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A daughter's tribute to John M. Drescher

August 6, 2014 by Conference Office

by Sandy Drescher-Lehman, Souderton congregation

John Drescher with family — John Drescher with the family that he loved, August 2013. Photo provided.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

That’s one of the many quotes we received over these last two weeks from your hearts to ours. We’ve been overwhelmed and grateful for your love to us and for our parents. Many of you know that two of Dad’s greatest joys were writing and preaching. The man we knew best was the one who cried tears of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love and who surrounded us with his laughter, his creativity ,and his daily prayers for each of us by name.

When he couldn’t stand long enough to preach any more this past year and his hands were too shaky to write—when all that was over, the thing that kept him wanting to live was his family. He cried tears of unspeakable love as he told us that even though he was so eager to touch Jesus, he cried tears of overwhelming grief to know that he was leaving us.

Dad worked out his life with words, writing them and sharing them. He worked at how to do relationships with words. He admitted that our mother was the one in his life who inspired him to write about the fruit of the Spirit. He asked her out for a date when someone in college pointed to her and said, “That woman would do anything for anyone,” and he found out how true that would be.

Dad moved around a lot when he was a child and made a decision to not do that when he had a family. He did travel a lot for the work that he loved. When he came back, he always had something in his suitcase for each of us—usually a pack of life-savers—that was a splurge for him, to let us know he’d missed us. In the summers, he plowed up a plot for each of us in our big garden and taught us the value of honoring the land. I remember him bragging to anyone who would listen about the big cantaloupe I raised and sold at our roadside stand, to earn money for Christmas presents. He was my overt cheerleader in everything from my childhood creations to being a pastor when it wasn’t okay for women to do that.

His favorite sermon to preach—the one he told me a few months ago that he still wanted to preach again—was on encouragement. He was a cheerleader for the church of Jesus Christ, for each person who shared their stories with him and for each of us in his family.

We’ll miss our cheerleader.

Dad taught us by his example to never accept a job based on what it will pay, but how it resonates with God’s calling. He taught us to decide how much we need to live on and give the rest away; that giving away 10 percent of what we earn is only the place to start.

He showed us that miracles happen all around us, all the time, and that we just need to notice them. Before gas got expensive, he took us on Sunday aft drives to look at the “views.” It was always the same one, but it was always newly amazing to him. Nature was to be honored and enjoyed. Life itself was a miracle.

Each of us in the family have our own experiences of times that he and mother together prayed us through crises of health and faith and emotional upheaval in our lives. I’m sure our memories of his faith and the power of prayer will help us keep watching for and expecting miracles, but we’ll miss his prayers.

After Dad was gone, we found the poems he wrote for this day in a folder with his memorial service plans. So he finished his life with poems again. In his last weeks of life, he was reading the scriptures purely for himself. We’d over hear him repeating Psalm 90, the psalm that upheld his spirit at the end, the last one he’d memorized for such a time as this:

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn us back to dust, and say, Turn back, you mortals. For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past. You sweep them away and they are like a dream… Satisfy us in the morning, with your steadfast love so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days… Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!”

May it be so for each of us, as we choose to allow Dad’s prayers and his spirit to live on through us.

John M. Drescher passed away on July 10, 2014. Excerpted from the eulogy given at John’s funeral by his daughter, Sandy. Posted with permission.

Still a place of storm

August 5, 2014 by Conference Office

by Stephen Kriss, Director of Communication and Leadership Cultivation

In July I traveled with a group of four Eastern Mennonite Seminary students to bear witness to Mennonite Central Committee’s ministry of presence in New Orleans, now nearly a decade after Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaks that have reshaped the city.

Pam Nath, formerly a professor at Bluffton (Ohio) University, has served as MCC Central States representative in New Orleans since this more recent initiative began, building upon a generation of MCC presence that had a brief hiatus in the years before the storm.

Nath graciously opened her network of relationships with locals working toward justice and hope in this complex process of rebuilding a city.

