Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Anabaptist

Moved by faith … back to school

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Philippiansby Maria Byler, Philadelphia Praise Center

In Matthew 17 Jesus tells the disciples that with faith the size of a mustard seed they could move mountains. But at Philadelphia Praise Center/Centro de Alabanza de Filadelfia, something else is being moved by faith: adults are going to school. And I, as site administrator, get to witness the miraculous results.

This fall, 15 members of PPC/CAF started the certificate program of the Anabaptist Biblical Institute (IBA), an adult Christian education program coordinated by the Mennonite Education Agency and the Hispanic Mennonite Church. It consists of eight 12-week courses. Students complete workbook lessons on their own and meet weekly in group tutoring sessions. Tutors are pastors Leticia Cortés and Fernando Loyola. With God’s help the first course, Introduction to Bible Study, was completed in early December.

Each student is in a very different place with their education. One student is completing postdoctoral work, one dropped out of elementary school over 20 years ago. Most have begun to know Jesus within the last five years. But their varied experiences with school and church were overcome by the strength of their faith and their desire to learn more about God.

At the first class when asked about the homework, most of the students raised their eyebrows and shook their heads sadly. “Me cuesta leer tanto,” – “It’s hard for me to read so much” “No entendí todas las preguntas,” “I didn’t understand all the questions.” We struggled through the literary genres in the Bible and the difference between figurative and literal. But we also had great conversations about Hebrew identity, Creation, and even vegetarianism. Week after week I left the class amazed at what God is doing with these humble but eager followers. And the students left the class feeling as though they had merely scratched the surface of knowledge, and ready to deepen their understanding.

More than what God is doing inside each student is what God is doing with us as a community. We are each (including me) growing so much more than if we just read the lessons individually. IBA has become a very human place where we learn from the reading and also from our sisters’ and brothers’ life views.  This includes experiences of members of the community during the course. We have had to cancel or rearrange classes because of illness or other church events – and those happenings make it into the class conversation. Students often bring their children, who participate in their own way. It’s giving us all practice in being a community of sharing and support as we learn together how to walk this life as Christians.

At the beginning of the New Year we start on the second course: Anabaptist History and Theology. For more information on what we’re studying, check out the Mennonite Education Agency website. Or, if you’d rather, contact me – I love to talk about this exciting work that God is doing in the church!

AMP conference focuses on multiculturalism and identity

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by Andrew Mashas, Anabaptist Missional Project (reposted by permission)

Anabaptist Missional Project
Leonard Dow, Oxford Circle, challenges the group to move toward the vision of the multicultural multitude in Revelation 7.

On the weekend of June 29 – July 1, 45 people from around the country gathered at Oxford Circle Mennonite Church in Philadelphia for the Anabaptist Missional Project (AMP) conference. Attendees experienced a time of worship, discussion, and fellowship centered on the growing and expanding diversity among Anabaptists in America, specifically within MCUSA. Throughout the weekend, attendees discussed the difficulty of embracing other cultures while maintaining an Anabaptist identity.

The conference, titled “The Spirit’s Work in Mission: Prophesying about Many Peoples,” focused on a vision of the Kingdom of God in the book of Revelation, which explains that every nation, tribe, and tongue will come together to worship the one true Lord and King, Jesus Christ.

Speakers David and Madeline Maldonado shared about the hundreds of Guatemalan immigrant workers attending their Florida congregation. As the number of immigrant attendees increased, so did the ethnic tensions between the Guatemalan workers and Puerto Rican congregants. The Maldonados explained the reconciliation that took place within the church and its example to the community.

Both Habecker and Oxford Circle Mennonite churches of Pennsylvania were able to share their stories of struggle with identity in the midst of declining church attendance and about revitalization within the church.

Leonard Dow of Oxford Circle, a Franconia Conference Partner in Mission, gave a passionate testimony on how the congregation provided a nonviolent protective community around residents who were threatened with violence, allowing for a new approach to community outreach.

