Download the Spring 2008 issue of Youth Breezes
Click here to visit other Youth Ministry resources
View photos of the Lock-In at Christopher Dock
Uncategorized
Notes to Pastors
April’s Thursday Pastors’ Breakfast with Gilberto Flores, Director of Denominational Ministry and Missional Church, MC USA
Franconia Mennonite Conference has been on a journey of discovering the next level or stage of oversight in the missional church. Gilberto will share around the conversations MC USA leadership have been engaged with centered on the question: “What is the role of oversight in the missional Church?”
Come and engage this question in order to help shape what the role of oversight might mean for us here at Franconia. The April 24th breakfast will be held at the Mennonite Conference Center, 8 – 10 a.m. A donation of $ 5 is recommended for breakfast. Please register for this event by April 19 to Jessica Walter at jwalter@mosaicmennonites.org.
FREE MINISTRY SEMINAR FOR PASTORS AND LAY MINISTERS
Pastors, chaplains, and lay ministers are invited to Dock Woods Community’s annual “Pastoral Care to Seniors Seminar” on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, from
8:00–11:45 a.m. in Dock Woods Community’s Fisher Auditorium. Complimentary continental breakfast will be provided.
This year’s focus is: “Hidden Gifts and Challenges: Affirming our Sexuality and Dealing with Depression in Seniors and Those Who Minister to Them.”
Our speaker is Dr. Andrew Johanson, LMFT, D. Min.
He is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice in Child, Individual, Couple, Family, and Sex Therapy. He is adjunct Professor at Moravian Theological Seminary teaching “Human Sexuality”, “Family Systems and Marriage Counseling,” and “Professional Ethics for Counselors”. Web page: www.drandrewjohanson.com
To attend free of charge, pre-register by calling (or e-mailing) Merlin Hedrick at 215-368-4438 by May 9. The cost for those who do not pre-register is $10 the day of the seminar. There is a $25 fee for those taking the seminar for continuing education credits. (The seminar counts for 2.5 continuing education credits.) Your advance questions on our topics are welcome and can be sent to mhedrick@dockwoods.com. They will be forwarded to our speaker to be used anonymously in our seminar sessions.
MMN Responds to Need for Anti-Racism Guidelines
Mennonite Mission Network’s Shared Voices provides a much-needed set of anti-racism communication guidelines. The book suggests how the guidelines can be used, gives editing samples, offers principles of photo taking, collecting and assessing, and examines layout, photo usage, and choice of media. Although anti-racism training would be helpful to every member of the Mennonite Church, this book is a beginning to sensitize and make us aware as we communicate with each other. This book is recommended for pastors, congregational leaders, writers and anyone who is communicating across cultures. Shared Voices is available from MennoSource and/or MMN.
People’s Summit for Faithful Living
Greetings,
I’d like to invite you to participate in the People’s Summit for Faithful Living July 8 to 10 at the Canadian Mennonite University Campus in Winnipeg. This summit will be a joint gathering between Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA. We hope to have many people from Mennonite Church USA attend and enjoy this time of fellowship and discernment with our Canadian sisters and brothers. Under the theme “At the Crossroads: Promise and Peril,” participants will focus on the urgent task of being a faithful community of God amidst the many challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Deuteronomy 4:1-9 will be the theme text.
Please follow this link to see a video invitation from Jack Suderman, General Secretary of Mennonite Church Canada, to attend this event http://www.youtube.com/watchv=LoM_gEg6YFo
Information on registration, costs and how to get to Winnipeg are available at summit.MennoniteUSA.org. Please forward and share this invitation with others you think may be interested in attending the People’s Summit with Mennonite Church Canada this July.
Peace,
Jim Schrag
Executive Director
Mennonite Church USA
Notes to Pastors
Managing Holy Restlessness Workshop
Franconia Conference School for Leadership Formation presents Managing Holy Restlessness – Calling and Discernment at any age and in any life situation. This workshop will be held at the Mennonite Conference Center on Saturday, April 19 from 8:30 a.m. to noon and will be led by Debra Franke, MA Counseling, and Walter Sawatzky, Franconia Conference Minister. The workshop will look at discerning and managing the holy restlessness that often stirs in us as we seek to live into the design God has for each person. The registration fee is $20 per person. For more information about this event, click on the following link: http://mosaicmennonites.org/news/tmoyer/managing-holy-restlessness
Please register for this event by Tuesday, April 15, by contacting Jessica Walter at jwalter@mosaicmennonites.org.
April’s Thursday Pastors’ Breakfast with Gilberto Flores, Director of Denominational Ministry and Missional Church, MC USA Franconia Mennonite Conference has been on a journey of discovering the next level or stage of oversight in the missional church. Gilberto will share around the conversations MC USA leadership have been engaged with centered on the question: “What is the role of oversight in the missional Church?”
Come and engage this question in order to help shape what the role of oversight might mean for us here at Franconia. The April 24th breakfast will be held at the Mennonite Conference Center, 8 am to 10 am. A donation of $ 5 is recommended for breakfast. Please register for this event by April 19 to Jessica Walter at jwalter@mosaicmennonites.org.
