Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

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Notes to Pastors

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New Mileage Rates Announced
As of July 1, the Internal Revenue Service increased the business mileage rate by
8 cents. The new rate for mileage reimbursement is 58.5¢ per mile and is effective
July 1 through December 31, 2008. You can view the IRS notice at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=184163,00.html.

Upcoming Retreats at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center
Laurelville Mennonite Church Center in Mt. Pleasant, PA is pleased to offer the first annual Music and Worship Leader’s Training Workshop, September 12-14, 2008. The weekend will include corporate worship as well as in-depth training for music leaders, worship leaders, dramatists, scripture readers and visual display artists. Emerging and experienced leaders are encouraged to come together.

Laurelville is also featuring its first-ever retreat on spirituality and the visual arts October 24-26, entitled Beyond Words: Imagining a Visual Spirituality. Designed for artists, pastors, and lay-people, this retreat will include visually-focused worship, workshops, open studio space, and conversation. Come to participate and to receive. More information and brochures are available at http://www.laurelville.org/program or call 800-839-1021.

Notes to Pastors

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Zimbabwe call for intercession
Mennonite World Conference (MWC) is asking congregations to be in prayer for the country of Zimbabwe. MWC is sending a deacon couple and calling for two days of prayer and fasting, June 26 and 27, as Zimbabweans face a tense run-off election on June 27. For more information and to view specific ways to be in prayer, visit www.mwc-cmm.org and look under the Resources tab for the news release.

Notes to Pastors

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Dear Friends:

We received word this past Saturday that Kenneth Seitz, Sr., age 91, passed away in Harrisonburg, VA. Kenneth served for many years as a missionary to Mexico for the Franconia Mission Board, 1958 – 1978. He was among the first of Franconia’s missionaries to Mexico and is highly regarded among the Mexico churches as a founding and “father” leader. Kenneth pastored in Virginia prior to going to Mexico and after his return he pastored at Line Lexington Mennonite in Franconia Conference. In his later years he retired to Harrisonburg, Va. where he also served as a chaplain for a few years. Kenneth died on Friday, June 6, 2008. His funeral was held Tuesday, June 10 at Mount Clinton Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Va.

In 1937 Kenneth married Grace Hebner from the Plains congregation, who died this past December. Kenneth & Grace farmed and raised their family in the Lansdale area until Kenneth went to college at Eastern Mennonite University in the early 1950’s. Kenneth was a rather stern disciplinarian in his early years. He was also a learner and in his later years he grew to become a gracious, kind, and non-judgment person. We extend our love and thanks to the three sons and three daughters and their off-spring who follow after.

Noah Kolb
Pastor of Ministerial Leadership
Franconia Mennonite Conference

June Prayer Gathering
You are invited to the June prayer gathering on Saturday, June 14, at the Mennonite Conference Center, 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. This will be a unique opportunity to hear from Amish brothers from Montana and Idaho who will be visiting this area. Brother Ben Girod is a bishop in the Amish community there and has been a leader in the Anabaptist Swiss-reformed reconciliation process. Ben carries a burden for spiritual renewal and unity in the Anabaptist community.

Thursday Pastors’ Breakfast
The next Thursday Pastors’ Breakfast will be held at the Mennonite Conference Center on Thursday, June 19 from 8 – 10 a.m. Christina Alderfer, Administrator of the Agape Prayer Ministry School, will be speaking. The Agape Prayer Ministry provides an organized, thorough approach to healing based upon forgiveness. Come to learn more about this ministry resource for your congregation. This will be the last Pastors’ Breakfast until September. A continental breakfast will be served. Please register for this event by June 16 by contacting Melissa Landis.

Learning Community Forming
A Learning Community called “Deepening the Spiritual Lives of Congregations and Leaders” is being formed and hopes to begin meeting in the fall of 2008. Some of the goals of this group would be: learning to “be” instead of just “do”; nourishing intimacy with God as part of discipleship; not just finding God for others but for ourselves as leaders, too; dreaming with other leaders in our congregations how deepening spiritual growth might happen in each of our settings; letting our missional journey lead to a deeper spiritual journey. Both pastors and lay leaders are invited to be a part of this group. If you would be interested or would like more information about this learning opportunity, call Dawn Ruth Nelson. For general questions regarding Learning Communities, contact Walter Sawatzky.