In the case of Habecker, Pastor Karen Sensenig described the congregation’s willingness to become vulnerable to God’s transforming spirit. She explained how the church embraced Burmese refugees who stumbled upon their small rural congregation in Lancaster County. And now, with the church seeing a resurgence of life because of this newly found diversity among the community, they’re able to tell their story to the broader Anabaptist community.

“’New Life’ expresses my response to the conference,” said Pastor Sensenig in reflection on the dynamics of the conference. “The vitality that young people bring to the church is so full of hope. They ask questions that push us into new considerations of the movement of God among us. They are willing to be vulnerable and to take risks. The sincere engagement of the group put us all on a quest to discover just what is needed to open a way for the Spirit to blow into our midst in unexpected ways.”

Anabaptist Missional Project
Worship was led by a team from Oxford Circle Mennonite Church.

Meal times were spent in dynamic discussion around a variety of topics including the history of racism, ethnic divisions, and sensitivities in the West and among churches in America.  This discussion provided a platform for people to share their faith journeys with new people across the Anabaptist landscape.

Many of the conference organizers, including Carmen Horst, Ben Wideman and Aaron Kauffman agreed that this year’s conference lacked ethnic diversity and representation from multicultural congregations within the Philadelphia area.

“I was hoping for a diverse group of individuals who were interested in networking and entering into dialogue with each other on the subject of mission and had hopes that there would be a large contingent from the local area, but in the end only a few could make it.” said Ben Wideman, associate pastor at Salford Mennonite Church in Harleysville, Pa.

As for the future of the AMP conference, organizer Carmen Horst, associate pastor at James Street Mennonite Church, said, “I hope that those who have been leading our church for a longer time will pay attention to AMP and see a group of people who can be committed to serving Jesus together without agreeing on some of the issues facing the church. What draws me to AMP is the love for and commitment to the Church.”

Some would also like to see AMP grow to have regionally specific and more frequent gatherings. Aaron Kauffman, Global Ministries Director at Virginia Mennonite Missions said, “I would love to see this kind of thing continue to multiply in other parts of the country where local AMP networks would gather to worship, share insights, and spur one another onto greater faithfulness as witnesses to the reign of God in Christ.”

The sky seems to be the limit for a group like AMP. Creating a space for dynamic and in-depth conversation around the church and its mission while facilitating intentional fellowship among many cultures and ethnicities will serve as an example to the broader Mennonite Church. As Carmen Horst described it, “The leaders and participants of AMP recognize the many failings and brokenness of our Church, and yet desire to remain in it. Out of our love for this messy thing called church, we try to create spaces for speaking truth and growing in truth together.”

Reflections for the future Church

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by Scott Hackman, Salford

Post-Christendom class 2012
Bobby Wibowo (Philadelphia Praise Center), Dorcas Lehman, Tracy and Barbara Brown, Scott Hackman (Salford), and instructor Steve Kriss (Franconia Conference director of leadership cultivation) traveled to the UK last month to study Anabaptism in a Post-Christendom context.

The Anabaptist movement has re-emerged in Post-Christendom Europe and it may give American Mennonites insight into our future.

Last month, I participated in a cross-cultural class through Eastern Mennonite Seminary that took us to Bristol, Birmingham, and London, England.  There my classmates and I saw glimpses of hope from the UK Anabaptist movement, where people are asking basic questions about the purpose of church and joining God’s mission of restoration in their context.

Post-Christendom is the transition from the church as the center of power in society to the church on the margins of society. This is often manifested in the embrace of other religions, even as Christianity is declining.  The Muslim faith community is growing rapidly in England; an estimated 50% of people attend a Mosque every week.

We went on walking tours to observe what God was doing in the context of each city and how the church was participating.  On one of these tours, after a late walk in the rain, we found a cab to take us back to our lodging.  The cab driver asked me if I was a Christian from America.  I disclosed my identity with hesitation but he looked at me and said, “Did you see me come out of that Mosque where I was praying? I am Muslim and I want you to know we are not all violent people.”

“I am a Christian from America and I don’t support our wars against your people,” I responded.  In that moment I began to understand our Post-Christendom context, where I could express my identity and have a conversation with my “enemy,” and all because he modeled this transparency with me.

