership development, we included elements of the Vibrant Mosaic Program, trusting that we would receive grant funding to do so.  

Our hardest work was on the recommendation for affiliation. We spent a lot of time hearing from one another and discerning together. Ultimately, we decided “partnership, rather than membership” was the best approach for affiliation with MC USA. As stated in the rationale, our recommendation gives space for those who disagree to covenant as one body, while maintaining some level of relationship. Some congregations in Mosaic want to remove themselves from MC USA because of the Repentance and Transformation Resolution, while others affirmed the resolution and are excited about being members of MC USA. As a newly reconciled conference, it felt most important to figure out how to live into our name “Mosaic” and find space for each of those groups to belong.  

Another dynamic in our recommendation is that as Mosaic has worked at its missional and formational priorities, new global, Spirit-led relationships have emerged naturally. Mosaic Conference has a history of being experimental and entrepreneurial. Being a member of MC USA has posed a challenge to us that limits establishing those new relationships. As members, we would not be able to credential those leaders or have those communities join our conference. Being a partner with MC USA would let us live out our priorities and form deeper local and global relationships. 

I recognize that being on the PST has allowed me to process this recommendation and my emotions about it before others in the conference. I entered this process wanting very strongly to remain members of MC USA. I was going to fight for it. I value the relationships, networking, and resources the denomination provides. I have positive memories of attending various events and Convention.  

My stance changed during this process as I learned to practice “holy indifference” which calls us to set aside our own will and desired outcome and allow the Holy Spirit to transform in ways we need to be transformed. I heard concerns from affirming pastors and traditional pastors about the direction of our conference and how we should affiliate with MC USA. On the PST, I had to wrestle with different viewpoints and concerns of my teammates. In the end, the Holy Spirit took over the Pathways process. We all surrendered our desired outcomes to discern what was best for us as a conference and our pathway forward.   

We are excited about the strategic plan and how it will transform us as a conference. We are excited about the Vibrant Mosaic Program and the new opportunities it will create. And we are hopeful about the recommendation that it will shape new models for relating in institutions and allow us to be fully Mosaic. 

Danilo Sanchez

Danilo Sanchez is the Leadership Minister for Intercultural Transformation for Mosaic Conference. Danilo Sanchez lives in Allentown with his wife Mary and two daughters. He is a pastor at Ripple and leads in the areas of leadership development, discipleship, and teaching. Danilo also works part-time with the housing program of Ripple Community Inc as the Community Life Director.

A Congregant and Her Pastor Dialogue About Pathways

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By Brenda Shelly and Jeff Wright

With permission, Mosaic News is reprinting an email dialogue that took place shortly after the Mosaic Board affirmed the Pathways Team’s recommendation for partnership, rather than membership, with MC USA.  

Subject: A question 

I guess I don’t have a clear understanding of what denominational membership “does” for a conference or a church. Other than the feeling of belonging to something larger (which makes me a little nostalgic and wistful when I recall the many impactful weeks I spent at conventions shepherding teens as a sponsor or being part of an uncomfortable table of strangers in delegate sessions who somehow become sweet friends by the end of the third day of forced conversation).  

Can you define for me exactly what would change if Mosaic became a partner with MC USA rather than a member? What is lost? What is gained?  

I feel like I understand the third way approach. How could we do anything else in this situation without amputating limbs from this body we call the church? If only all our anatomical parts would agree which direction to walk, right?  

-Brenda Shelly (Blooming Glen [PA] Mennonite)  

Subject: Re: A question

Brenda: 

I appreciate being asked this question, and particularly appreciate how it has been asked.  You have a wonderful spirit, getting to tough issues with tender care. Thanks. 

I was a participant in the efforts to bring the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church (which had a strong Canadian contingent and numerically bigger and more spread-out U.S. contingent) together into a binational merger. In the early days (1989-1997), we wanted three church bodies to become one. Unfortunately, Revenue Canada and by their own admission, the Canadian Mennonite leadership in Winnipeg, did not agree with that vision, and so by 1999 the three bodies began to become two national churches. “Amputation” was part of the organizational solution when merger took place in 2001. Even then, there were those of us serving on General Boards who found the language of “realignment” more descriptive and meaningful than “integration” or “merger.”   

