Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Conference Assembly

God IS at Work…

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by Sandy Landes, Franconia Prayer Ministry Coordinator

On November 10, Franconia and Eastern District Conferences will gather for our annual assembly, around the theme of “God at Work.”  More information.

How do we live life in such a way that it requires faith? Hebrews 11 says that, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him, must believe that He exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

I see God at work building faith in Him in many different ways in our community. In my role as prayer ministry coordinator for Franconia Conference, much of what I do involves seeing people cooperating with God through prayer as they put their faith in a God who invites us to come to the throne of grace with boldness (Hebrews 4:16).

On Wednesday, September 12, twenty-eight pastors and credentialed leaders gathered at Camp Men-O-Lan (Quakertown, Pa.) to spend the day in prayer and fellowship. God was at Work as the pastors listened to what God was saying to them through the Word, through the testimonies of each other, and through creation. I saw faith built as leaders related the ways in which God has been faithful and is providing all they need to continue to follow Jesus and equip the church for ministry.

Salem Mennonite Church (Quakertown, Pa.) was the setting for another example of God at Work, releasing his healing power. Marcella Ruch shared her story of being a “yes” woman for God, even as God called her to a healing ministry after retirement. We may hear the words, “healing ministry” and assume it means only a prayer ministry but there is a duality to the work God is doing through Marcella. Since her retirement 15 years ago, God has used Marcella to start a free clinic for uninsured people in her city of Colorado Springs, to start a medical outreach for the families of Liberia, and to minister his healing power wherever she goes. God blessed Marcella as she shared her testimony and inspired others to also say “yes” to God, even if it doesn’t fit in with their plans. Several persons were touched by God’s love as they received personal prayer ministry by a prayer team.

God's house of promise
God’s House of Promise, on Allentown Road in Souderton, Pa.

I also see God at Work in a new ministry beginning this week in the little stone building on Allentown Road just below Lower Road in Souderton, Pa.  God’s House of Promise is an ecumenical ministry with the purposes of uniting the body of Christ and transforming our community through the continuous reading of God’s Word aloud on a daily basis, offering a place to pray for personal, community, and worldwide needs, and uniting our community in monthly worship.

The kick-off event for God’s House of Promise was held on Saturday, Sept 22 at Souderton (Pa.) Mennonite Church. Seeing worshipers from many different denominations praying together is an example of God at Work answering the prayers of Jesus in John 17, “that they would all be one.”

It is encouraging to see God at work in so many different ways in our community, in the church and outside. As I have been prayer-walking with a close friend in my neighborhood, we have been drawn to stop in at a local bar and to connect with and bless the new friends we are making there. It requires faith that God is at work as we share stories and build connections on a personal level. Through God’s nudging we have prayed for healing, for provision of jobs, and for blessing on the families of the employees. It requires faith to believe that the kingdom of God is present as we enter in to an unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable environment, but we trust that God is at work because we believe, as it says in Ephesians 3:20, that “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”

How have you seen God at work in your congregation, community, and conference?  Share your story (in a sentence or several paragraphs—up to you!) here.

Gathering on Holy Ground

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by Stephen Kriss, Philadelphia Praise Center

Rev. Dr. Dennis Edwards encourages Franconia and Eastern District Conferences to follow the example of Christ. Photo by Stacy Salvatori.

Gwen Groff, pastor at Bethany Mennonite Church in Bridgewater Corners, Vermont, drove the seven hours south for the joint Franconia and Eastern District Conference Assembly on November 11-12 for what she suggests became a “beautiful cacophony.”

Groff and more than 300 others from across both Conference communities along with Mennonite Church USA representatives gathered Friday night at Penn View Christian School in Souderton, Pa, in the first joint worship service for both Conferences since 1999. The opening worship, which featured a combined cross-conference, multi-ethnic and multilingual worship team, kicked off the gathering switching swiftly back and forth between Creole, English, Indonesian, Spanish and Vietnamese—the worshipping languages of the 60 congregations that make up both conferences.

The worship team lead by Emily Ralph gathered for months together in preparation to lead interculturally and multilingually in Creole, English, Indonesian, Spanish and Vietnamese. Photo by Stacy Salvatori.

Groff describes her experience, “I always look forward to the singing at Conference Assembly worship services. Coming from a small congregation, I enjoy the big sound, the full harmony. When I come into an Assembly worship space, if I see that we’ll be using the blue Worship Book hymnals I like to sit in the center of it all to be surrounded by the four part harmony. When I see a screen and projector, instruments and microphones, I usually take a seat on the periphery.

“This year I found myself most moved by the kind of singing I usually hang back from. Singing all together, with some singing in Indonesian, some in Spanish, some in Vietnamese, some in English and some in Creole, was disorienting in a way that was challenging, enlightening and beautiful.