Cross-cultural trip 2012
Class members investigate a peace garden in the center of Birmingham that stands on a site where a church was bombed during World War II. Photo by Scott Hackman.

On a walking tour in Bristol, we passed a church building that has been re-purposed into apartments and yet another that was used as an elderly care facility.  In London, the former church buildings were used for music venues and community centers.  These buildings stand as monuments to an era when the church shared power with the state.  As this authority is shifting, followers of Jesus are seeing “church” less as a place of worship and more as a practicing community on mission in its local context.

Anabaptists in the UK are asking different questions than the Mennonites of my faith community back home.  In one London neighborhood with 90,000 residents, for example, only about .5% of people enter a church each week.  We met with the community’s Christians, who asked, “What does the Gospel look like in this context?”  After years of prayer and hard work developing relationships with their neighbors, they built a playground in the middle of a marginalized community.

These Anabaptists are asking hard questions: What does the Gospel look like in our neighborhood?  What is church when no one understands the basic story of Christianity?  Who is the church for?   In their persistent engagement, I saw a glimpse of the kingdom; I am encouraged to ask these kinds of tough questions in my context, too.

As I return home, I continue to ponder what I heard and saw.  Our neighbors aren’t going to engage in the future church if they can’t bring who they really are to the community of faith.   They yearn to belong to a faith community before they will believe or behave differently.  They’re not going to believe in a loving God if they aren’t loved.  They’re not going to respond to the Gospel if it’s not a liberating move of love in their lives.

Anabaptist followers of Jesus in England have given us a glimpse into our future and it’s one that fills me with grief and hope: grief because of the pain we have caused in the name of Jesus through our colonialism and patriarchy and hope because people are expressing the Gospel message and following Jesus outside of the systems and hierarchy of religion.  They are being and becoming the people of God—church—in a context we have not yet but still may encounter as America moves towards its own version of Post-Christendom.

Scott Hackman is part of the missional team at Doylestown Mennonite Church and a student at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, PA campus.  He has received assistance in his education through the Area Conference Leadership Fund—to learn more about the ACLF or to make a contribution, click here.

Does Mennonite Matter?

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By John Stoltzfus, Franconia Conference Youth Minister

Dale Schrag at Salford. Photo by Ben Wideman.

Does it matter being Mennonite? According to Dale Schrag, “It depends.”

Dale, who is campus pastor and director of church relations at Bethel College, spoke to this question at a seminar for youth and adults at Salford Mennonite Church on April 11.  He elaborated by saying that it depends on what we mean by being Mennonite.

Schrag quoted Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches who said, “Mennonite is a beautiful adjective but an idolatrous noun.” We need to understand being Mennonite as an adjective description of Christian. In addition, in the Mennonite tradition it is essential to understand the Anabaptist theological distinctiveness of our tradition.

He named four central markers of Anabaptist theology from Harold S Bender’s Anabaptist Vision of 1944:

  • A distinctive reading of the Bible that is centered in Christ
  • A distinctive approach to discipleship, following the teachings of Jesus
  • A distinctive understanding of community
  • A distinctive commitment to nonresistance in the reconciling love of God

Dale concluded by emphasizing that being Mennonite matters because of what we have to offer to a world that needs Jesus.  Our particular understanding of the gospel of shalom (peace) and of how Jesus calls us to live is a gift to offer to our broken world.

Some questions to consider as we continue to unpack the question identified in this seminar.

  • How can we engage our children and youth in talking about what it means and why it matters to be a Mennonite Christian in today’s world?
  • How does this distinctiveness make a difference in how we practice our faith?
  • What difference does it make in how we read the Bible, live as community, relate to our neighbors, and engage in mission in our world?
  • How does being Mennonite help us to be faithful in following in the way of Christ?
  • What testimony do we have to share?
  • How can we hold these convictions with an open hand in a way that is inviting and winsome and good news to our neighbors and to a hurting and broken world?

