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After Hurricane Sandy—resurrection stories

November 7, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

On Saturday, November 3, conference staffers Steve Kriss and Emily Ralph joined Mennonite Disaster Service in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens to assess the damage left by Hurricane Sandy and identify needs in preparation for sending teams to aid in the cleanup. After returning home, Steve compiled this list of recollections, appreciation, and observations.

1. Mounds of garbage in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens. And the realization that this is not ordinary trash, but people’s possessions, the stories of their lives in discarded items that had held either purposeful or sentimental value only a few days earlier.

2. Overflowing generosity that meant that the church we were visiting had to stop receiving donations by the end of the day because they had too much. Oasis Christian Center (formed out of the merger of two congregations including a former member congregation of Lancaster Conference) transformed its sanctuary into a distribution center piled high with clothing, water, food, cleaning supplies.

3. We passed by a large 4×4 truck and saw some guys who were gutting an entire house. I commented that this was the right kind of truck to have this week. I asked if we could take a photo of the owner with the truck. He insisted that the whole work crew gather around the truck and that we share the photo with them.

4. New York City is beautiful; the mix of skyline, bridges, architecture, water, and people is stunning even when it’s a mess. Why would people live here? Because it’s so beautiful and energizing, frustrating and amazing.

5. People took what they had and shared it with each other—setting up food tables on the sidewalk, serving meals out of their car. A group of Latino women made sandwiches and soup and told us, “We are poor, but we can help too.” Members of New York’s Sikh community brought their vegetarian meals to the streets rather than keeping them at their temples as would be the norm. We had amazing conversation and curry with basmati rice together while we discussed the community leader’s fascination with Lancaster County. Meanwhile a boy from the community was repeatedly yelling, “Free good hot food!” It was almost like communion.

6. We walked to one of the worst hit areas of Midland Beach where two elderly neighbor women had drowned in their homes. There were flower memorials outside of their homes and buried in the mud we spotted a copy of The Purpose Driven Life.

7. On Facebook, I posted that I’d be driving my pickup truck to Staten Island. Within 24 hours it was filled with donations given in love from Mennonite friends in Philadelphia and another friend loaned me a car so I could leave my truck with friends in Staten Island. I loaded up the truck at night almost to the hilt, but came out to leave in the morning to discover that my neighbors had topped off the load with more bottled water while I slept. I returned that evening to find my yard cleaned and raked from the storm thanks to my other neighbors.

8. We headed out with a Mennonite Disaster Service assessment team to the Rockaways. The entire boardwalk had been lifted off the cement pilings and pushed back into houses. One family reclaimed the boardwalk now as their beachfront deck and set up umbrellas and chairs along with a sign that said, “Rockaway Forever.”

9. While we walked in the neighborhoods, I kept getting sand in my mouth as the wind kicked up. I want to remember the grit of it in my teeth, the sensation of the storm both outside and within me.

10. I was overwhelmed by hope in my encounters with people all day who reflected the Incarnation–the love of the Creator made Real–handing out peanut butter sandwiches, quietly cleaning neighbors’ homes, translating issues in Spanish, Russian, Hindi, offering hamburgers fresh off the grill to passing vehicles, gracious and committed first responders, plain-dressed Mennonite women who kept relief efforts moving efficiently, a woman driving around clean and dry socks to neighbors who were cleaning out their homes.

The human response to the situation was amazingly hopeful despite the challenges of cleaning up, rebuilding. Fourteen-year-old Zach who went along with us remarked, “I wasn’t surprised by the destruction. I was surprised by people smiling in the midst of it all.” People like Zach, who wanted to come along with his big sister, photographer Emily, and my Methodist pastor friend Christine from New Jersey, who told the stories of what she saw on Saturday to her worshiping community the next morning while choking back tears, remind me that the power of the Christian story is that it is comedy over tragedy, not death but resurrection.

If you are from southeastern Pennsylvania and you would like to join a Mennonite Disaster Service team going to Staten Island, contact Rick Kratz, 267-372-4637. Outside PA, contact the MDS representative in your congregation. If you would like schedule your own team, contact Judy Roes, New York volunteer coordinator, 717-823-3020. Facebook gallery of photos from Saturday’s trip.

