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Blooming Glen

Three congregations credential new leaders on Pentecost

June 25, 2014 by Conference Office

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 credentialing of leaders for ministry.

On June 8, all occurring in southeastern Pennsylvania, Donna Merow was ordained and Danilo Sanchez and Phil Bergey were licensed for ministry. Their credentialing brings the number of credentialed leaders in the conference to approximately 160 men and women serving in at least seven states and four countries.

Merow was ordained for pastoral ministry at the Ambler congregation, where she has pastored for more than four years. LEAD minister Jenifer Eriksen Morales led Merow’s credentialing. Merow chose to be ordained on Pentecost Sunday after discovering she was confirmed in the United Methodist church on Pentecost 40 years prior.

Donna Merow's ordination
LEADership Minister Jenifer Eriksen Morales and members of the congregation pray at the ordination of Donna Merow (seated center), pastor of Ambler Mennonite Church. Photo by Andrew Huth.

“The 40-year journey from one public confession of faith to another,” Merow said, “has been a significant one for me — including marriage and becoming a mother and grandmother, completing college and graduate work, worshipping in multiple traditions other than the one in which I grew up, and facing the challenges of breast cancer and kidney disease.”

Merow was only 12 when the possibility of religious vocation was first suggested to her. Between now and then, she “worked at a church camp, dropped out of college, cared for blind students, got married, and raised two daughters.” She has also been an active participant in churches from several denominations: Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Mennonite.

She described her credentialing ceremony as “an outward acknowledgement of an inward change in identity as I became a pastor in the process of practicing pastoral care.”

Sanchez was licensed for youth ministry among multiple Anabaptist congregations in and around Allentown. LEAD minister Steve Kriss led the credentialing. Sanchez is primarily working with Whitehall and Ripple, both Franconia congregations, by leading music or teaching children, but is also working alongside Karen Fellowship (independent), Iglesia Menonita Evangelica Restoracion (Lancaster Conference), Christ Fellowship (Eastern District Conference), and Vietnamese Gospel (Franconia Conference).

Sanchez said his licensing felt like an important personal and professional step because many people and institutions, including Franconia Conference and Whitehall, “are recognizing my gifts and willing to walk alongside me as a pastor.” Sanchez, grew up in the Boyertown congregation and has interned with both Souderton congregation and Philadelphia Praise Center while a student at Eastern University. He graduated from Eastern Mennonite Seminary last year with a Master of Divinity degree.

Members of Whitehall Mennonite Church pray over Danilo Sanchez
Members of Whitehall Mennonite Church pray over Danilo Sanchez. Photo by Patti Connolly.

“I finally feel like a pastor,” he said. “I am so honored that God has called me to be a leader. I’m thankful for the ways that Whitehall and Ripple will shape me into the leader God has called me to be.”

Bergey was licensed as interim lead pastor of the Blooming Glen congregation, where he has been a member for about 20 years. Ertell Whigham, executive minister of Franconia Conference, led the credentialing. Bergey is former conference executive of Franconia Mennonite Conference.

In the wake of Firman Gingerich’s resignation as Blooming Glen’s lead pastor, the congregation’s board invited Bergey to assume a part-time interim lead pastorate. The congregation is searching for a long-term pastor.

Phil Bergey
Phil Bergey, interim lead pastor of Blooming Glen.

Bergey preached the morning of his licensing, focusing on the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12. He framed the commencement of his pastoral leadership and the pastoral search processes not as the beginning of a journey but the continuation of a journey. That journey, he said, includes the history of the Blooming Glen congregation, the Anabaptist tradition, and the Christian church, going all the way back to Abraham and Sarah.

Bergey said: “Blooming Glen, like other congregations, has been through pastoral transitions before; it is simply part of a congregation’s life together. And pastoral transitions are especially true for a congregation that is approaching 300 years of age.”

Filed Under: Articles, News Tagged With: Ambler, Blooming Glen, Conference News, Danilo Sanchez, Donna Merow, Ertell Whigham, formational, Jenifer Eriksen Morales, Pentecost, Phil Bergey, Ripple, Sheldon C. Good, Steve Kriss, Vietnamese Gospel, Whitehall

Kenneth Hochstetler named as next president of Everence

June 17, 2014 by Conference Office

The Everence board of directors has named Kenneth D. Hochstetler as the organization’s next president and CEO. Hochstetler will assume the role upon the retirement of President and CEO Larry D. Miller at the end of August.