Watch the full presentation:

Community Home Services: Caring in the name of Jesus

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by Mary J. Tidey, Souderton, mtidey@communityhomeservices.org

Community Home Services is now beginning its 17th year of providing home care to those in need in this community. Founded on Anabaptist principles, CHS provides well-trained and supervised staff to meet the needs of the elderly and disabled in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia in their homes.

CHS was founded in 1995 with Ruth Mumbauer as Administrator. Ruth did the initial hard work of hiring workers, establishing policies and procedures and marketing the services offered in local churches and throughout the community. In 1997, Diane Tihansky began to serve as Executive Director. Building on the foundation laid by Ruth, the company saw much growth under Diane’s direction. The scope of services was refined and expanded to meet the changes and challenges of the 21st century.

I joined CHS in 1998 as Operations Director. I was attracted by the Christ-centered mission of the organization which describes CHS as a ministry charged with giving care to elderly and disabled persons in the Mennonite/ Brethren tradition of caring. This felt like a good fit for me from the beginning. When Diane resigned last year, I was happy to take up the reigns as Executive Director.

It has been a busy and challenging first year. CHS employs 100 workers and has provided care to approximately 4000 clients in this area. I am humbled by the task of leading this organization and grateful for a Board of Directors which provides direction and guidance to me and the CHS Management Team.

I am extremely proud of our employees who work so hard to bring the care our clients need to their doors. Our staff can be a bright spot in the day of someone who spends too much time alone or respite for overwhelmed caregivers. Sometimes they are eyes and ears of children who live a distance away. More times than I can count, they have intervened to prevent a true crisis for someone living alone.

I came to faith in a Christian home, raised by parents who were active members of Souderton Mennonite Church and then BranchCreek Community Church. My personal faith was deeply influenced by watching my parents. They were a wonderful example of faith in action. The example they set taught me that doctrine and theology pale in importance when compared to living Christ-like. Allowing others to see Christ in you is being light in a world that can be very dark.

My work experience prior to coming to CHS was with Grand View Hospital as a Registered Nurse for 24 years. Working in various capacities including Emergency Department, nursing management and Hospice gave me many learning opportunities. I have learned that life is very precious and sometimes we do not get to choose our own path. Sometimes, the only control we have is our response to the hand we are dealt.

I have also learned that most people are hurting, even if it’s beneath the surface, most of the time. This is what each of us has in common with every other human being: we are all vulnerable. Knowing this helps us understand those around us and makes us a little more patient. This is why caring in the name of Jesus is the most effective way to reach out to someone.

Sounding the Gospel of our common Christ: Lutherans and Mennonites move toward right relationships

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by Dr. John Ruth, Salford Mennonite Church, and Bishop Claire Burkat, Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The history of Lutherans and Mennonites has not always been one of mutual appreciation. The Mennonite Church is a church of Anabaptist heritage. The name Anabaptist was first used in the 16th century by Lutheran reformers. “Anabaptist” literally means re-baptizers, because of the practice of believers’ baptism. This was not used as a term of respect; in fact the early Lutheran reformers used the name in derision, condemning Anabaptists as heretics and accusing them of sedition.

In the 16th century, Lutheran invectives against Anabaptists were treacherous and produced serious harm and death to the historic members of the Mennonite community. Hundreds of Anabaptist Christians were put to death, imprisoned, and persecuted by Lutherans. Lutherans by and large developed an historical amnesia about this shameful part of their Reformation heritage.

Last summer in Stuttgart, Germany, the Lutheran World Federation presented a statement of regret to the Mennonite World Conference, asking forgiveness from God and from their Mennonite brothers and sisters. The expression of a “deep and abiding sorrow and regret” from Lutheran people of the 21st century for atrocities perpetrated by their ancestors almost 500 years earlier, is a confession and subsequent reconciliation which God has desired for centuries.

Ripples from those deep events have reached the backwaters of the Delaware Valley, to a place watered by the Indian Creek, once known to both Mennonites and Lutherans as “Indianfield.”

This landscape still carries names of historic memory: at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School in Lansdale, Pa., there is Grebel Hall; in Allentown, Pa., there is Muhlenberg College; in Souderton, Pa., a Zwingli United Church of Christ.