Amid this realignment as national churches, there also began almost immediately realignment of local congregations from one conference to another. Churches withdrew from Ohio Conference and Indiana-Michigan Conference to join Central District Conference. The Iowa-Nebraska Conference and the Northern District Conference realigned as Central Plains Conference. The churches on the West Coast in three conferences had already merged into two conferences in 1994. Churches in various smaller conferences in the deep south, the Great Lakes, Maryland, and New York realigned with what we then knew as Lancaster Mennonite Conference (which was as early as 1971 ambivalent about connecting with other Mennonites in a denominational system). The Puerto Rican Mennonite Conference ultimately decided not to participate in this realignment as a part of the MC USA system. Other churches, in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Florida joined more “conservative” Mennonite Conference or became independent. So, the realignment process was always a bit shaky, as congregations in both the former GCMC system and the former MC system struggled to navigate a new denomination that was chronically underfunded from day one. 

On your question of purpose, I would say that MC USA has been unable to provide the value of large conventions for over a decade. Issues of cost, demographics, and purpose for denominational conventions have been in flux for several convention cycles. What I think a denominational body can do today is pool limited resources for efforts that require a larger, deeper scope of work. Hymnals, curriculum, commentaries, missionaries, primary, secondary, and higher education, and other projects are examples of that which require collaboration and pooled investment.  

As for the question of change, I would begin by saying exactitude isn’t as possible as one might hope. One thing that is lost is Mosaic Conference’s place at the MC USA decision-making table. One thing that is likely gained is the capacity and the mandate to cultivate a global community of local congregations and ministries with a different freedom to respond to diverse contexts relationally and effectively. Where this might take us is not yet fully known, but the current status quo is not effective for enhancing a global community of local congregations and ministries. 

Personally, I think the church press is focused on compromise and human sexuality – as if these issues are somehow new. In the 2019 merger of Eastern District and Franconia, which gave birth to Mosaic, we knew the question of affiliation would need to be addressed – but then COVID hit. While LGBTQIA+ inclusion is an issue, it is not the singular driver of this conversation.  

I don’t believe that Mosaic is seeking to create more schism and division. It is useful for me to remember that the New Testament has various metaphors for the church; the body image is one of several. In the case of Mosaic, I think we are seeking to be a more grown-up part of the household of faith, able and willing to respond to things unique to our experience. 

I look to Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) or Everence as future models of Mosaic Mennonite Conference and its potential relationship to MC USA. There are significant differences within MCC’s constituency about women in ministry, divorce, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, the scope of the peace witness, and more. Yet somehow, MCC finds ways for disparate groups of Mennonites to do relief, development, and peacebuilding in the name of Christ. I can foresee Mosaic Conference working with MC USA…and LMC, Brethren in Christ, and the even the Mennonite Brethren and plain Mennonite communities to do good in the world, collaborating with agencies like MennoMedia, Mennonite Mission Network, Eastern Mennonite Mission, Virginia Mennonite Mission…and Mennonite World Conference (maybe especially MWC). 

What is being proposed, in my opinion, is not a severing of relationships, but a continued adaptation and realignment. Speaking personally, I think MC USA will find itself returning to a more General Conference Mennonite Church polity point: dual membership. If I can be forgiven some prognostication, I think MC USA will ultimately be membered by local congregations, not area conferences. Local congregations may (or may not) be members of MC USA, and by separate action may (or may not) be members of a specific conference. Being a member of one might provide an access point to collaboration, but not necessarily to specific assemblies of decision-makers. 

I hope I haven’t wandered in the tall weeds too much. My reply comes to you as a pastor and in no way seeks to speak for Mosaic Conference. As it might be said: “The opinions expressed in this email are the opinions of the author alone, and does not represent Mosaic Conference, MC USA, or Blooming Glen Mennonite in any official capacity, and are subject to change without notice.” 

Thanks again, Brenda, for asking.

-Jeff Wright

Ministerial Committee Update – September 2024

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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 credentialing committee, review and revise current policies around credentialed leaders, and provide leadership in cases of misconduct.   