Friday worship. Photo by Stacy Salvatori.

In worship there is often an invitation to sing or pray each in our own language, but this year the multicultural worship team was leading in all the different languages, switching languages between verses, between lines, singing in different languages at the same time. There was no right language to be singing in at any particular moment. We all could experience how it felt to be singing new words and not knowing if we were pronouncing them correctly. We all knew how it felt to be a little off balance. It wasn’t about political correctness (or it was what political correctness should be). It was about leveling the ground as we worshipped together, and it was holy ground.”

While energetic music and multiple languages marked the shape of the worship, Rev. Dr. Dennis Edwards, pastor of Peace Fellowship Church in Washington, DC, a Franconia Conference Partner in Mission, focused intensely in an evening message that explored the possibilities of the assembly theme, “Unity and Maturity in Christ” based on Ephesians 4. The whole of the worship gathering was broadcast in five worshipping languages and available online through a live stream. Over a dozen persons from a variety of congregations helped to coordinate technology, translating, and communication for the event.

Saturday joint session. Photo by Emily Ralph

The spirit of gathered worship was framed further through Saturday’s joint delegate session held around tables that considered the further cooperation between both Conferences in a move toward healing the 1847 historic rift between the groups. Overwhelmingly, representatives from both conferences gave permission by raising green cards that suggested a continuation to explore life together more extensively and collaboratively. Considering the future of the conferences, Sam Claudio, Jr., associate pastor at Christ Fellowship in Allentown said in a time of reporting, “Hopefully we’ll be able to be a positive witness [in a way that people will say], look how they came together after this long division in love, in peace, in charity, in grace.”

After recognizing the affirming move, Dave Hersh, moderator of Eastern District Conference responded, “I’m really excited about what we’ve accomplished. Your direction to us is loud and clear. We’re going to continue working together.” The conferences divided for business sessions, but re-gathered for lunch and a commissioning worship that recognized each person’s role and contribution in both conference communities.

Brent Camilleri, Deep Run East, and Derek Cooper, Doylestown, enjoy Friday’s ice cream social. Photo by Stacy Salvatori.

In general business, Eastern District Conference marked the transition of Ron White of Church of the Good Samaritan (Holland, Pa) into the moderator role succeeding Hersh of Grace Mennonite Church (Lansdale, Pa). Marta Castillo of Nueva Vida Norristown (Pa) Mennonite Church was affirmed as assistant moderator for Franconia Conference for a special one year term.

First time Franconia Conference delegate Derek Cooper of the Doylestown (Pa) congregation said, “I appreciated the worshipful tone. Beginning and ending the assembly in worship united the community and guided our interaction throughout the weekend. I also appreciated the prayer ministry. It created a Spirit-led presence that saturated the building.”

Reflections on Conference Assembly 2011:

Mary Martin (left), shown preparing to lead worship with fellow worship leaders and church friends Tuy Tran and Hoai Huynh from Vietnamese Gospel. Photo by Stacy Salvatori.

“I enjoyed singing with young people in several languages. I was inspired in (the) bringing together (of) a group of singers and instrumentalists with limited preparation time.” —Mary Martin,  Vietnamese Gospel

I thank God for what felt like a renewed sense of vision, energy and hope among our Conference body. Worshiping our Lord together in several languages was inspirational! God is preparing us for heaven, where followers of Jesus “from every tribe and language and people and nation” will bow down before the Lamb in worship. (Rev. 5:9) — Steve Landis, Franconia

For me the recognition, acknowledging, and welcoming of the different leaders was very inspiring; I believe the greatest asset of any organization is people. As someone from the global South, I still feel that we have a long way to go in order to have some of our leaders in higher leadership positions. — Ubaldo Rodriguez, New Hope Fellowship, Baltimore

Friday worship. Photo by Stacy Salvatori

It was particularly touching to see elements of my parent’s homeland incorporated in the assembly. When I asked my mother afterwards on Saturday what she had thought, she smiled and said the celebrating, unity, and sense of community made her feel warm inside. —  Theresa Nguyen, Plains

Assembly was a welcome opportunity to share space across our cultural diversity. Especially Saturday morning, moving in the direction of healing the long time division between Eastern District Conference and Franconia Conference. — Bob Walden, West Swamp

I think that Friday and Saturday was just a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven will look like and that is a certain hope that God puts in us. The longing to just worship God regardless of our differences. I appreciate the fact that the Holy Spirit is moving around and uniting people from different languages. — Adrian Suryajaya, Philadelphia Praise Center

Thank you to:

  • Penn View Christian School for the use of facilities and the support of janitors, staff, and audio/visual personnel.
  • Dancers from Nueva Vida Norristown New Life for sharing your gifts as we gathered for Friday night worship.
  • Worship Planners and Worship Team Members for the time and energy you invested into planning, practicing, and leading our congregation in worship.
    • Saturday delegate session. Photo by Emily Ralph
  • Translators for helping us to understand one another.
  • Everence for sponsoring Friday night’s ice cream social and Bally Mennonite Church for providing and serving the ice cream.
  • One Village Coffee for donating coffee for the weekend.
  • Perkasie Mennonite Church for providing snacks and serving coffee on Saturday morning.
  • Zion Mennonite Church for use of your hymnals
  • Salford Mennonite Church for providing and serving lunch.
  • Franconia and Eastern District Board and Committee Members for supplying baked goods and deserts.
  • Litany Writers for your creative energy in tying everything together.
  • Prayer Ministry Participants for covering the gathered assembly in prayer.
  • Technology assistants who insured that the glitches were managed and that the flow of the worship was enriched and participation enhanced through our use of the web.

 

An invitation to Conference Assembly

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David Hersh – Moderator, Eastern District Conference
John Goshow – Moderator, Franconia Conference

For the first time since 1999 Eastern District Conference and Franconia Conference will hold their annual assemblies together at Penn View Christian School on November 11 and 12. We want to extend our personal invitation to all members of both conferences to attend Assembly 2011.  On Friday evening at 7 PM we will join together in worship with Rev. Dr. Dennis Edwards from Peace Fellowship in Washington D.C.  Dr. Edwards is known widely for his energetic preaching style and his gifted teaching of the Word.  On Saturday we will meet both jointly and individually to do the business of our respective conferences.

In 2001 the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church joined together to form one denomination, Mennonite Church USA.  Now, all of the congregations affiliated with Eastern District Conference and Franconia Conference are members of MCUSA.  Our two conferences send delegates to the MCUSA’s biannual convention, we participate together in the Constituency Leadership Council (CLC), and we collaborate together with other MCUSA conferences on the east coast through Atlantic Northeast Conferences (ANEC) in outreach and church planting efforts.  As moderators we have been blessed and inspired by the many ways our two conferences work together locally as well as with MCUSA.  Recently we announced that our two conferences and Christopher Dock Mennonite High School have collaborated to hire a full time Youth Pastor. In the past we have partnered with Frederick Mennonite Home and Mennonite Health Services to offer a training opportunity for Conference Related Ministries.  And our conferences share office space which provides many opportunities to work together.

In the past year we have met a number of times with Ron White, Eastern District Moderator-Elect and our Conference Ministers, Ertell Whigham (Franconia) and Warren Tyson (Eastern District) to think about how we can work together to do God’s Kingdom work.  We believe that this collaboration is good and that it will add value to both of our conferences; we look forward to finding many ways to work together in the future.

So, we think this year’s assembly symbolizes our growing desire to continue to find ways of working together to do God’s work and to do this in such a way that the rich histories of each conference are respected and appreciated.  We are open to the leading of God as we continue to be faithful to discover how we can advance the Kingdom together.

It is our hope that the chapel at Penn View Christian School will be filled on Friday evening with members of our two conferences worshiping God together, united in the desire to do God’s work.

Transforming Mennonites by the Gospel of Peace in 2012

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Samantha Lioi, Whitehall, samanthalioi@gmail.com

“Syrian troops have kept up their assault on the coastal city ofLatakiafor a third day, reportedly killing three people.” — Aljazeera.net

“The marines made a frenzied escape, opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way . . . [according to] the Afghan Human Rights Commission report . . . the victims included a 16-year-old newlywed girl carrying a bundle of grass and a 75-year-old man walking back from the shops.” — Guardian.co.uk

“Nonviolence isn’t just about not having a gun or not going to war,” says [Jason] Shenk [of Men Encouraging Nonviolence]. “It is an active respect or reverence that I seek to cultivate in all my relationships.” —TheMennonite.org

It’s safe to say our world could use more peace—a greater surplus of well-being, mutual love, and respect. And for Mennonites, people historically known for our teachings and practices of peace, it’s not news that we’re in different places when it comes to owning and living our identity as peacemakers. Though in our worship and everyday relationships, we all desire to reflect the image of God by becoming more like Jesus the Christ, we think about this differently, and our practice reflects these differences. So when I say the Peace and Justice Committee of Eastern District and Franconia Mennonite Conferences is inviting every congregation to a year-long focus on peace—to be introduced at our combined Conference Assembly in November—I suspect we’ll have a variety of responses. Some will think this is exciting and even overdue; some will think it unnecessary, maybe even cliché. There are bound to be questions. What if it’s too political? What if it’s not political enough? Will this really bring us closer to God? Will it help us be more sensitive as we engage in intercultural relationships?

