We come from a variety of backgrounds in culture, ethnicity, education, and lifestyles, and we come together as a worshiping community with Jesus at the center.
Ambler
Three congregations credential new leaders on Pentecost
by Sheldon C. Good Many Christian congregations commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, and three Franconia Conference congregations in particular acknowledged the Spirit’s movement through the […]
Ministerial Update (April 2014)
Steve Kriss, Director of Leadership Cultivation, provided this update from the March & April meetings of the Credentials and Ministerial Committees.
From there to here: a story of community
I came back from Mennonite Church USA Convention in July feeling challenged and uncomfortable, the kind of feeling that means I need to do something. In Phoenix, I’d prayed about how to respond to a drone center coming to our area. I went to the next protest. Still, I remained uncomfortable.
Successful Conference, Seminary partnership concludes
Theological educators believe headfirst immersion into unfamiliar cultural terrain is a requirement for preparing church leaders in the context of the twenty-first century. For students at Biblical Theological Seminary (Hatfield, Pa.), a lifelong commitment to intercultural ministry begins at the second year mark of their LEAD Master of Divinity Program.
CD graduates are reminded to live greatness
In a commencement ceremony that emphasized the three main pillars of Christopher Dock Mennonite High School’s mission, the school graduated 84 students in the Class of 2013 Saturday night. Christopher Dock “seeks to ignite passion for learning, faith and life,” according to its website and demonstrated so in this year’s ceremony.
Delivering Christ to a waiting world
Christmas.
I have long been ambivalent about this holy season. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Christmas—the anticipation of Advent, the children’s pageant, singing “Silent Night” by candlelight with guitar accompaniment, the live nativity, the retelling of the familiar story, the making and wrapping of gifts.
But I also dread its coming—the gaudy lawn decorations, inane songs like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” blaring from the radio, the excesses of the celebration. I lament with Linus its commercialization and long to discover if the Grinch’s Whoville observation is farther reaching and that it can, indeed, come “without packages, boxes, or bags.”
Introducing Ambler Mennonite Church
Ambler began in a garage in 1952 as an outreach of Franconia Conference. This mission was nearly abandoned when those who came to serve the children of the area found them too unruly. For the last fifty years, the meetinghouse has been located at the corner of Spring Garden and Mount Pleasant Avenues, within walking distance of the train to Philadelphia. In the last century Ambler grew as a company town for Keasbey and Mattison, an asbestos manufacturer. Despite this environmental legacy, Ambler is in the midst of revitalization with numerous restaurants, theaters, and shops opening on its main street.
Quiet rebellion against the status quo
In a sermon titled Transformed Nonconformist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority” (Strength to Love, 27).
To “Mennonite” is to be creatively maladjusted to a society that promotes materialism, nationalism, militarism, and violence.
Communing with each other and the world
Whether wearing clothes from other countries or sharing a spaghetti dinner with the church down the street, Franconia Conference congregations spent October 2nd remembering their holy communion with the world-wide church.
Conference pastors focus on intergenerational leadership
By Benjamin Sutter, benjamins5@goshen.edu Harleysville, PA—Sheldon Good and Steve Kriss know what it means to work as an intergenerational leadership team—Good worked as an intern with Franconia Conference for four […]
Youth in the city: Rooted in the future
Young leaders retreat into Philadelphia for a new kind of leadership formation –Kayla Benner, Ambler Mennonite Church “I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled […]
A long distance out of the way: Decades of living life lead to a call to pastor
Donna Merow, Ambler Edward Albee wrote, “Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” This describes my […]