Kenneth HochstetlerHochstetler currently serves as senior executive vice president at Univest Corporation, which provides a wide range of banking, trust, financial planning, investment, foundation and insurance services through a network of approximately 40 offices in southeastern Pennsylvania.

“Ken will bring deep and broad experience in the many services of a financial organization,” said D. Duane Oswald, Everence board chair. “He has over two decades of management and executive leadership experience in banking, insurance and investments.”

“He is strongly committed to the church and is actively involved in the Anabaptist faith community,” said Pat Swartzendruber, chair of the Presidential Succession Committee and Everence board member. “He has contributed volunteer service to many local and national nonprofits, demonstrating his strong sense of call to serve the church and community.”

“I am grateful for the opportunity to use my experience gained in private industry for the good of the stewardship organization serving the Mennonite and Anabaptist faith community,” said Hochstetler. “I look forward to joining the Everence team in helping members integrate their faith and values into financial decisions.”

Hochstetler joined Univest in 1992, and currently serves as chief executive of the following Univest subsidiaries: investments, advisory services, foundation, municipal pension services and wealth management services. He previously worked at Meridian Bank in eastern Pennsylvania.

Hochstetler holds a bachelor’s degree in business and computer science from Goshen College and a master’s degree in business administration from Lehigh University.

He attends Blooming Glen Mennonite Church, where he serves as chair of its congregational leadership board. He is on the board of directors of Goshen College, co-chair of the Campaign Leadership Council of the North Penn Commons, chair of the Souderton Industrial Development Authority and a long-term planning committee member of the Bucks-Mont Coalition for Evangelism.

Hochstetler’s appointment was approved by the Everence board as well as by the executive committee of Mennonite Church USA’s executive board. Everence is the stewardship agency of Mennonite Church USA.

Founded in 1945, Everence will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2015. The organization serves approximately 80,000 members and manages $2.4 billion in assets (as of Dec. 31, 2013). Everence helps individuals, organizations and congregations integrate finances with faith through a national team of advisors and representatives. Everence offers banking, insurance, and financial services with community benefits and stewardship education. Everence is a ministry of Mennonite Church USA and other churches. To learn more, visit www.everence.com or call 800-348-7468.

Filed Under: Articles, News Tagged With: Blooming Glen, Conference News, Everence, Mennonite Church USA

Worship event to foster connection among youth

May 7, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Sheldon C. Good

Luke Hartman
Luke Hartman will be the guest speaker at the June 1 youth worship event. Photo by Lindsey Kolb/Eastern Mennonite University.

HARLEYSVILLE, Pa. – Franconia and Eastern District Conferences are hosting junior and senior high youth this June at an event that will feature elements very similar to the biennial Mennonite Church USA youth convention, but with one key difference – it’s outside.

The worship event, cosponsored by the Mennonite Heritage Center, will be held from 12-3pm on June 1 on the lawn of 569 Yoder Road, Harleysville, a campus shared by the Mennonite Heritage Center and the Conference offices.  The rain location is Christopher Dock Mennonite High School’s auditorium (Lansdale, Pa.).

After eating lunch together at noon, potentially hundreds of youth will spread out on the lawn for free time and then worship featuring Luke Hartman, vice president of admissions at Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, Va.), as the main speaker. Hartman’s message will focus on John 17’s call to unity in the body of Christ. He will collaborate with his good friend Peder Eide, a popular musician and worship leader in the Lutheran Church.

Additional music will be provided by Susquehanna, a band of students from Christopher Dock. Band members are John Bergstresser, Ryan Moyer, Austin Kratz, Brooks Inciardi, Simon Nam, Derek Reeser, and Ethan Neal.

John Stoltzfus, conference youth pastor and one of the event planners, anticipates that the event will invite youth to consider “what God is doing among us and who God is calling us to be together.”