Report from the September 4, 2024 Ministerial Committee Meeting

Credentialing Updates and Motions

Ordination

  • Effiem Obasi (LA [CA] Faith Chapel)
  • Emmanuel Villatoro (Philadelphia [PA] Praise Center)

Withdrawn

License Extension

  • Benjamin Toussaint (Solidarity and Harmony [Philadelphia, PA])

Active without Charge to Active

  • Samuel Charles (Bethel Worship and Teaching Center [Levittown, PA]) 
  • Tim Weaver – Mosaic Leadership Minister
Other Ministerial Committee Updates

Hearing from Beth Yoder (Salford [PA]) about her Giving and Receiving Counsel Process

Giving and Receiving Counsel Policy Update – adding steps for after committee determination

Misconduct Policy Review – for situations of conflict of interest and enmeshment

Credentialing Renewal Update – approximately half of credentialed leaders have successfully renewed their credentials

Credentialing Process Alternative Questionnaire will be tested with Partner in Ministry leaders outside of the United States.

Definitions Related to Credentials:  

  • Licensed for Specific Ministry (LSM) – Person called from within the congregation to serve in a specific leadership assignment within the congregation or another organization  
  • Licensed toward Ordination (LTO) – 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; may or may not lead to ordination.  
  • License Extension – A three year-extension is given to a person in active ministry who has a license towards ordination but is not ready for ordination. 
  • Ordination (ORD) – 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.  

Status Definitions

  • Active – held by those serving in a leadership-ministry assignment. 
  • Active without Charge – held by those not presently holding a ministry assignment.  
  • Inactive – held by those who have been without a ministerial assignment for more than three consecutive years.  
  • Retired – held by those who have retired from active ministry.  
  • Withdrawn – is given when a ministry credential is ended for non-disciplinary reasons. 

Get Ready for Mosaic Mennonite Conference Assembly 

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Saturday, November 2, 2024: 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  
(in person – there is no virtual option this year) 

Delegate Registration 

All delegates named by their congregations should have received an email on September 3, 2024, explaining the day-of onsite delegate registration process.  

If you are attending Assembly as a guest (all non-delegates), you are most welcome.  To help us plan and prepare, please let us know by signing up here. RSVP for non-delegates opened on Tuesday, Sept. 3. Delegates were automatically signed up when their congregation named them.

Sue Conrad Howes, former Editor of Mosaic News, has returned as Mosaic Assembly’s Registrar. 

If you are coming from a distance, plan your travel and arrange for your lodging.  If you need assistance with lodging, please click here for information. 

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

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. The purpose of these meetings is to help delegates understand the important commitment and specific duties they are responsible for, to prepare them with the latest information on the issues that will be discussed, and to give an opportunity to give feedback and ask questions. 

Delegates are asked to please attend at least one meeting on a date & location that best suits them.  Let us know what meeting you are attending so we can plan.

Guests are welcome to attend these meetings.  

The 2024 Docket will be released in early October and emailed to delegates.

Visit MosaicMennonites.org/assembly for more information.  

Where Do We Go From Here?

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by Stephen Kriss

My last vote as a Franconia Conference delegate was to reconcile with Eastern District Conference in 2019. After years of process and negotiation, a 150-year-old schism was reconciled. It was joyous and hopeful. There were tears and senses of finally. It was the fruit of long processes, listening, and laboring. It included a carefully constructed formation document that was designed to bring as many of us between the two conferences into relationship as seemed possible at the time. While this was happening in fall 2019, we expected those in Southeast Conference that wanted to remain in fellowship with Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) to join us in fall 2020. 

No one could have predicted that our Eastern District/Franconia Conference reconciliation process would be impaled by a pandemic and months of social unrest, including protests related to George Floyd’s murder and an uprising at the U.S. Capitol during a presidential transition. Our increased social isolation and polarization came to the surface as anger and frustration.  While many U.S. cities were experiencing protest, we took on the new hopeful name Mosaic. We believed that a new identity was necessary to move forward and find our way together. 

There were already some challenging points in our formation document. The question of affiliation with MC USA was raised, but as both Eastern District and Franconia were members, the team deferred it. There was conversation about switching our basic belief document from the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective from 1995 to the Seven Core Convictions of Mennonite World Conference. At the time, that would have put us outside the boundaries MC USA had formed. And there were already tensions around the inclusion of queer people, with some of us needing the Grace and Truth and Going to the Margins statements, and others seeing this as a time for revision. We took the most conservative route and held onto all the documents and positions already in play, deciding that a new organizational system didn’t need that challenge yet. 