These names are reminders of people and events that shaped our history and our identity; things that happened in European cities like Wittenberg, Zurich and Augsburg—and, after nearly five centuries, last summer in Stuttgart—still affect us today.

Yet our joint history is not just one of animosity and persecution. Over three hundred years ago, Mennonite and Lutheran refugees made their way to Pennsylvania to enjoy a religious freedom that they had never before experienced. The immigrants got along remarkably well together in Penn’s Woods.

One of the Lutheran’s early leaders was Henry Muhlenberg. Even after Muhlenberg had a beautiful new church built at Trappe, he allowed one of his members, who had been living among the Mennonites of Skippack, Pa., to bury his aged mother’s body in the graveyard of the Mennonite congregation. Of course the service would be conducted by the Lutheran pastor, who was considered the best preacher of the gospel in the region.

The day was very hot, so Muhlenberg proposed to preach under a large tree. He was surprised that the Mennonite leaders present urged him instead to come into what he called their “roomy” meetinghouse for the service.

Hesitantly but respectfully accepting this invitation, Muhlenberg found himself nevertheless cautioned at the meetinghouse door by an elderly Mennonite minister, who hoped that the Lutheran pastor would not include any “strange ceremonies” in his service. Yet after the service came another surprise, when the same old man thanked Muhlenberg—with tears—for “sounding the Gospel” in their Mennonite meetinghouse.

Three hundred years later, in a gesture unimaginable for early Mennonites, Lutherans once again held a service in one of their roomiest houses of worship, Franconia Mennonite Meetinghouse in Franconia, Pa. This time, as part of their annual business meeting on May 6, 2011, the Lutheran Synod of Southeastern Pennsylvania extended their own apology for the oppression of the past, reminding those gathered that reconciled communities are not about abstract relationships; instead, the forgiveness and healing between Mennonites and Lutherans is a family matter.

As Charlie Ness, pastor of Perkiomenville Mennonite Church, responded to the apology, he echoed the words of the President of the Mennonite World Conference Danisa Ndlovu, saying, “Today, in this place, we together—Lutherans and Anabaptist Mennonites—are fulfilling the rule of Christ. We cannot bring ourselves to this table with heads held high. We can only come bowed down in great humility and in the fear of the Lord. We cannot come to this point and fail to see our own sinfulness. We cannot come to this point without recognizing our own need for God’s grace and forgiveness.”

Once again on that sunny May morning, the Lutherans were sounding the Gospel—for what is the good news but the news of the reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth and under the earth, worked and revealed and offered by Christ on his cross? As at Skippack, that day in Franconia, Lutherans accepted Mennonite tears of joy for their gesture, this request for forgiveness. And on that day, their witness to our common salvation, sounding out in the Mennonite’s roomy meetinghouse, was the Gospel of our common Christ.

Adapted from remarks shared at the Eastern Synod of the ELCA gathering on May 6, 2011 by Dr. John Ruth, historian for Franconia Mennonite Conference, and Bishop Claire Burkat, bishop of the Eastern Synod of the ELCA.

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Healing Memories, Reconciling in Christ: A Lutheran-Mennonite Study Guide for Congregations

On flattening the Mennonite world: a view from Singapore

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by Steve Kriss
skriss@mosaicmennonites.org

New York Times writer Thomas Friedman suggested in the World is Flat that flourishing businesses would need to be both global and local in the emerging interconnected age.  It’s a comment that I’ve taken pretty seriously as a pastoral leader trying to imagine how local congregations might flourish and thrive in this time as well.  In my work over the past five years in Franconia Conference, it’s been easy to see lively connections that link our largely Pennsylvania-based congregations to far flung places like Jakarta, Mexico City, London and the Mekong Delta.   Sometimes, the conversations I’ve had in those places are as pertinent and relevant to congregational life in the States as what happens at the Conference Center in Harleysville.