He said there are several goals for the event: to provide opportunity for deepening relationships and fellowship among youth across conference churches; to give space for youth to engage in inspiring worship and experience renewal in their relationships with God and one another; and to offer a witness to the surrounding community of the church’s call to be a united people of God.

Mike Ford, associate pastor of youth at Blooming Glen (Pa.) congregation, has also been integrally involved in the event’s planning. He hopes that “youth leave challenged and encouraged spiritually, and that they also experience a healthy dose of fun and fellowship.”

The gathering is part of an ongoing commitment in Franconia Conference to help individuals and congregations connect, says Ertell Whigham, Franconia’s executive minister.  “While it’s true that it takes little or no effort for us to find opportunities to disagree, it takes a greater commitment to reach out across our diversity and connect in ways that express the kingdom of God,” he reflects.  He encourages congregations to keep this event in prayer, as youth gather to worship, play, grow, and share a meal together in Christ.

“Now that’s a very cool way to connect,” he says.

Filed Under: Articles, News Tagged With: Blooming Glen, Christopher Dock, Conference News, Eastern District, Ertell Whigham, formational, intercultural, John Stoltzfus, Mennonite Heritage Center, Mike Ford, Sheldon C. Good, Youth, Youth Ministry

Paul Lederach: A Spiritual Oak on our Horizon

January 8, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

Paul Lederach
Paul Lederach joins in discernment with the conference community at the 2013 Conference Assembly this past November. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

by John Ruth, Salford congregation

The passing of  Paul Mensch Lederach (1925-2014) on Monday morning, January 6, brings to an earthly close one of the most admirable, valuable and lengthy life-stories in the three-century history of the Franconia Mennonite Conference.  Not only Paul’s wife Mary (Slagell) and their children and grandchildren, but the Dock retirement community, the conference, and the Mennonite Church USA are now saying farewell to a far-reaching presence and influence.

Born as the oldest living child of a young mission-worker couple in Norristown, Paul grew up in an epicenter of Mennonite life, whose themes captivated his soul.  Ordained a minister by the casting of lots when only halfway through his years at Goshen College, the tall, handsome nineteen-year-old could electrify a traditional Mennonite audience.  The respect the aging bishops had for this newcomer was such that only five years later, when he was 24, and a graduate of a Baptist seminary, they could endorse him in the office of bishop.  I myself, at the age of 20, was ordained by the laying on of his hands at Norristown in August of 1950.

Paul’s completion of a doctoral degree in Christian Education had led immediately to a call to work in that field at the Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, PA. This was another epicenter, this time of the wider church.  But his second ordination called him back home, where the bishops asked him to help the Blooming Glen congregation through its recovery from the loss of members to the recently born “Calvary Mennonite” (later independent “Calvary”) church.  One of his tasks in this role, he found, was to persuade members to remove wedding rings.  Many years later he would observe that he had never seen a decade without major debate in the church on one issue or another.

But the wider Mennonite Church renewed its call for Paul’s exceptional training and gifts, with the result that shortly before marrying Oklahoma-born schoolteacher Mary, he returned to Scottdale.  There too he would serve as a bishop in the Allegheny Conference, while supervising the Christian Education work of our entire denomination.  For a quarter century, with four children growing up in Scottdale, Paul’s name was increasingly synonymous with curricular themes and projects in not only our own churches, but those of related denominations.

Some twenty-plus titles from Paul’s pen are still available on Amazon.com.  One with which every member of our Conference should be familiar is his little classic of 1980, A Third Way.  Written at the close of his Scottdale career, it placed in simple language the key insights and convictions of the Mennonite faith tradition and shows how deeply Paul, no follower of fads, was rooted in scripture.  The breadth of this biblical orientation became overwhelmingly evident in his commentary on the book of Daniel, now spread to over 500 libraries nationwide and beyond.

Though not narrow in mentality, Paul represented insight into the reasons for being the kind of Christians implicit in our tradition.  When a respected sister in our conference began to wear a cross necklace, describing it as a spiritual ornament, he asked, “Would you wear an electric chair?”  When in 1995 at a historic and somewhat tense meeting in Wichita, Kansas, the Mennonite Church and General Conference jointly accepted our groundbreaking “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective,” Paul soberly counseled, just before the vote was taken, against a demonstrative, triumphant response that would insult those who in good conscience voted negatively.