After our historic, joyous vote to reconcile, we had two online annual assemblies due to Covid concerns. We didn’t meet face-to-face again until after a special delegate session of MC USA in summer 2022. Some of us came to the 2022 Mosaic assembly with heated concerns about its process and outcome, particularly related to the passing of the Repentance and Transformation Resolution. There was a mosaic of opinions and responses, with rumors of schism already. In response to issues around human sexuality, Mosaic lost five member congregations and delegates allowed an opt-out of MC USA, which another seven congregations took. We focused on hesed, extending loving-kindness. We tackled a two-year process of Pathways to help us find our way together. 

In teaching about Anabaptism, I’ve come to love Walter Klassen’s work Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant. His later addition would be that we are “both/and.” We have much in common with the Protestant movement and its fracturing ways. We have much in common with the orders of Catholicism in their orientations to distinct practices. As someone shaped by Catholic background and education along with Mennonite education and practices, I’ve tried to find a way for us to live in the in-between of this reality. Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher/theologian, calls it the “narrow ridge.” 

The narrow ridge is precarious. Finding a pathway that is solid enough for us all to move ahead together while admitting the precarious and difficult terrain takes wisdom, willingness, and work. Moving forward with a recommendation as bold and complicated as a redefined relationship with our denomination will require elements of hesed, and another word that we used to know well from German, gelassenheit or yieldedness. 

The Pathways Team’s recommendation will require something of us. It is easy to define relationships as “in/out” or “right/wrong.” Sometimes relationships change because of organic growth. And for many of us, change is difficult. 

The recommended shift to partnership rather than membership gives Mosaic the space that we need to navigate the narrow ridge. We will need to commit to working in ways that are collaborative more than hierarchal, local/global rather than national/colonial, and relational rather than institutional. This creates space for growth and allows us space to further discern our identity as Mosaic Mennonites in a world that desperately needs the reconciling love of Jesus. 

Of course there is irony in all of this. And pain. And all kinds of emotions. I trust the work of the Spirit to use this moment regardless of the outcomes. Through our history, we have been entrusted with a peaceable and often fracturing way of following Jesus. We are like the world around us, both broken and beautiful. We are full of hope and possibility and desperately in need of mercy and grace. 

Author’s Note: Our conference communities have been in flux of relationships for years. 

  • Franconia Conference joined the General Assembly of the Mennonite Church in the early 1970s. Before that it operated autonomously in collaboration with other conferences (though rarely until recently with Eastern District).
  • Eastern District joined a group of mostly Midwest congregations to form the General Conference Mennonite Church after the split from Franconia in 1847.
  • Southeast Conference formed from the amalgamation of congregations from a variety of Conferences in Florida and Georgia in 1967 which then broke apart as it joined LMC following a 2018 vote. Several congregations from California joined Franconia/Mosaic over the last decade after exiting Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference.

Stephen Kriss

Stephen Kriss is the Executive Minister of Mosaic Conference.

Creation is Calling for Peace

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by Joyce Munro

immersive and collaborative 

An art installation of 12 Mosaic Conference artists suggests its theme: “Creation is Calling for Peace.” It is on display until September 28 at the Conference-Related Ministry Mennonite Heritage Center (Harleysville, PA), along with paintings and worship sanctuary art by Berdine Leinbach (Souderton [PA] congregation).  

Ever since she visited Wonderspaces in Austin, TX, Leinbach has wanted to create an interactive multi-sensory art experience. How could she do that for her upcoming 2024 show at the Mennonite Heritage Center? In the Lapp gallery? 

Ouisi, a game of associations, has a nature version that invites players to find patterns. “Everyone can notice, wonder, and connect,” Leinbach says about this game. The show idea grew to include the game, as well as an I-spy element.  

Another question for Leinbach was: Could artists together create something around a creation theme?  

The Interdependence Hexagon Project, an arts and educators collective based in Scranton, PA, uses this geometric shape to focus its makers on relationships that can be made visible and practiced in a world where shared values are needed if we are to survive.  