Can enemies become friends?

September 20, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

Jean Claude (Whitehall) — Jean Claude Nkundwa shares his story of living through Burundi’s civil war. Photo by Patti Connolly.

by Rose Bender, Whitehall

I guess I started thinking about this earlier in the summer. I was acting as ‘crowd control’ at a peace camp at Franklin Park in Allentown. The story teller had the kids acting out Acts 10—where Peter and Cornelius move from historic animosity toward friendship and salvation. A Jewish fisherman, a Roman Centurion, and their respective cohorts took on a decidedly urban, Latino flavor. The kids seemed to enjoy the story, but when they were asked to think about why someone like Peter would be friends with someone like Cornelius their answers were painfully honest. When asked to imagine creative ways to respond to bullies—they couldn’t seem to think of anything but fighting back. And I could see why a white woman of privilege, suggesting Jesus would have them do otherwise, didn’t necessarily sit well with them.

The story time ended as it had each night, by the children passing around a ‘blessing cup’ filled with apple juice and saying words that went along with the story. That night they said something like “The Spirit of Jesus can make friends out of enemies’. One by one, children who had eagerly taken from the cup on previous nights refused to drink. And I went home with an uncomfortable knot in my stomach. The story of peace hadn’t seemed like ‘good news’ to them. (Read Samantha Lioi’s reflection)

The memory of that evening stayed with me all summer. It was why I was looking forward to having Phoebe Kilby, from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, come and share with our congregation in worship on August 5. She was bringing a current student from Burundi, Jean Claude Nkundwa. In planning the worship, we had chosen to read Matthew 5:38-48 and entitle their talk ‘Can enemies be friends?’ I wanted to hear a modern-day, real life story, from someone who had been willing to drink from the blessing cup of reconciliation.

At a Saturday evening gathering and during our worship on Sunday morning, I heard the complicated story of Burundi’s civil war and Jean Claude’s experience during it. He was a teenager when his village exploded in violence from which only three of his family escaped—hiding by day and traveling under cover of night—not knowing who or where the enemy might be. In his words, his “mind was paralyzed” and he questioned the existence of God. He began to believe the only way to peace was through military dictatorship.

Phoebe Kilby (Whitehall) — Phoebe Kilby tells Whitehall congregation about discovering her ancestors had been slave owners. Photo by Patti Connolly

But slowly and mysteriously, through a variety of people and situations, he was able to believe again in the God of Moses—present even in the wilderness. His journey toward healing has included reconciliation with folks in his village. He is a remarkable man—who feels called by God to continue working for truth-telling and justice in his own country, and dreams of starting an Eastern Africa Peace-Building Institute. “Africa will be prosperous when the heart of Africa will be healed.”

After our time together, I wanted to bring Jean Claude to Franklin Park. I wanted the kids to hear God’s story about Peter and Cornelius from his lips. I wanted them to hear about his village and his family’s land that is now being farmed by former enemies.

I would like them to hear Phoebe’s story, too. When she discovered that she was a descendent of slave owners, she reached out to the descendants of the slaves her family owned. Her journey of reconciliation includes working together with her new-found cousins to fund and install a historic marker at the high school their family had worked to desegregate. I think that each of them would have made the story of Peter and Cornelius come alive to the kids in a new way.

Can enemies really become friends? After listening to Jean Claude and Phoebe, I know it is possible, but it requires holy imagination and committed perseverance—joining the work of the Spirit. In reflecting on their stories and my time at Franklin Park, I have been struck by the importance of sharing where my own story intersects with the biblical narrative. Perhaps that is what bearing witness really means. We speak about the Good News we have seen and heard and lived. I wonder if that would have made a difference to my young friends at Franklin Park. I wonder if they would have been more open to imagine another way. I am trusting there will be more opportunities to bear witness and live into the story together—the blessing cup of reconciliation overflowing.

How do you cultivate Mennonite spirituality?

September 11, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Dawn Ruth Nelson, Methacton

What is the spiritual commitment that is at the core of our identity as an Anabaptist community and followers of Jesus, who “for the sake of the joy set before him, endured the cross”?