In his return to the Franconia Conference area Paul not only served as an appreciated elder statesman, but poured his talents into a sequence of pastoral interims and major historical writings.  A quarter-century later he was still growing spiritually, confessing that his mind was  changing under the influence of the Gospel he loved.  And, on the day before his sudden final illness, he was back at Norristown, encouraging a plan to support the congregation into which he had been born 88 years before.  His legacy will continue initiating and steadying our life as a Christian fellowship.

Paul Lederach passed away on Monday, January 6.  Relatives and friends may call after 1:30 p.m., Saturday, January 11, 2014 at Blooming Glen Mennonite Church, 713 Blooming Glen Road, Blooming Glen, PA 18911. A Memorial Service will follow at 3:00 p.m. Interment will be in the church columbarium.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Blooming Glen, Conference News, formational, Franconia Conference, John Ruth, missional, Norristown, Paul Lederach

Franconia Conference gathers to celebrate, pray, confer, listen

November 7, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

Garden Chapel Children's Choir
Garden Chapel’s children’s choir led a rousing rendition of “Our God” at Conference Assembly 2013. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

Franconia Conference delegates and leaders gathered November 2 at Penn View Christian School in Souderton, Pa. to celebrate God still at work.   With a packed auditorium for a third united assembly with Eastern District Conference, representatives gathered to listen and pray, to celebrate newly credentialed and ordained pastoral leaders, and to work alongside one another after an over 150-year rift created two separate Mennonite entities.  The theme “God still @ work” was an extension of the 2012 theme, “God @ work.”

With singing in Indonesian, Spanish, and English led by Samantha Lioi (Peace and Justice Minister for both conferences) and Bobby Wibowo (Philadelphia Praise Center) and translation into Franconia Conference’s worshipping languages, delegates and representatives from nearly all of the Conference’s congregations from Georgia to Vermont gathered to confer around a board-crafted statement on the Conference’s increasing diversity in ethnicity, experiences, faith practice, and expression.   The gathering was punctuated with points of celebration including testimony from Peaceful Living led by Joe Landis and Louis Cowell from Salford congregation, a youth choir from the revitalizing Garden Chapel in Victory Gardens, NJ, and a moment to mark the upcoming November retirement of Franconia Conference Pastor of Ministerial Leadership Noah Kolb after 45 years of ministry, which was met with rousing applause and a standing ovation.

Noah blessing 2013
Noah Kolb was recognized and blessed for 45 years of ministry. He will retire in November. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

In a shortened one-day event, delegates spent the morning together around tables with Eastern District Conference to continue to deepen relationships across conference lines.  Business sessions were separate, and Franconia’s included a significant amount of time in conversations among table groups, conferring over the board statement and then reporting on those conversations to the whole body.  Delegates and representatives were encouraged to mix across congregational lines to better hear and experience the diversity of conference relationships.

For many, including Tami Good, Souderton (Pa.) congregation’s Pastor of Music & Worship, who was attending Conference Assembly for the first time, the table conversations were holy spaces.  Each person at her table was from a different congregation.   “I saw God at work in the gracious listening, especially in the time when we talked about the conferring statement,” Good reflected. “There were disagreements, but everyone was graciously listening and hearing.  Everyone actually wanted to hear each other.  It was a beautiful time.”

The conferring time, along with an afternoon workshop led by the Franconia Conference board, focused on prayer and visioning for the Conference into the future.   Conference board members Jim Longacre (Bally congregation), Rina Rampogu (Plains congregation), Jim Laverty (Souderton congregation), and Klaudia Smucker (Bally congregation) served as a listening committee for the daylong event.  They reported seven themes of consistent and continued conversation: engagement, diversity, shared convictions, authority, polity, the role of conference, and the reality of changing relationships and engagement.  Board members noted that there is much response work to do to continue the conversation and discernment process.

Bruce Eglinton-Woods, pastor of Salem congregation (Quakertown, Pa.), said, “The challenge is speaking clearly on what we believe and where we are at, which is often a challenge for Mennonite leaders. My hope and prayer is that we can trust God and release the idea of keeping it all together. We need to let God do the holding together.”