New Orleans is a distinct place in the American soul and landscape, reflecting earlier French and Spanish rule. It’s unique in architecture, geography and racial-ethnic mix.

Before arriving, we tried to acquaint ourselves with the city’s history. We learned about the immigrant groups who built the city. More recent waves of Vietnamese found it to feel a lot like the Mekong Delta.

We glimpsed stories of slave trade and the city’s ruthless marketplace that separated families. At the same time, the Code Noir devised by the French was considered a “kinder, gentler form of slavery.” The city is full of complexity, complicity, and contradiction.

We watched Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke and readily carried the visuals of thousands of people stranded at the Superdome, others marooned in their attics as flood waters rose. Locals were quick to point out it wasn’t the storm that nearly destroyed the city. Instead, levees and seawalls failed in dozens of locations, allowing water to pour into low-lying neighborhoods, flooding up to 80 percent of the city.

Listening to storm survivor stories is tough, recognizing this part-natural and part-human catastrophe. But far more agonizing were the ongoing stories of racial aggression and the contempt evident in patterns of civic behavior that undermine the flourishing of the city’s black majority population. One student said she frequently wanted to scream as we listened. The stories were so consistent, so prevalent, that many we spoke to had come to best understand the situation as a combination of storming and conspiring forces with seemingly faceless people dictating maneuvers.

The listening was exhausting. We came to recognize patterns of trauma in those we encountered.

I’ve traveled further to listen to people tell the difficult stories of oppression and conspiring forces before.

But these New Orleans stories were as intense and difficult as I’ve heard from anywhere in the world. In some ways, the listening was more disconcerting because we were still in the U.S.

Hard listening in New Orleans made us all wonder where those hidden stories might be closer to home.

We wondered whether we were missing similar struggles next door or down the block. My guess is that we are.

I wonder what it would take to have the kind of courage, time prioritization, and wherewithal to find them out and to bear witness more regularly with the neighbors near at hand. My guess is that hearing even closer to home will be even more difficult.

I suspect, uncomfortably, that in not listening and not knowing, we become silent conspirators for those under the heavy weight of ongoing struggle.

This article first appeared in Mennonite World Review. Reposted with permission.

An Anabaptist “In House” Discussion: Forming a Non-Racist Approach to Ethics and Social Responsibility

May 14, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

Race and Church — Last October, Drew Hart led a conversation at Germantown HIstoric Trust on racism in the church. Drew is working on a PhD through Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia on the intersection of Anabaptism and Black Theology.

by Drew Hart, reposted by permission

I am concerned that many Anabaptists have unconsciously and unknowingly adopted a model for social action and ethics that is problematic because it cooperates with our racialized and unjust society. Therefore, I figured I would offer an “in house” discussion on the subject. This all flows out of listening to the language and comments of my brothers and sisters (though mostly brothers) as they talk about engaging society (or not) in relation to various social issues we are confronted with in the U.S.

More specifically, I have observed many talk about desiring to remain “local”, “contextual”, “on the ground”, and “ecclesially” oriented when it comes to dealing with social realities. Let me be clear, I believe it is essential that we are rooted and grounded in local communities. When I hear these terms being used, it is often done so in great contrast to the Christendom logics for social engagement that is so common in American Christianity. Many seem to only imagine their social options for responding to injustice as being limited to the so-called democratic electoral process. More specifically, every four years, Christians pop blood vessels and gain grey hairs stressing over who the next president will be. This is the only active engagement that they will have socially, so I guess their limited options impose on them a certain manner of stress that cannot be released through daily resistance and activism. So, I am in agreement that our Christian imagination should not merely be defined by citizenship and the options given to the “good citizen.” However, there are also some serious consequences for swinging the pendulum all the way in the other direction, and again, they have racial implications, as well as others.

