Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Bobby Wibowo

Franconia Conference gathers to celebrate, pray, confer, listen

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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.

Justice includes compassion and mercy

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Bobby Wibowoby Mikah Ochieng, summer writing team

Compassion rarely surfaces as a topic voiced in the same breath with justice. Justice, after all, is commonly acquainted with the tenets of fairness, that is, what is deserved according to a set of commonly held laws and beliefs. Displaying a form of affectionate compassion, it would seem in most cases, would fly in the face of the outcomes of fairness. Think about helping people that you know, by all accounts, shouldn’t deserve help–isn’t this a breach in the case of enacting justice?

I had this discussion recently with Bobby Wibowo, a 23-year-old man born in Indonesia, who is now living in Philadelphia where we are part of the same church, Philadelphia Praise Center.  Bobby is a paralegal working mostly with immigration law.  He tells me that despite the machine-like tenacity of our legal system, he believes that compassion is an integral component in treating people justly. Bobby believes that people of privilege and power in law-making decisions often need a change in perspective. He asserts that mercy should be a lens by which law-makers interpret the law and arbitrate on people’s immigration cases.

I ask why.

“People in power have their own agendas,” Bobby says, implying a critical disconnect between the worldview and power of the socially influential from the experiences of the socially marginalized or powerless. Bobby’s insight evokes the adage: one cannot possibly hope to understand the “other” without first walking a mile in his or her shoes.

But what would mercy and compassion actually look like in the process of immigration justice and reform? In the case of immigration, Bobby suggests, people who have an order posted against them for deportation should, in certain cases, be excused. Bobby lists some cases where the justice system should reconsider the sentence of those awaiting deportation on the basis of extraordinary circumstances: if a dependent family member is suffering from poor health; if the deportee is strongly involved in the community, is seeking asylum, or if children with U.S. citizenship would be involved in the deportation process. These are all factors that need to be considered in cases that include deportation as an option, Bobby asserts.

Bobby retains a lot of faith in the justice system but he isn’t blind to unjust rulings in cases that pass through his hands at the law office. While translating and organizing documents and files that have gone to trial, he sometimes comes across a case in which he thinks the ruling should have been more lenient. Maybe if the justice system would be more willing to extend a hand of grace, he reflects, and recognize that the human dignity of offending immigrants is equal to that of U.S. citizens, we might reach a justice that more reflects what Christ demonstrated with us.