Franconia Conference delegates spent time conferring and praying together.  Photo by Bam Tribuwono.
Franconia Conference delegates spent time conferring and praying together. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

According to Rampogu, one of the longest standing Conference board members, “the hardest part about this kind of meeting is that there isn’t enough time. We want to share and to talk together,” she said.  “That is a positive sign.  People want to connect.  My hope and prayer is that we keep our goal in mind, keeping our mission focused on equipping leaders to empower others to embrace God’s mission, with Christ in the center and churches focused on missional activity.”

In business sessions, delegates selected a number of positions by 97% affirmation including a 2nd term for conference moderator John Goshow (Blooming Glen congregation) along with board member Beny Krisbianto (Nations Worship Center), as well as ministerial and credentialing committee members Rose Bender (Whitehall congregation), Ken Burkholder (Deep Run East congregation), Mike Clemmer (Towamencin congregation) and Chris Nickels (Spring Mount congregation).   Randy Nyce (Salford congregation) who is completing a term as finance committee chair and board member reported on Conference finances, noting an 11% decrease in financial contributions from congregations.

“I was surprised and pleased that the attendance at Assembly 2013 was so strong; seeing the room filled to capacity was an affirmation of how much the delegates and guests in attendance care for our conference,” Goshow noted.  “Franconia Conference is all of us who are members of our 42 churches and our Conference Related Ministries.  It is my hope and prayer that together we chart a course that will advance God’s Kingdom in exciting and wonderful ways.”

Listen to the podcast.

Conference Assembly 2013 Highlight Video from Franconia Conference on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Conference Assembly, News Tagged With: Bally, Beny Krisbianto, Blooming Glen, Bobby Wibowo, Bruce Eglinton-Woods, Chris Nickels, Conference Assembly, Conference News, Deep Run East, Garden Chapel, Jim Laverty, Jim Longacre, Joe Landis, John Goshow, Ken Burkholder, Klaudia Smucker, Mike Clemmer, Nations Worship Center, Noah Kolb, Peaceful Living, Penn View, Philadelphia Praise Center, Plains, Randy Nyce, Rina Rampogu, Rose Bender, Salem, Salford, Samantha Lioi, Souderton, Spring Mount, Stephen Kriss, Tami Good, Towamencin, Whitehall

Ministerial report (September 2013)

October 10, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

The Ministerial Committee met on September 4:

  • We took action to grant a specific license to Tim Hart to serve as pastor of revitalization for Garden Chapel.
  • We approved ordination for Emily Ralph from the Salford congregation who has been called to an associate pastor position at Sunnyside in Lancaster.
  • We granted a license toward ordination to Tami Good who is serving as minister of worship and music at Souderton.
  • Arnold Derstine and Mike Ford have resigned from the pastoral team at Franconia.
  • Blooming Glen has hired Mike Ford as youth pastor.
  • Frederick and Lakeview are seeking interim pastoral leadership.
  • Perkiomenville is seeking an associate pastor and Alpha and Taftsville congregations are looking for pastoral leadership.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alpha, Arnold Derstine, Blooming Glen, Conference News, Emily Ralph, Franconia, Frederick, Garden Chapel, Lakeview, Mike Ford, ministerial, Perkiomenville, Salford, Souderton, Taftsville, Tami Good, Tim Hart

Reflections on the Conversation on Race and the Church

October 3, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

On September 21, Drew Hart and Ben Walter presented a conversation on race and the church at Germantown Historic Meetinghouse in Philadelphia, sponsored by the Franconia and Eastern District Conferences’ Peace & Justice Committee.  (Listen to the podcast.)  The following are reflections on this conversation from two men in very different walks of life: Mikah, a biracial young adult who is working with students in north Philadelphia, and Firman, a white pastor of over twenty-five years, ministering in a prosperous, rural setting.

“Take daring and bold steps”

mikahby Mikah Ochieng, Philadelphia Praise Center

Few people can present on the topic of race with such knowledgeable comprehension and articulation that it greatly impacts others, possibly for the first time in their lives, to open their eyes and hearts to new and positive perspectives of understanding the people with whom they come in contact everyday. PhD student at Lutheran Seminary, Drew Hart, achieved this very feat at September 21’s conversation on race at Germantown Mennonite Historic Trust.