Notice of Closing
The Mennonite Conference Center will be closed on Monday, June 23. Staff will be attending a Conference Board meeting held during the day at Lakeview Mennonite Church in Susquehanna.

June Prayer Gathering

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Pastors, intercessors, prayer teams and anyone else interested in seeing the church grow in unity: You are invited to a unique opportunity to join together in prayer, worship and seeking God as we hear from Amish brothers who will be in the area to do some work on reconciliation within the Anabaptist community. We will meet on Saturday, June 14, 10:00-12:30 pm at the Franconia Conference Center.

Our guests will be Ben Girod, his son, Ben Jr, and Roy Yoder. Ben Sr. is a bishop in the Amish communities in Idaho and Montana; Roy is a minister. Ben has been a leader in the Anabaptist-Swiss Reformed reconciliation process. Ben carries a burden for the spiritual renewal and unity in the Anabaptist community.

Intersections Spring 2008

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Extending the fellowship of justice, mercy and grace into a flat world

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Stephen Kriss, PPC
skriss@mosaicmennonites.org

steve.jpgNew York Times writer, Thomas Friedman is fascinated by the concept of freeware in his book on global economics and movement, The World is Flat. Freeware is a genre of computer software and applications lodged on the web, developed and tweaked by designers and programmers from around the world. Skilled techies who speak different languages find ways to collaborate, create and largely hold themselves accountable through a community of integrity for development and advancement of projects and initiatives. They innovate and contribute often for nothing more than the exhilaration of developing something that is good and useful, motivated by the opportunity to work together in a community with other tech savvy persons connected by shared questions, goals and possibilities.

Franconia Conference was created to confer, to gather, to test doctrine and direction, to discern the moves of the Spirit, to maintain what John Ruth of the Salford congregation has called “the right fellowship.” We’ve been gathering now across four centuries, maintaining and at times extending that right fellowship to persons across the Perkiomen Creek and the Delaware River, north of Route 80 and increasingly south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, south of the Rio Grande and into the world.

text1.jpgContemporary theologians and theorists suggest that Mennonites have a unique perspective with an emphasis on orthopraxy (right practice/action) rather than orthodoxy (right belief/thought). In this issue of Intersections, how we’re practicing the faith together as a community becomes evident. These activities—sharing resources and learning between congregations, opening spaces for persons with differing abilities, considering the situation of immigrants, responding to needs in northern Pennsylvania—manifest some of the best of our efforts at mutuality, mission and extending grace.

We gather together to meet and confer, for sure. And often in thinking of the conference, we think of committees, organizational structures and decision-making processes. The conference is designed to “maintain our fellowship” in many ways. But in these pages, I see glimpses of ways that we are moving toward “extending the fellowship”: in sending and receiving with communities in Chile and the United Kingdom, in supporting emerging leaders through the Area Conference Leadership Fund and in considering the ways that the Bible reads us and is read by us.

New Testament Bible scholar Laura Brenneman who teaches at Bluffton University, recently visited with Methacton congregation, Christopher Dock Mennonite High School and with emerging leaders at the Germantown Historic Mennonite Meetinghouse. In her discussion at Germantown, we considered the possibilities and responsibilities of freedom in Christ, freedom from fear and movement toward life. It’s a freedom that pulls us toward cultivating responses that extend peaceableness into the world.

I can’t help but think that as we embrace that freedom in this age of connectivity and movement that Friedman describes, that we’ll find ourselves with new possibilities to move to extend and explore our historic right fellowship.
Who might we become together as we share resources, learn and go into the world, creating and contributing toward today’s incarnation of the reign of God? Maybe we’ll find ourselves contributing and problem-solving because it’s exhilarating and life-giving, because we, like God, are creative in our relating and freedom. We might yet be transformed and joyous in our connecting through open and available possibilities that embody and extend the prophet Micah’s call to justice, mercy and grace.