Joy and Connection. These were Leinbach’s longings for the anticipated show. There it was—a hexagon project for Mosaic artists. With six equal sides to connect to other hexagons!  

Leinbach offered each artist three or more wooden hexagons in Fall 2023, which were returned to her by each artist in Spring 2024.

“Berdine asked if I’d be willing to collaborate in this project. I agreed without hesitation,” writes Ramona Pickett (7 Ways Home Fellowship), a liturgical dancer and life coach living in Maryland, with whom Berdine first brainstormed the project.  

Leinbach and Pickett had worked together on the intercultural planning team for the October 2022 Mosaic Women’s Gathering. “I knew she was full of ideas and her creative outlet was dance and sewing,” Leinbach says. They brainstormed other artists they knew.  

“Carla Garder was the first person who popped into my brain,” Ramona says. Carla and she worship together with 7 Ways Home Fellowship. So the project got a crochet enthusiast.  

Glenn Bauman, Joanna Rosenberger, Kim Bergey, Libby Musselman, Lydia Sensenig, Mandy Martin, Tim Swartz, and Vicki Beyer were also on board.  

So was Steve, Berdine’s husband and a graphic artist whose skills would be needed when it came to building a visual key for the installation with statements from the artists. 

When the hexagons came back from the artists five months later, Berdine saw that no mammals were included (think Edward Hicks’ “The Peaceable Kingdom”). Steve searched through his photos. A lion, elephant, and a leopard made hexagonal entrances. 

fusion, sometimes drama 

Many individual hexagons speak for themselves:  

Dramatic three-dimensional blues and white swirl on Vicki Beyer’s hexagons, sometimes in interlocking patterns. There’s tension and action here.

Poppies like shooting red and white stars pop—these are the flowers of Flanders and war; the artist Mandy Martin reminds viewers—not simply a signature subject of hers.  

Subtle green tones and patterns occur in the quilted fabrics of Pickett’s earth hexagon; a gold button for the precious metal that Proverbs signifies is the result of purification provides continuity among her three hexagons. 

A child looks at you, its brow furrowed, so that peering at the installation, you cannot help but feel that a trauma has occurred and you are here to wait for its voicing.  

counterpoint 

Several hexagons benefit from their placement among others: 

A crescent moon among distant stars situates questions that night skies prompt, that religions seek to answer. . . abuts Fraktur symbols of Mennonite piety in Kim Bergey’s hexagons. 

A grey so dark so close you must make of the scene something that’s almost terrifyingly your own meaning, even though your brain scrambles to categorize the image calmly. . . It is the breakdown of life carbon and mineral that up close is a sandy shore on a cloudy day. Tim Swartz attends to the turmoil narrative of creative process while finding calm in the patterns that happen where land and water meet. 

I left the art installation feeling its silences:  

the tiny pollinators that get mistakenly called “bees,”  

unseen, the billions in a tablespoon of healthy soil and their absence in unhealthy soil,  

the vulture gut and its glorious work, 

edible oyster fungi growing on dead ash trees,  

invisible methane escaping confined meat animals. . . 

Then there is the vanilla bean that we are about to lose because of climate change. 

What are life changes we could make if we would hear these creations calling for peace?  

The collaborative work by Mosaic artists, along with many other of Leinbach’s paintings, are available for viewing at the Mennonite Heritage Center until Sept. 28, 2024. 

A photo of this collaborative work was selected by the Hexagon Project’s Posters for Peace exhibit beginning at ArtWorks Gallery and Studio in Scranton from Sept 6-21. It is one of 40 selections out of 1,500 entries.  

If your congregation or Conference-Related Ministry is interested in displaying the piece after the exhibit, please let Berdine Leinbach know.  

Mosaic congregations and Conference-Related Ministries represented include Souderton Mennonite, Dock Mennonite Academy, Ambler [PA], Blooming Glen [PA] Mennonite, 7 Ways Home Fellowship, and Salford (Harleysville, PA) Mennonite. 

Joyce Munro

Joyce Munro is a member of Unami Friends Meeting and involved with the Carbon Forest Project. She is also a volunteer for the Mennonite Heritage Center (Harleysville, PA).