I, for one, particularly appreciated the intentional usage of official vocabulary and language that tied thoughts, ideas, and experiences to meaningful terms that are often used in the public arena when facilitating dialogue on the topic of race. I took Hart’s usage of terminology to be a great gesture of introduction into historical and trending issues that evolved out of the topic of race. And maybe because talking about race, ethnicity, or cultural background is typically taboo in the public arena, we might need a good refresher to help us not only be conscious people of a racialized society, but active engagers of racial reconciliation.

Hart shared a glimpse into his story of growing up in a racialized society and being the target of micro aggressions, a term used to describe the subtle, non-verbalized, non-conscious marginalizing actions of others towards people of different races and cultures. Hart calls this a sort of ‘silent-killer’ in the arsenal of 21st century racism.  Like the harpoons of institutional racism, which is typically a covert form of marginalization working in the forms of our society’s institutions, micro aggressions work in such subtle ways as to not be considered existing issues in our society, but can over time, if gone unnoticed, cause great pain to its victim.

Hart tells a really great encapsulating story of when he was attending college at a well-to-do suburban Christian school and he would walk down the main path that went through the heart of the campus. Occasionally, as he would notice, when groups of white students would pass him they would walk near the opposite edge of the path, cast their eyes down or to the side and stop talking. As soon as they had crossed paths the students would go back to their conversations, laughing and joking just as casually as before.

It’s a small act that would seemingly deserve a small amount of attention, but as Hart describes, “It’s like getting a paper cut: it’s annoying at first, but when you keep receiving that type of treatment, a thousand paper cuts really adds up.”

As a biracial young person, that I was able to relate my own experience to Hart’s. I took some time to reflect and I’ve come to the undoubted conclusion that certain micro aggressions have made up the narrative of my life at a similar suburban liberal arts Christian university as well, not least of all the experience of walking along the paths of the campus and the interactions (or non-interactions) that develop between myself and white students.

Paired with micro aggressions are micro affirmations. That is, the reverse of a micro aggression, a subtle acknowledging action of another’s personal value to the other. One might make space for the other through an affirming smile or nod during a conversation that gives the other a sense of value and self-worth.

I take away from this discussion that there is hope for the Church, particularly our Anabaptist tradition, of becoming not only more racially aware, but active in reaffirmation and racial reconciliation. It is my hope, and I know from discussion with others after the event that it is the hope of many others, that the Church would take daring and bold steps to make racial reconciliation a reality in concrete steps.

Just as Hart and his conversation partner Ben Walter emphasized, reconciliation looks like being active listeners and partnering collaborators with those who share different viewpoints and experiences from our own in situations where power is concerned. A particularly pertinent issue might surround the authority of the Church and how it delegates its finances. Here, then, would be required the shared stewardship of resources across racial boundaries so that all represented peoples in the Church have a slice of dignity. It’s a hard bit to accomplish, but we at least have to try.

Firman“The radical nature of hope”

by Firman Gingerich, Blooming Glen

I am glad I attended the “Conversation on Race and the Church” held last week at the historic Germantown Meetinghouse.

Drew Hart’s comments have had me thinking a lot about my Anabaptist theological underpinnings and how they intersect with theological perspectives of people of color.

Drew reminded us that much of Black Theology comes from the perspective of people on the margins.  He correctly reminded us that much of Jesus ministry was birthed and expressed among folks who were oppressed and on the margins.  The Kingdom of God Jesus was calling people to participate in was a kingdom much at odds with the kingdom of the occupying and brutal Roman government.

Drew suggested that if we want to recover vital Anabaptist faith values, it will need to come through stories of people on the margins.  I think he is on to something that we should pay attention to.  Our Anabaptist parents were often marginalized by persecution or rejection.  Life on the margins taught us much about trusting God and the community to uphold us.  Anabaptism from the margins measured faithfulness by how we followed Jesus’ teachings.  Anabaptists were often bold in offering a prophetic witness to the culture that did not know Christ.