For me, figuring that out far from home, in the middle of the violence of Dublin, Ireland in the 1980s meant integrating other Christian traditions with the practices of my plain grandmother. All these practices – together – have nurtured my life as I try to live out discipleship, peacemaking, and witness.

I think other Mennonites in urban and mobile settings are trying to figure this out, too. I’ve received requests from churches in Toronto, Champaign-Urbana, Evanston, and Montreal to come and talk about spiritual practices, commitment, and depth. They want to talk about how to cultivate a Mennonite spirituality that makes sense in today’s world. (And also, interestingly enough, requests came from Franklin Conference, in central Pennsylvania. Even in our more rural heartlands we are asking the question: How can we be more aware of and intentional about our spiritual practices?).

To be conformed to Christ, to be formed by Christ, we need to spend very significant time with his words and in his presence, corporately and privately. I am convinced of the centrality of Jesus and of the encounter with the Risen Christ through the Scriptures as a way to anchor Mennonites (and all Christians) in [what could be called a] Dark Night transitional time.

Nelson Kraybill, at the time president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), said the “church . . . must be centered on Jesus. . . . Transforming ministry requires sustained encounter with God made known in Jesus Christ. . . . When the risen Lord is the center of our lives, the Spirit will empower us to speak and act in ways that honor the One who shows us the face of God.” The centrality of Jesus Christ is not an unfamiliar theme to Mennonite-Anabaptists, who grew out of medieval movements practicing the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi).

“Finding a centering rather than a fracturing experience” is how one AMBS seminary student described what happened as he worked on spiritual formation in the 1980s at AMBS. Finding a centering experience is key. That is what [spiritual] disciplines and contemplative prayer do for us. Some people find themselves in a tremendous balancing act, juggling their lives, family and profession. They need something to hold everything together—a deep anchoring in Christ. Centering or contemplative prayer allow us to center in on our experience with God, become anchored in Jesus, as a way to give some coherence to an increasingly fractured existence.

1954 Dawn with her Grandma — Dawn with her grandmother in 1954. Photo by John Ruth.

In my grandmother’s life, this coherence was provided by an ordered life that centered around a particular place that never changed for her. The place we meet God now is often “in Jesus” through the contemplative disciplines. Some Mennonites are using these now as spiritual formation tools—silence, solitude, daily personal prayer time, spiritual direction, contemplative/listening prayer, lectio divina.

One suggestion: Teach people in Sunday school how to practice listening prayer and lectio divina. Also offer special weeks of prayer where people commit to reading a Scripture daily, meeting daily for half-an-hour with a spiritual director, and meeting with a group for faith-sharing at the end of the week. Take Sunday school classes on weekend retreats following the suggested retreat outlines in the book Soul Care: How to Plan and Guide Inspirational Retreats. We need a concerted congregational effort to help people learn to pray, to listen to and talk to God, to read Scripture in a listening mode (lectio divina), to ask, What is God saying to me today through this Scripture? And we need to accompany them as spiritual friends or in spiritual direction as they try to pray.

–Reflections on and from A Mennonite Woman: Exploring Spiritual Life and Identity by Dawn Ruth Nelson, available from Cascadia, Amazon, or on Kindle. E-mail Dawn.

What does it mean To Mennonite?

August 31, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

As our conference grows increasingly diverse, questions of identity come to the forefront. Who are we and what does it mean for us to be in community together? Often we get stuck on questions of ethnicity and heritage.

But what if we were held together by shared practice? What would those practices be? This summer blog series listened to voices from throughout and beyond Franconia Conference to understand more deeply what we mean when we say that we are “Mennoniting” together.

How do you Mennonite? Add your own response by emailing Emily Ralph, associate director of communication for Franconia Conference. Please include your name and congregation.

Who am I? (Introduction)

“What if we viewed our identities as followers of Jesus who Mennonite? What if we saw Mennonite not as our identity, but as our practice? What would the practices for the verb Mennonite be?”

–Emily Ralph, Associate Director of Communication, Franconia Conference

Serving Christ with our heads and hands

“But I know that Christians are not just about what is in their heads. To me, “to Mennonite” means to serve Christ with our heads and our hands, flowing out of the love that is in our hearts.”