As part of my Franconia Conference position focusing on leadership cultivation, Biblical Seminary contracts with a portion of my time to build on the foundations of our global relationships to help in the formation of their students toward missional leadership.   Several times over the last three years, I’ve had the privilege to travel for 10 days with a group of about a dozen students, most of whom aren’t Mennonite, and to offer an Anabaptist way of engaging the world.   We traveled this year to Vietnam and Cambodia.

On the way back, I stopped in Singapore—a glistening, overly perfected city/nation/island on the straits between Malaysia and Indonesia.  It’s safe, clean and tightly controlled but with a fascinating cultural mix that represents both the west and the east.   I was energized by the city despite its Truman Show-like (un)reality.  While there, I met with two young Mennonite leaders who give a hopeful and thoughtful glimpse of future church leadership.   Both embody the face and soul of global Anabaptist movement with savvy, integrity and intelligence.   It was a gift to spend time with Elina and Wilson—these cosmopolitan business leaders who travel between their Singapore residences, their respective native lands (Indonesia and China), and the United States.

One conversation that lingers for me was a request to understand where the upcoming Mennonite World Conference gathering would be, an attempt to understand the significance and importance of meeting in Harrisburg (which I said is close to Philadelphia and in the one of the world’s largest concentrations of Anabaptists and had to clarify again that it’s “close to New York”).    What I heard in this question was a desire to understand the US American church as a partner, not a parent. For global Mennonite leaders, Harrisburg and Philadelphia are just another Bulawayo or Ascunsion.  In these questions, though, I sensed a hope that the American church would understand how costly and potentially difficult this decision to meet in Pennsylvania will be for the global church community.

One thing that I’ve learned is that incarnation and making things real is costly and complicated.   After my Singapore conversations (where we also talked about partnerships to initiate new Indonesian-speaking Anabaptist congregations on the Arabian peninsula), I’ve realized that the global church is set to come to Pennsylvania not because it holds us in esteem—but because it wants to help the church here to understand a global reality.  This upcoming gathering can help the us begin to grasp how deep, how wide, how long, how far the message of the Good News has spread and rooted.   It’s an opportunity to invite US American Anabaptists to situate ourselves in this new space—not as the center of activity or authority–rather as part of a global and local movement called to be wise as serpents, innocent as doves and a glimpse of the Real Eternal One in the midst of a flattening world.

An Open Pastoral Letter to Anabaptist Churches

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An Open Pastoral Letter to Anabaptist Churches
from Mennonite Central Committee U.S.

In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, many members of Mennonite and Brethren in Christ congregations reached out to Muslims in their communities to support and encourage them. In the face of ever-increasing anti-Islam sentiment, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S. urges congregations to redouble those efforts.

MCC U.S. also calls on the Florida church that has stated its intent to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the attacks to abandon the plan and instead embrace Christ’s love for all.

Anabaptist history provides a sobering reminder of the need to respect those with a different faith. During the 1500s in Europe, religious and political leaders persecuted Anabaptist believers, with thousands facing violence or death as a result of their beliefs. Because of this history, Anabaptists around the world have long advocated for freedom of religious expression for people of all faiths.

In the twentieth century, some Anabaptist communities in Canada and the U.S. again were subject to stereotyping during the first and second World Wars, as a result of their German heritage. Experiences such as these should reinforce for all Christians, and especially Anabaptists, the dangers of assumptions and stereotypes about one’s beliefs.

Christians should take instead the example of Jesus, who reached out in love and respect to all who drew near to him. He recognized the human dignity and worth in every person, as created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). He challenged his followers to extend compassion without reservation (Matthew 22:34-40; 1 John 4:7-21).

MCC’s work around the world, including in predominantly Muslim countries, has shown us the importance of interfaith bridge-building. MCC is committed to continuing and strengthening this work in international contexts but encourages Anabaptists in the United States to also find ways to build these bridges in their own communities.

The Bible tells us to extend hospitality (Hebrews 13:1-2; 1 Peter 4:8-10). Sharing in meals and conversation can be a radical act, and a powerful counteraction to violence. Let us follow Jesus by showing hospitality to neighbors near and far.