2009 Mennonite Directory
Mennonite Church USA is collecting updated information for the 2009 edition of the Mennonite Directory. Credentialed leaders are asked to check the Ministerial Leadership Registration System for current and accurate position and credential information. If you have not updated this information recently, please do so promptly! You can make these changes at www.mennodata.org. Please contact Deb Ratzlaff at DebR@MennoniteUSA.org or mlandis@mosaicmennonites.org with any questions.
Intersections March 2008
(click the header to read all stories)
Read the articles online:
- A gift plain and simple: Encouraging each other to live out grace– Bruce Eglinton-Woods
- The house is being built– Noel Santiago
- Historic peace churches meet in Indonesia: What is peace in our land?– Aldo Siahaan
- From Zimbabwe to Pennsylvania and back: Extending the blessing– Renee Gehman
- Global shared convictions series: The love of God comes wearing skin– Blaine Detwiler
- About faith, grace, fear and a whole range of emotions: “I thought I was the most unqualified person”– Gary Parmer
- Building relationships: Bridging culture and community– Elaine A. Moyer
- A reflection from the Honduras trip– Marlene Frankenfield
- Called to a Mission in Marketing: Encouraging shopping with a conscience– Brenda Oelschlager
- Wanted: Ideas for Ministry– C. Conrad Martin
Click to View/download the printable PDF
A gift plain and simple: Encouraging each other to live out grace
The house is being built
Noel Santiago, Executive Minister
nsantiago@mosaicmennonites.org
Grace… Peace… Blessing… Love… Goodness… Relationships… Encouragement… Ministry…
Almost sounds like the list found in Galatians on the fruit of the Spirit, doesn’t it?
God indeed is doing a new thing in our midst. Those who have gone before us have been faithful and their legacy of faithfulness continues to live today.
The prophet Haggai (2:9) once said, “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house… And in this place I will grant peace….”
In these pages of Intersections we once again capture the “the glory of this present house” the Lord is building among us. This house is built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, for truly no other foundation can be laid.
• As grace is experienced through becoming communities of grace, the house is being built.
• As peace is being sought in places of religious pluralism, poverty and injustice, the house is being built.
• As blessing is extended materially, spiritually and emotionally, the house is being built.
• As love shows up in unexpected skin, the house is being built.
• As God’s goodness comes in a way totally unexpected and a ‘yes’ is said, the house is being built.
• As relationships are forged across miles and cultures, the house is being built.
• As encouragement comes to help people through conscientious shopping, the house is being built.
• As ministry ideas are encouraged and offers to assist are made, the house is being built.
The house of God, a place of habitation where the glory of the Lord can shine forth, is being built among us!
In these pages you will get a glimpse of the house of glory being built through the lives, stories, works and words of those who write. The future looks bright, there is much to hope for even in the midst of a broken and dying world.
May you be built up in your inner being – the temple of the Holy Spirit – as you read the story of God’s movement in our midst. Blessings.
Historic peace churches meet in Indonesia: What is peace in our land?
Aldo Siahaan, Philadelphia Praise Center
siahaan22@gmail.com
Pastors, leaders and activists from Church of the Brethren, Mennonite, Brethren in ChristQuaker and congregations from around the world came together in December in Solo, Indonesia. Participants came from as far as Australia, Japan, India and the United States. The theme for the conference was “Peace In Our Land: In the Asian Context of Religious Pluralism, Poverty and Injustice.”
On the opening day of the conference, Mesach Krisetya, from the Indonesian Mennonite conference Gereja Kristen Muria Indonesia (GKMI) , challenged participants to sacrifice our comfort and wealth for others who are existing in less fortunate situtations than our own. Basing his theme on Isaiah 2:1-5, he asked us, “What do you bring before God, war-ship or worship?”
One testimony about poverty in India–where the big issue is mass suicide, especially by women, because they don’t know the answer to their financial problems–became a difficult and engaging topic in group discussion. One group asked, “How can we as Christians be a community of love and practice the economics of love in a global economy?”
Not only did we hear from many speakers, we also allowed God to speak to us. We sang and knelt down together in prayer, and tried to hear God’s voice.
After a few days of meetings we went to Surakarta Palace, located in the city of Solo, and had a chance to meet with the siblings of the sultan, or king, of Indonesia. We planted a Sawo Kecik tree seed in the palace garden, symbolizing planting the virtues for gaining peace. The king replaced the trees surrounding the palace with this kind of tree as a symbolic work to share the openness, calling on all religions to plant their virtues and goodness in the earth.
One of the messages from this conference was that of St. Francis of Assisi, who said, “If you desire peace with your lips, make sure it is written first in your heart.”
Do we truly love our enemies? Do we pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43-44)? Sometimes I wonder: what is peace if I know there are so many people killed by gun violence?
What is peace if I know many Christians are being persecuted? What is peace if I know so many of my Indonesian friends in Philadelphia live in fear because of their immigration status? Sometimes I feel helpless.
One day God reminded me of a story from the Gospel about a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish, who gave everything without asking any questions. He did his part and God did God’s part by multiplying it. What God wants from me is just to give everything that I have to make peace and have peace with others, especially those who need it most. It is like God is saying to me, “Aldo, you do your part, full-hearted and trust me, I’ll do My part.” I thank God for my helplessness.