The first thing we must remember is that we live in a racialized society. By that I mean that race shapes our society’s movements and organization. Basically, race manages us socially and geographically. Unconsciously, most people are “patterned” by race in various ways. Most people go to a church where the majority of people are of the same race. Most people live in a neighborhood where most people are of the same race. Most people attend a school where the majority of people are of the same race. Most of the people that we call to actually chat with are of the same race. Most people regularly invite only people of the same race over to their homes for dinner. Based on race, we often have a sense that we “belong” in certain spaces and not in other spaces. In a sense, race has a sophisticated way of managing us and segregating us, despite that it is not legal segregation. This is no surprise, given that we are working with 400 years of deeply racialized laws and practices in this land. Those types of responses, if not intentionally resisted, will be unconscious and inevitable practices in our society.

If we take seriously the depth of our racialized society, and how it impacts our lives (which I have only unveiled a tiny fraction of), then we must consider the racial outcomes that flow from limiting and only concerning ourselves with “local” & “contextual” realms. For example, lots of research has been done exposing national racial issues that demand massive response.

A perfect example is Michelle Alexander’s acclaimed book, The New Jim Crow. She exposed the national crises and confirmed with data what African American communities have been experiencing and prophetically speaking out against since post-civil rights era. Her simple point is that at every stage of “law and order” from policing, stops, arrests, trials, sentencing, and even after release back into society, the process is racially biased against Black people. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to order it and read it carefully (book discussion groups are being formed right now–contact Samantha Lioi for more information).

Anyway, if you live in a primarily white, suburban, middle class neighborhood that is not vulnerable to these practices and instead actually look to the police and judicial system, expecting it to provide protection and law and order, then what are the implications of deciding to limit your social engagement to your local situation?

You see, by looking down and limiting your social engagement, you create for yourself an artificial social vacuum. It is as though your community and social life has nothing to do with what goes on regionally, nationally, or globally. That isn’t so. The reality is that our way of life always has direct implications beyond our local contexts, because we are interconnected much more than we realize. Only from a vantage point of privilege and comfort, blinded by the logics of dominant culture, can someone think that an ecclesial ethic is sufficient on its own, when it has not taken seriously its own social location and complicity in social systems. This is precisely why historic Anabaptist streams have a complicated history as it relates to slavery and racism in America. On one hand, most Anabaptists did not participate in slavery, unlike almost every other Christian tradition and denomination. On the other hand, unlike the Quakers, many of whom eventually became great abolitionists, Mennonites did very little to actively confront and challenge slavery and later racist manifestations like Jim Crow, Lynching, the convict leasing system, etc. So, it definitely is important to have a formational community that produces people that can resist participating in things like slavery. But it is also important to produce people that are willing to head towards Jerusalem and accept the consequences that come from confronting a social order that does not align with God’s Kingdom.

In 1963, Martin Luther King decided to protest in Birmingham, which was not his actual residency or home. In the process, he was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement over Easter weekend (which is probably the most faithful observance of that weekend that I have ever seen). However, some moderate yet influential white ministers, who were supposed to be “for” integration, critiqued King and the movement while he was sitting in jail. One of the big critiques was that the civil rights movement was moving too fast and was being provoked by “outside agitators.” They argued that it needed to be dealt with by local Birmingham citizens, not outsiders. Dr. King in contrast, understood the danger of limiting one’s social responsibility merely to one’s own local context. Here is just a small portion of his response, in his now famous, Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.[1]

So, in wrapping up, I hope to stretch the focus from merely being ecclesial ethics and local concerns. We do not want to fall back into Christendom logic, where the only options are from the top down, but nor can we disconnect what goes on in Nazareth from what goes on in Jerusalem and Rome. I encourage us all to continue to practice an ecclesial ethic that is simultaneously a socially located and marginalized ethic. I’m not sure the Church collectively can truly follow Jesus faithfully in the world if it isn’t exploring the world from the vantage point of being in solidarity with the crucified among us. And if one suffers, we all suffer, therefore, as King argues, we are no longer outsiders because everyone’s suffering pertains to us.

[1] King, A Testament of Hope, 289–303.