As members of our peace committee met, we imagined the year 2012 as a time to re-educate ourselves, to renew and deepen our commitment to peacemaking. Here is our vision for that in light of Franconia Conference’s three current priorities of formation, intercultural relationship-building and mission:

How do we open ourselves to be shaped by this Gospel? First, we allow Scripture to be inscribed more deeply on our hearts and minds. We hope to see every congregation engage in Biblical study, absorbing and wrestling with the witness of both Old and New Testaments regarding the nature of peace/shalom, our identity as peacemakers, and our worship of the God of peace/shalom. What do the Scriptures teach us about the restoration of broken people and places? About reconciliation? Could we open ourselves to be surprised, scandalized, encouraged by the Bible and the Spirit speaking through it to our gathered communities of faith? Who knows what beauty and new life might break out?

Our second goal is growing into unity and maturity in Christ, who breaks down the dividing walls. We know our conference holds and blesses many different expressions of Anabaptist Christian faith in many languages. How might we welcome that diversity through intentional relationship building? To that end we hope every congregation will make an intercultural connection appropriate to that faith community, with the purpose of learning in relationship more of what it means to belong to Christ together in unity which spans boundaries of gender, economic resources, race, ethnicity, national identity, and beyond.

And when we have done some of that good work, how do we make it public? Our third desire is that, growing from the experiences and learning of the first two goals, every congregation will engage in a peace witness or public action which models reconciliation to people outside our Mennonite Church circles.

The peace committee has also proposed a time during the Saturday afternoon of our joint Conference Assembly for the delegates to confer and share resources around peacemaking in our various contexts. While we’ll hear more at Conference Assembly, in the meantime, you’re invited to talk with colleagues and members of our committee about your own imagining and questioning as you hear this proposal. You can find our names under “who we are” on our home page: http://efpjc.ppjr.org. May our imaginations and our spirits be stirred to love boldly, immersed in the love of God who is not counting sins against us but reconciling the whole world through Christ.

Conference Assembly to build unity

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Emily Ralph, Swamp

Franconia and Eastern District Conferences will hold a joint conference assembly this November.

“We felt that this is an exciting opportunity resulting from a long standing conversation about what it means to work together for God’s purpose and ministry in our region from Georgia to Vermont,” said Ertell Whigham, Franconia Conference’s executive minister.

The planning for this annual gathering, which will be held November 11-12 at Penn View Christian School in Souderton, Pa., has already begun. Members from both conferences are working together on details of the joint worship service on Friday evening, including guest speaker Dennis Edwards (pastor of Peace Fellowship Church in Washington DC), an intercultural worship team, and exploration of this year’s theme, Unity and Maturity in the Body of Christ (from Ephesians 4:16). Although each conference will hold its own delegate sessions, Eastern District and Franconia Conferences will reunite for part of the day on Saturday to recognize new leaders and discuss future collaboration.

Franconia Conference is also planning a series of Conference Assembly Scattered gatherings, which will meet on the evenings of October 4, 9, 11, & 19 at locations throughout eastern Pennsylvania (TBA) or online streaming. The purpose of these gatherings is to prepare delegates, according to Gay Brunt Miller, director of administration. “It is an important assignment that helps to influence and shape the work of Franconia Conference and should be accepted with a real sense of God’s call,” she said.

This is not the first partnership between Franconia and Eastern District Conferences: they already share office space and staff and are in the process of hiring a shared conference youth minister. The conferences also share resources and training events, so the joint conference assembly is a logical next step. “It feels natural and timely,” said Whigham. “We are excited about the possibilities of what it will mean for our future together.”

Franconia Conference and Eastern District Conference announce joint assembly

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By Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

Franconia Conference and Eastern District Conference of Mennonite Church USA will hold a joint conference assembly this November.

“We felt that this is an exciting opportunity resulting from a long standing conversation about what it means to work together for God’s purpose and ministry in our region from Georgia to Vermont,” says Ertell Whigham, Franconia Conference’s executive minister.

The annual gathering, which will be held November 11-12 at Penn View Christian School in Souderton, Pa., will be planned by a team consisting of members from both conferences.  Although some details are still in process, the event is already scheduled to include a joint worship service on Friday evening and then separate delegate sessions on Saturday.

The purpose of this joint event, says Eastern District executive minister Warren Tyson, is to strengthen the unity of the two conferences and continue to move forward in common work in this region.  Added benefits would include costs savings and increased value for Conference Related Ministries, who would only have to set up booths at one event instead of two.

This is not the first partnership between Franconia and Eastern District Conferences: they already share office space and staff and are in the process of hiring a joint conference-wide Youth Minister.  The conferences also share resources and training events, so the joint conference assembly is a logical next step.

“It feels natural and timely,” says Whigham.  “We are excited about the possibilities of what it will mean for our future together.”