–Dennis Edwards, pastor, Sanctuary Covenant Church

Quiet rebellion against the status quo

“Such non-conformity to the standards of culture is only possible if one takes Jesus seriously, not only on Sunday morning but in every encounter and experience throughout the week.”

–Donna Merow, pastor, Ambler Mennonite Church

Mennoniting my way

“And some things I deeply appreciate are not of significant importance for following after Jesus. I recognize that every expression of faith takes on some cultural expression. Mennoniting is partly about discerning what is of Jesus and what is of culture.”

–Noah Kolb, Pastor of Ministerial Leadership, Franconia Conference

Generations Mennoniting together

“This promise gives me hope for unity, for integration; for working together as people of God in the same spirit, a spirit in which the older generations share their unfinished spiritual dreams to the younger generations and empower them to accomplish those dreams.”

–Ubaldo Rodriguez, pastor, New Hope Fellowship/Nueva Esperanza

Body, mind, heart … and feet

“I am a firm believer in physical rituals to remind us of things that are important. In taking off our socks, getting on the floor, and actually cleaning someone else’s feet or allowing ours to be cleaned, our body experiences what we train our minds and hearts for as Mennonites.”

–Maria Byler, Community Resources Coordinator, Philadelphia Praise Center

We have much more to offer

“I feel the question of “How do I Mennonite?” is an outstanding one and I appreciate how Mennoniting has led me to good works in the past. But for me, the follow-up question is just as important: And where does my Mennoniting go from here?“

–Ron White, moderator, Eastern District Conference

Mennonite community … and community that Mennonites

“It is not easy separating the noun “Mennonite” and the verb “to Mennonite.” I think it is because the terms are not mutually exclusive. Those of us who identify as Mennonite, ethnically or culturally, and practice a Mennonite faith are likely already Mennoniting.”

–Alex Bouwman, youth leader, West Philadelphia Mennonite Church

Observing together what God is saying and doing

“For me, “to Mennonite” is to engage in communal discernment about the most important issues in the Christian life. To new leaders eager to make changes in the church, processing often appears as a weakness, if not a downright annoyance.”

–Ervin Stutzman, executive director, Mennonite Church USA

Simple obedience

“Not complicated doctrine but simple acceptance of this mystery and living by it is what church is about. Not trying to be “realistic” about politics, war and economics, but simple obedience to the great Pioneer of our reconciliation, is what our church fellowship is, by birth and continuing discernment, about.”

–John Ruth, historian, Salford Mennonite Church

To “Mennonite” when we’re each other’s enemies

“Perhaps our most prominent expression of such love has been through conscientious objection to killing enemies in wartime, and this remains a vital Mennonite conviction. Increasingly, however, I wonder if we risk so focusing on enemies out there that we fail to learn how to love the enemies we make of each other.”

–Michael A. King, dean, Eastern Mennonite Seminary

On realizing what it means to be a Mennonite

“After I shared my conversation with the leaders and members of the church, no one objected. The leaders and I remembered, though, that we were now part of Franconia Mennonite Conference and we didn’t know if opening our church building would be the right thing to do according to Mennonite values.”

–Aldo Siahaan, pastor, Philadelphia Praise Center

It IS really all about the relating (Wrap-up)

“From their diverse viewpoints, what emerges to me is the sense that it’s our relatedness that is our distinction. It’s this relatedness that is both our biggest strength and potential as well as our possible Achilles heel.”

–Steve Kriss, director of communication, Franconia Conference

RESPONSES

As one who did not grow up in the Mennonite community I found this series to be helpful, interesting, and insightful. We are wonderfully diverse, and this is an invitation to learn from each other and with each other. To all of our friends who contributed–thank you for sharing your stories.

–Chris Nickels, Spring Mount

I appreciated listening to the variety of perspectives about what it means to Mennonite and yet a central theme of ‘putting faith in action in practical ways’ seemed to emerge. To Mennonite means to not be content with simply knowing things about God but putting this faith into practice in tangible ways in local and global communities. We preach not just death but resurrection with our lives. Putting faith into practice within a diverse discerning faith community reminds me that we put our trust in God’s Spirit and not in ourselves. We trust that God is at work among us and big enough to shape all of our quirks into something greater than we can fathom. He has risen indeed! Thanks to all for contributing.