Settling into our legacy

May 8, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, associate director of communication

Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University. Photo courtesy of EMU.

All meaningful conversations should happen around a table filled with good food. This particular Sunday afternoon, as we laughed together and swapped stories, the conversation inevitably drifted to human sexuality.

“Is this what your legacy is going to be?” I asked Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University. The university has been in the midst of a listening process to discern the future of their hiring practices related to faculty and staff in same-sex relationships. Just that morning, Loren had visited my congregation to share an update.

“I think it will be,” Loren responded, a little resigned. As a former pastor of Franconia’s Salford congregation (Harleysville, Pa.) and a former president of Hesston College, Loren’s life has led him through many other challenges of leadership as well as his share of victories. It’s not that he didn’t feel the issue of human sexuality was important, but, as he went on to explain, he had hoped that he would be remembered for more than just this one issue: as someone who was deeply committed to the Christian education and formation of his students, the development of his institution, and the future of his church.

He’s not alone in his feelings; I have heard many leaders sigh about how this topic is dominating conversation or jokingly wish that they had reached retirement before it had come to a head. Some are concerned that the conversation is distracting us from the mission of the church while others feel that this decision is essential to our missional understanding.

It’s easy to try to outrun this conversation or to avoid it altogether. As we look to the future, however, many of us are aware that we will be remembered not only by the decision we make but by how we behaved during this time of discernment: Did we lead toward division or unity? Did we foster rhetoric or dialogue? Did we model non-anxious compassion, confident humility? Were others able to look at us and see a glimpse of Jesus?

Franconia Conference has designated a year in which we are building relationships across congregations, finding ways to share in mission and ministry, and learning to understand one another more clearly. By investing in the difficult work of relationships, we hope that we will be able to engage in this conversation in 2015 with a deeper respect of and love for one another.

Will the controversy around same-sex orientation define our legacy as leaders? Perhaps. But maybe it will also be only one piece of a legacy that includes a new model of relating, a new passion for joining God in God’s mission in the world, a new commitment to unity and discernment.

May we be committed as much to the process as the outcome and may we seek our own formation as followers of Jesus gathered together in a community of faith, a sign to the watching world that we are Christ’s disciples (John 17).

Have a question for Loren Swartzendruber? Then come out for a conversation sponsored by Eastern Mennonite University on May 15 at 7pm at Towamencin Mennonite Church (Kulpsville, Pa.). This gathering is for all credentialed leaders in Franconia and Eastern District Conferences.

Anointed for Business Prayer Teams

May 6, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Noel Santiago, LEADership Minister for Spiritual Transformation

“The boardroom should be to those anointed to serve
in the marketplace what the pulpit is to pastors.”

Such is one of the many thought-provoking quotes found in the book Anointed For Business by Ed Silvoso. Intended to stimulate and perhaps shift our ways of thinking, Ed brings forth a wealth of experience grounded in the Biblical text.

And as this book has shifted our ways of thinking, the prayer ministry of Franconia Conference has partnered with other regional prayer groups to establish prayer teams that go into local businesses and organizations to offer prayers on behalf of their behalf.

The Anointed for Business Prayer Time is about blessing owners, employees, their families, work, relationships, and engagement as they go about their daily work as worship. We also seek to participate and bless the church, the body of Christ, in order to bring about reconciliation between the church and the marketplace. We seek the Lord and intercede on behalf of the business/organizations/churches so that the transformational values noted below are achieved and that their financial and/or organizational or ministry needs are surpassed to the point where they can give from a place of abundance, even as they continue their giving generously as a lifestyle.

Transformation Companies are ones which embrace and seek to live out the following values:

Intentionally investing in the betterment of its workforce and its families;
Actively pursuing the transformation of its sphere of influence and expertise in the marketplace;
Investing generously and sacrificially in the broader community;
Purposefully connecting with other companies, professions, and individuals to impact the world.