For many years I have felt growing tension over this in preaching.  Settled-in people don’t want faithfulness measured by how well we live the Sermon on the Mount.  We white folks often project that our faithfulness is connected to how we fulfill the American dream.  I’m reminded of what Scott Hutchinson, a pastor friend, told our staff several years ago as he was unpacking a Jesus parable to us: “There is no church in North America that would have Jesus of Nazareth as their pastor today.”    Jesus offered hope, new life, and courage to those on the margins of society and saved much of his criticism for those settled in, the religious and political leaders.

With a fresher perspective I’m wondering again how people on the margins can teach me, a white pastor, about the radical nature of hope that Jesus preached to the masses of the Galilean villages.

Several themes from Drew and Ben Walter’s conversation were helpful for again naming perspectives.  I found it valuable to ponder my white guilt, knowing that I believe deeply in the biblical themes that all of us are created in God’s image.  It was also helpful to be reminded that many people of color do not have the same privileges as I do.  I wondered about ways to model the kind of reflecting conversation between Drew and Ben in our churches.

One thing I have little to wonder about is our future.  The Germantown historic meetinghouse was filled, and mostly with folks much younger than me.  The willingness of younger leaders to have this conversation will only help us move more boldly toward the biblical themes that “we are all one In Christ Jesus.”  May we all help grow John’s dream in Revelation 7 where there is a gathered multitude worshipping at the heavenly throne made up of people from all tribes, peoples, and languages.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Ben Walter, Blooming Glen, Drew Hart, Firman Gingerich, formational, intercultural, Mikah Ochieng, Philadelphia Praise Center, Racism

What’s in a Vacation?

September 5, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

MCC East Coast bike ride
Front row – Ruth Walter (Souderton), Sandy and John Drescher-Lehman (Souderton) Vernon Martin (Salford) Daryl Derstine (Blooming Glenn). Back Row – Len Walter (Souderton) Gene Kropf (Salford) and Steve Histand (Blooming Glenn)

by Sandy Drescher-Lehman, Souderton

Why would these 8 people from three different churches in our conference choose to spend 5 of their lazy days of summer vacation together, being NOT-lazy?

  1. They enjoy making the wheels on a bike go round and round.
  2. They wanted to help raise money to support Mennonite Central Committee’s project of planting trees in Haiti.
  3. Biking is their favorite way to stay in shape.
  4. They enjoy meeting other people from across North America who are making the same vacation choice!.
  5. They’re WILLING to sleep in tents for a week.
  6. They like to eat good food at the beginning and end and in-betweens of a good, hard day of biking.
  7. They know what an incredible gift it is to experience the beauty of God’s world, intersecting with healthy bodies and wholesome fellowship, all wrapped up in a good cause.

When I say that “All of the above” are the true answers, you’re likely asking, “Who WOULDN’T want to use their vacation to do that and how can I join this great endeavor?” Well, know that you, too, are welcome to join this ride the next time around!  Read on to learn some of the possible benefits.

Every year for the past 20, Mennonite Central Committee has sponsored a bicycle trip as one of its fund-raisers, alternating routes on the east and west coast.  Michigan and Ohio have also run similar trips of their own. This year, during the first week of August, the East Coast MCC ride was in the beautiful hills, under the voluptuously clouded skies, surrounding three of the Finger Lakes in northern New York. The group of 50-some bikers, including members of Souderton, Salford, and Blooming Glen congregations, plus another dozen staff who took care of the trip details of eating, sleeping and getting from place to place, raised over $60,000.00 – an exciting new record!  Thank you to each of you who sponsored one of us and to everyone who shares our passion for spreading God’s love throughout the world through the ministries of MCC.

I loved that bikers from 16 to 81 years of age, at all skill levels, could enjoy the same roads, worship in all of our different ways of noticing God’s presence, sing and pray together, and find out about each other’s families and the ministries we were returning to at the end of the week. Uniting around the things we had in common was energizing.  Sharing the tasks of camping was fun. Hearing new ways, from each other, of being God’s messengers in the world was inspiring.  And pedaling 300+ miles of roads that were hardly ever flat, was downright exciting, often exhausting and occasionally exhilarating!

Filed Under: News Tagged With: biking, Blooming Glen, Conference News, Mennonite Central Committee, Salford, Sandy Drescher-Lehman, Souderton, vacation

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