–Angela Moyer, Ripple Allentown

It IS really all about the relating (To Mennonite Wrap-Up)

August 30, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Steve Kriss, Director of Communication and Leadership Formation

I remember the puzzled look on Ellen B. Kauffman’s face as she tried to place me in her social geography of biological relationships. “Who are you parents and grandparents?”

As a junior high kid at the annual Winter Bible School for the Mennonite Churches of Greater Johnstown (Pa.), I gladly told her my parents and grandparents names. I don’t think it helped either of us to navigate our relatedness together as my family had only recently joined a Mennonite congregation. We were on our own, it seemed, to build a relationship together, to co-construct our Mennoniting.

Over the summer, we’ve had excellent writers reflect on what it means to Mennonite. To many of us and many persons in the culture beyond Mennonite congregations, we know that it’s about the relatedness. These blogs evidence this relatedness in refreshing and hopeful ways that give a real glimpse of Mennonite relatedness as Good News.

When my family became part of a Mennonite congregation, we adopted some cultural practices that seem to epitomize Mennoniting in traditional senses. My mom even took to wearing a netted prayer covering. We bought milk in glass bottles from the local dairy. My parents did some communal gardening with people from our church—they even canned and froze vegetables together. These were all the sorts of things that I’d imagine Mennonites do. It’s easy, from the outside, to assume these marking practices are what it means to be Mennonite, or to Mennonite, whether it’s a verb or a noun. What surprises me about our blogs is that there is little conversation, really, about these cultural practices often rooted in agrarian lifestyles alone.

Our writers this summer have pointed toward something beyond practices, beyond even our radical reformation heritage and distinctive acts of footwashing and believers baptism. From their diverse viewpoints, what emerges to me is the sense that it’s our relatedness that is our distinction. It’s this relatedness that is both our biggest strength and potential as well as our possible Achilles heel.

Mennoniting, as our bloggers have stated, has to do with how we relate to God, each other, the world, our past, and our future. It’s not something ever done in isolation. All of the blogs present authentic encounters and relationship. Some, like John Ruth, Aldo Siahaan, and Ron White, highlight reflective action that pulls us inward to move us outward. Some, like Noah Kolb, Maria Byler and Alex Bouwman, celebrate our historical practices and pacing. Other stories by Donna Merrow, Michael King, and Dennis Edwards highlight holy discontent in the world. Some, like Ervin Stutzman, Emily Ralph, and Ubaldo Rodriguez, are pondering new identities.

What becomes clear is that this Mennoniting thing is about relating—with God in all of God’s interrelated Trinitarian identities (Creator, Redeemer, Spirit), with the world, with our neighbors, with our enemies, with our brothers, sisters, cousins (biological and otherwise). Mennoniting is knowing we are not in this world alone—there are enemies and friends, there is God and there is a universe called forth into being by God. It’s a radical response to contemporary individualism and isolation, to “me-ness.” It’s a witness of love and a response to God’s declaration in Genesis, “it’s not good to be on this good planet alone.”

Sister Ellen was ultimately right; though she couldn’t find the strand of my biological connection that day, she knew that I hadn’t arrived unrelated on this earth (or in her Bible school class). Ultimately, we are all created to flourish in our relatedness. Mennoniting, then, seems to be doggedly and joyfully living in those interrelationships between family and strangers, future and past, enemies and friends, the Creator and the created. And in the midst of that to hold a willingness to be transformed by the grace of God, the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

On realizing what it means to be a Mennonite

August 22, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

To Mennonite Blog #12

by Aldo Siahaan, Philadelphia Praise Center

In the past week, Muslims around the world ended their 30 days of fasting for the month of Ramadan. It was around this time of celebration, five years ago, that I realized that I am a Mennonite.

The church I pastor, Philadelphia Praise Center in South Philly, officially became part of Franconia Mennonite Conference in the middle of 2007. The leaders and I were still learning to know more about Mennonites that year and what our membership in the Conference might mean.

I am originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, where Christians are the minority. In Philadelphia among Indonesian immigrants, however, there are more Indonesian Christians than Indonesian Muslims; still, I have Muslim friends.