Transformation Churches are ones whose leaders embrace and seek to:

Equip, commission, and release its members to reach the marketplace and intentionally pastor the city/region;
Diligently pursue organic unity in the larger Body of Christ to energize the mission of the Church;
Commit a growing percentage of its resources to Kingdom expansion by sacrificially investing beyond the local congregation to achieve transformation;
Expect the Kingdom of God to be tangibly manifested in cities and nations.

So, here’s this word “transformation.” For us, this means the elimination of systemic poverty in four key areas: spiritually, relationally, motivationally, and materially.

Spiritual poverty afflicts those who don’t know that God is their father and are unable to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9b). They think of themselves as spiritual orphans. They believe that they are all alone, that God has judged or abandoned them, and that no one loves them. When trouble comes, they have no spiritual resources to draw on.

Relational poverty encompasses those whose focus is on themselves at the expense of the community of which they are a part. They may have great wealth but still suffer from a lack of close relationships with family, friends, and associates. They are lacking the “us” and the “our” of “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

Motivational poverty is a state of hopelessness that engulfs those who have no adequate way, means, or confidence to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. “Daily bread” is exactly that–it’s an ongoing occurrence. When people come under the grip of poverty, even when there is bread today, they have no hope that they will be able to provide for their needs tomorrow. This leads to anxiety, fear, insecurity, and sometimes even greed.

Material poverty is the most obvious manifestation of poverty because it involves lacking the resources necessary to sustain life. In this context, “daily bread” may include food, water, clothing, housing, and other essential resources. Material poverty always compromises people’s ability to focus on a spiritual life, relationships, and motivation, because when you’re hungry, you can’t think of anything else.

One way our prayer teams work at this is through placing Prayer Request Boxes in local businesses and organizations to provide employees of the company or organization an opportunity to submit personal prayer requests. The vision is that if each person employed at a given company or organization is experiencing the power of God in answered prayers in their personal lives, this will then have a ripple effect on other areas of their lives including their workplace.

This is not to suggest that such experiences aren’t already occurring or that the church is not meeting these needs. Rather it is an attempt to work at having the primary location where this impact is most keenly felt be the marketplace, the location where we want to see the transformation occur.

Transformational Churches reach beyond their walls and partner with marketplace ministers to see their city and nation transformed by the message of Christ! Kingdom Companies and organizations apply biblical principles to their “marketplace” and partner with others to see their city and industry transformed. If you’d like to hear more stories, visit Ed’s website at: www.transformourworld.org. You’ll see this is about “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Do you want to learn more about Anointed for Business Prayer Teams? Noel would be glad to hear from you.

A lesson from Rwanda

April 9, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Dennis Edwards, credentialed pastor serving in Minneapolis, MN

I recently spent several days in Rwanda as part of a teaching team for the Shepherd’s Leadership Conference, a weeklong conference for Rwandese pastors and other church leaders. There is much to share, especially having been there so close to the 20th anniversary of the genocide (April 6th). I hope to post several reflections on my time in Rwanda. This first is not about the genocide, but about my interactions with a pastor who attended the conference.

Pastor Vincent sought me out after one of the teaching sessions. He appeared to be young, maybe not yet 40 years old. He smiled broadly, eager to greet me. I listened as he reflected, in English, on the session entitled, “The Church and Social Justice,” where I had been the speaker. Pastor Vincent embraced the ideas of my message and wondered how he could help his many members who struggle just to survive. Pastor Vincent serves people who barely have enough food and whose daily lives are more difficult than most of us can imagine. I felt somewhat helpless at that moment. I thought about the things we often talk about in the USA regarding urban ministry, such as strategic partnerships where churches with more resources can share with those who have less.

Pastor Vincent said that his small church outside of Kigali does not have a “mother” congregation and he often feels isolated. Much of what he was saying reminded me of my first church-planting experience. Twenty-five years ago, I struggled to start a church in Brooklyn, NY. My wife and I burned out trying to meet the practical, emotional, and spiritual needs of a young congregation with limited resources. I developed some partnerships with suburban churches so that some money came in to help us, but I still had to work as a teacher to supplement my income and not be a burden to my congregation. My struggles in Brooklyn allowed me to relate—even if just a bit—to Pastor Vincent’s predicament, yet I knew his situation was much harder than mine was.