In the month of Ramadan 2006, knowing the feeling of being a minority, I offered the Indonesian Muslim community the use of our worship space for prayer during their holy month. I spoke with one of the leaders but she never called me back with an answer.

A year later, Ramadan 2007, the same leader called me and asked, “Aldo, do you remember that last year you offered us your church so we can pray? Is the invitation still open?” I told her that for me personally the answer would be yes, but that I would need to talk with our congregation’s leaders first.

After I shared my conversation with the leaders and members of the church, no one objected. The leaders and I remembered, though, that we were now part of Franconia Mennonite Conference and we didn’t know if opening our church building would be the right thing to do according to Mennonite values.

In conversation with Conference leadership, I asked carefully, “Is opening the church building to Muslims a Mennonite way?”

Steve Kriss, our conference minister, responded, “Aldo, that’s what Mennonites do. We build relationships with people, our neighbors, even other faiths. We forgive. We share what we have.”

I realized that that this was Mennoniting—following Jesus’ command to love one another (John 15:17).

Next week, Franconia Conference Director of Communication and Leadership Cultivation Steve Kriss will reflect back on the summer of blogs. Have there been any insights that have touched you, made you think, connected with your experience? How do you “Mennonite”? Join the conversation on Facebook & Twitter (#fmclife) or by email.

To "Mennonite" when we're each other's enemies

August 13, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

To Mennonite Blog #11

by Michael A. King, dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary (Salford)

Michael King — Photo provided by Eastern Mennonite University

Pondering what it may mean “to Mennonite” reminds me of a friend who leads a state agency serving persons with disabilities. Just returned from Washington, D.C., he reported a grim picture: the likelihood that a divided Congress won’t get its act together to release funds his agency relies on. Any cuts will hurt people with faces I cherish, because my friend has come to lead this agency as an outgrowth of love for his own children with Down Syndrome.

I found our conversation chilling. Has it come to this? Are we so divided we can’t find common ground even to support persons with disabilities?

This is not to minimize complexities; it’s appropriate to ponder the roles of, say, government versus church in caring for “the least of these.” But my friend works tirelessly to raise funds from church folk—yet they provide a fraction of the needed revenue.

So how have we reached a juncture at which even seeing some role for government to play in funding my friend’s agency—why should my taxes support those takers!—may pull me into the vortex of mutual hate which seems the only thing we now know how to build together?

My point isn’t to argue specifics of one more divisive matter. It’s to grieve what seems our loss of ability to work across legitimate differences to discern solutions. And it’s to suspect that an important meaning of “to Mennonite” in such bitter times is for us to learn and maybe model what love amid division can look like.

From our beginnings Mennonites have sought a “third way,” an understanding of Bible, faith, and life that doesn’t quite fit into Protestant or Roman Catholic categories though it can enrich and be enriched by both. Key to third-way understandings has been unusual passion to take Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount literally. This in turn has led Mennonites to believe that Jesus actually meant for us to love even enemies (Matt. 5:44)—here, now, concretely.

Perhaps our most prominent expression of such love has been through conscientious objection to killing enemies in wartime, and this remains a vital Mennonite conviction. Increasingly, however, I wonder if we risk so focusing on enemies out there that we fail to learn how to love the enemies we make of each other.

When we differ over today’s hot issues we seem ever more inclined not to treat persons who hold different views as fellow pilgrims seeking, with us, to hear God’s voice amid our common finitudes and frailties. We seem ever less inclined to trust that God could be threaded through any view other than our own. Rather, we seem ever more ready to believe that if you hold a view other than mine you are my enemy.

Maybe with so much alienation swirling, the one who is not my friend is, precisely, my enemy. But even if we accept such a troubling conclusion, to Mennonite our way through it may then be to ask what it means to love the viewpoint opponents we have made our enemies.

Amid my own limitations of vision, let me not offer a formula for navigating such complicated terrain. Yet let me at least suggest that to Mennonite our way through a time in which we turn even other Christians and Mennonites—not to mention, say, atheists or Muslims or Republicans or Democrats—into enemies is to find ways to repay even what we consider evil with good (Rom. 12:21).