Sadly, much of my experience with churches in the USA reflects how spoiled many American Christians are. We fuss over things like musical styles, the color of walls and carpets, and whether we were duly entertained on some particular Sunday. Church has become—at least in many evangelical sectors—a contest. Church leaders struggle to be hipper, cooler, and more entertaining than other churches so they can find their niche in the marketplace formed by Christian consumers. At times I have become very cynical over such ways of doing church. Many American Christian writers and bloggers pontificate over how the contemporary church needs to be more like the early Christians seen in the Book of Acts, but honestly, we are far from that picture. We are simply too affluent and self-centered to be like that community of sharing, caring, learning and growing that we read about in the New Testament.

This is not to say that contemporary churches lack charitable enterprises. Some give a good deal of money, food, clothes, and other practical things away to those who have less. But even in the midst of our generosity, we are slow to share our lives with others—particularly with others who are different from ourselves racially, ethnically, and economically. Sometimes even our financial generosity is a way of saying “You stay over there, while I stay over here.” The power dynamics are reinforced even though we think we are helping.

Perhaps the simplest thing is for me to send Pastor Vincent some money. But I know from my experiences that money is not always the best solution. The real solution, the biblical dynamic that is often missing from our contemporary churches when compared to the early Christians, is community. It is connection. It is being sister and brother, across the lines of geography, ethnicity, nationality, gender, economics—whatever.

Pastor Vincent and I have already been in email communication. His broken English is better than my non-existent Kinyarwanda. Am I willing to see how God will let us be brothers, and not just me be a benefactor? Am I willing to learn from Pastor Vincent and not assume that I have answers to his questions?

I never got to take a photograph of Pastor Vincent, but in my mind’s eye I see his smiling face and how happy he was to have a conversation with me. I know how it feels to have someone listen when I am struggling in ministry—especially someone who has been speaking to a large group and appears to be an expert. Those sorts of people never had any time for me when I was a younger pastor. I wanted to make sure Pastor Vincent had my time and interest. Maybe that’s the place to start. I will trust God to guide Pastor Vincent and also to guide me. But at this moment, I am simply grateful that God allowed me to meet this brother in Rwanda.

In light of the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, we will likely hear more news over the next few days. As you do, please take that as an opportunity to pray for Rwanda: the nation as a whole, the leaders, the churches, and for pastors like Pastor Vincent.

Dennis blogs at dennisredwards.com.

The travels of a missional minister

April 8, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by KrisAnne Swartley, Doylestown congregation

I am grateful for Doylestown leadership’s blessing to travel March 24-29. My first stop was at Eastern Mennonite University for three days. I met with various campus leaders including President Loren Swartzentruber, athletic director Dave King and undergraduate campus pastor Lana Miller, as well as several professors in both the college and seminary. It was a privilege to hear them talk about the passion they have for creating a learning environment that includes high quality training for vocation as well as a solid foundation of faith.

The best part of my visit was meeting students who have a desire to pursue ministry. They asked questions like: How do you find time to refresh your own soul? What is the most difficult part of pastoring? What is the best part? I have great hope for the future of the church after meeting these young adults. I was privileged to speak in seminary chapel on Thursday about Ruth and Naomi and Boaz, and how making space for outsiders creates space for God to work miracles in our midst. I shared several stories of what that looks like for us at Doylestown as we continue on the missional journey.

The second part of my trip took me to Alexandria, Virginia where I attended the Fresh Expressions National Gathering. The group of 200+ was made up of Southern Baptists, Anglicans, Anabaptists, Presbyterians and more!