When I was growing up, I saw my parents model what such Mennoniting might look like: no matter how much they might disagree with a person’s beliefs or choices, precisely because they always took seriously that even the enemy was to be loved, they always spied treasure in the other. It might be tarnished; it might need polishing; the light of Christ might barely brighten it. But it was there—and thus was something even in the enemy that could be cherished, learned from, not merely vanquished. I would like to try Mennoniting like that in today’s world and see where it takes me and us.

Our summer blog series will soon be wrapping up. Have there been any insights that have touched you, made you think, connected with your experience? How do you “Mennonite”? Join the conversation on Facebook & Twitter (#fmclife) or by email.

Simple obedience 'to Mennonite'

August 9, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by John Ruth, Salford

I was baptized after an emotional week of revival meetings with a tearful preacher in an old store-building at the young Finland Mennonite mission in the hills above “The Ridge” nine miles from the Lower Salford farm of my birth. I was all of eight years old, and in third grade. Other boys from Salford Mennonite families made fun of me, calling me, “Chun the Baptist.”

When Bishop Arthur Ruth of Line Lexington arrived at Finland for the service, and asked me some introductory questions, I felt I was flunking. I knew from Sunday School and family worship that we were saved because “Jesus died on the cross,” but I couldn’t answer the bishop’s follow-up question, “How do we know that?” The bishop helped me out: “The Bible tells us.”

Well, I had known that too. I had memorized a lot of Bible verses. And with all my immaturity I now found the church commending me on the solemn “step” I had taken.

This was only one of some questionable actions I would observe my church taking. So why did I continue to respect it and grow to love it?

I did not rebel when my extra-conscientious parents sent me fifty-five miles west to a two-year-old Mennonite High School at Lancaster (there was no Christopher Dock High School for another decade). I enjoyed my new Lancaster friends, visited their homes, dated a girl, and even got a “plain coat” for my graduation, like my Lancaster buddies.

While working in 1948-9 to earn money for college, I was asked to teach Sunday school in Conshohocken, at one of the many new “mission stations” then springing up in the Franconia Conference – many out of lay initiative. I think my plain coat had caught the attention of the bishops, because they put me in the lot for minister even though I was between my freshman and sophomore years at “EMC.”

Then when the “lot was cast” between me and two other men, both at least twice my age, it fell on me, as it had on even younger fellows like Paul Lederach of Norristown and Al Detweiler of Rockhill. Alas, I hadn’t yet really begun to think for myself. But the church had chosen me, and I chose to be chosen ecause in the voice of the church I heard the voice of God.

Sixty-two years later, my respect for the Church of Christ is a key to my Mennonite loyalty. In its fellowship I found a good wife, and was allowed both to finish college and a Ph.D. program in English at Harvard University, and teach literature for a dozen years at Eastern University. After that, I had a “second ordination,” again under the leadership of a bishop, Richard Detweiler. For thirty-five years I have been making films and videos, writing history books, and leading Anabaptist heritage tours in Europe, while serving as an associate pastor for twenty-two years in my beloved congregation at Salford.

I respect the Church because I believe, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 3, that it is the means by which God makes experiencable the mystery of salvation. Being reconciled to God and each other is what salvation is about. It is what our church is about. Our first confession of faith (Schleitheim, 1527) is about church, because the way we do church is the evidence of what we believe . Not complicated doctrine but simple acceptance of this mystery and living by it is what church is about. Not trying to be “realistic” about politics, war and economics, but simple obedience to the great Pioneer of our reconciliation, is what our church fellowship is, by birth and continuing discernment, about.

When I asked Indonesian members of the Praise Center this summer in Philadelphia why they would want to be a part of our Conference, they said, “Because you know what it is to be marginal” (i.e., non-conformed to the world). We don’t find that sense in other potential fellowships.”

“Well,” I said, “what about the fact that we’re pretty much part of the establishment now?”

“Yes,” they replied, “but at least you have the historical memory.”

I know what it feels like to be touched by that Mennonite memory. Seventy-four years after my immature baptism, though my church is still imperfect and tempted to imitate instead of obey, its noble birth-message of reconciliation makes it where I want to belong, be accountable, and share the mystery of salvation with a whole new set of neighbors.

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