We discussed the rapidly changing culture in the USA and how to connect with people who don’t know Jesus and have no interest in attending a church on Sunday morning. We talked about the need for discipleship and the ways the Holy Spirit leads us to “improvise” in whatever local context we find ourselves, much like the early church in Acts. I heard stories of coffee houses, single parenting groups, married couples opening their homes for family-style meals with neighbors, after-school tutoring centers, a “messy church” built around doing crafts and science experiments and a “sweaty church” built around active games and sports. It affirmed much of what we are learning at Doylestown about the missional journey, and it also inspired me to continue to encourage the ideas and dreams that are bubbling up within our congregation.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the weekend:

When you choose to keep company with Jesus, you give up the right to choose the rest of the company around you. You keep company with whoever Jesus chooses.
“These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise and its mission to seek out new life and new civilization…to boldly go where no one has gone before.” That is for us, Church! And if you can’t boldly go, then for heaven’s sake, at least GO!
If you are comfortable more than 70% of the time, then there is a problem, because the church in Acts was hardly EVER comfortable. They were always racing to catch up to what the Spirit was doing next.
Grace engages the world as it is now. The fact is, the world has changed, though we never gave it permission to do so. Acting as if it hasn’t changed and continuing to do the same old things, simply is not faithful.
40% of new leaders in these new, creative ministries are LAY LEADERS–not clergy or professional ministers. These are courageous, everyday people.
God is into the multiplication of the small. You don’t have to lead a “mega”-anything.

Recovering catholicity

April 1, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Steve Kriss, Director of Leadership Cultivation

I still remember the words of my tour guide in St. John Lateran in Rome. She referred to our group’s Protestants with loving disdain. She announced, “For the Protestants here, I want you to remember that this was your ‘Vatican’ — the center of the Western church for centuries before you splintered away. Your faith has come to you through this space.”

I sought to find my own story in the midst of the grand, bright cathedral on Rome’s east side, close to the city wall. In my six months living in Rome, this worship space became significant as I worked to reconcile myself with the “catholicity” of my faith.

Walter Klassen’s book Anabaptism: Neither Protestant nor Catholic was published a year after I was born. His phrasing shaped many of the ways we Anabaptists have understood ourselves within the Christian story — as belonging to neither tradition. Upon reflection later in life, Klassen suggested the book might have been better titled with “both/and” rather than “neither/nor.”

I’d say it is clear that Anabaptists have been Protestants, but we have yet to live into what might be possible if we take our catholicity seriously.

In these days of Mennonite Church USA turmoil, what does it mean to embrace the best of catholicity?

Anabaptists are more than local, temporal communities. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes that to flourish in a global era, organizations will need to embrace both their local and global nature. In the church, this suggests both the local and the catholic (global) are essential for identity and decision-making.

While many of us are biased appropriately toward our localities, we cannot ignore our catholicity, our togetherness. Privileging local discernment alone can ignore both the possibility and responsibility of living within and incarnating God’s shalom intended for all of the world.

Localities can be just as toxic, menacing and oppressive as distant and hierarchal systems that don’t understand the local or respect the relational context — where we sit face to face, see eye to eye, in relationship with one another.

Neither our locality nor our temporality alone will effectively shape our discernment and trajectory in a global age. Our faith and movement is undeniably interconnected (even though at times we wish it weren’t) and providential (part of the holy intention of the Spirit to cultivate a peoplehood beyond racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, national boundedness).

Localities can become self-referential and ignore the voice of the other. Our willingness to tell the story of a God who loved the world so much must be tied to a willingness to do likewise across the chasms of difference of experience and interpretation.

Our lifetimes will be filled with relentless questions and complexities presented by the gospel and our cultural contexts. Though it may be easier to disintegrate into 100 million blooming localities, I wonder if the time and the Spirit might not require more of us. I can’t shake the idea that Jesus’ final prayers for us included a plea for “oneness.” I hear this as an invitation to catholicity — a community that goes beyond the local, into the holy intention of mutuality.

Withdrawing into familiar localities is the invitation of the spirit of our age but not the invitation of the Spirit of our Lord. The Spirit and the Word require much more of us.

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