Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Conference News

Transition brings Interim LEADership Ministers

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As the Conference is in a time of transition, it provides an opportunity for reflection and strategic planning for the coming years. With that, the new Executive Minister, Steve Kriss, and the Conference Executive Committee have provided a six-month transitional period that included bringing on three contracted LEADership Ministers, one of whom will also serve as Interim Director of Congregational Resourcing.

On January 1, 2017, the Conference welcomed Emily Ralph Servant, Randy Heacock, and Wayne Nitzsche into the role of Interim LEADership Minister. Emily will also serve as the Interim Director of Congregational Resourcing. Their willingness to serve in these interim roles ensures that all conference congregations have a dedicated Conference Minister available to serve them. In addition, with Emily stepping in as Interim Director of Congregational Resourcing the Conference can expect continued equipping events available to all Conference members and some geared toward credentialed leaders.

“Interim times are valuable for reconsidering and rethinking staffing configurations,” says Steve Kriss, Conference Executive Minister. “With the departures of Ertell and Jenifer, we have an unusual opportunity to reimagine how to lead and serve at the Conference level.  While I don’t anticipate changing our model of LEADership Ministry for accompaniment alongside pastors and congregations, this team of interim LEADership Ministers for six months will provide excellent space while also offering clear contacts for Conference ministry.  Emily, Randy and Wayne are skilled leaders who have conference level experience.  I’m grateful for their availability and willingness to serve in this time of change.  I’m grateful too for the flexibility and trust we have found with our congregations in the willingness to embrace each of them in the interim role.   As a conference we have a healthy pool of gifted and capable leaders; Emily, Randy and Wayne are evidence of this in their responsiveness to our invitations to serve together.”

Emily has been credentialed with the Conference since 2010, and a member of the conference since her youth.  She has served as a worship leader at Bally Mennonite Church, led worship and taught Sunday School while a member at Salford, and conducted interim ministry work with Swamp and Indonesian Light. She also spent time serving Sunnyside congregation in Lancaster, PA. Emily will also serve a number of Congregations as LEADership Minister while working to provide meaningful equipping events over the next six months.

Looking toward this new role, Emily states, “There is a special spirit in Franconia Conference that feels different from other contexts in which I’ve ministered, one that continues to draw me back!  I love the way that we celebrate diversity, passionately partner in different types of mission, and support one another in difficult times.  I’m so pleased to minister again as part of the staff during this time of transition, walking alongside some really gifted pastors and congregations!”

Randy Heacock steps in to his role as Interim LEADership Minister while continuing as pastor at Doylestown Mennonite Church. Randy was ordained in 1991 through Virginia Conference transferring to Franconia Conference in 2001 when he accepted the position at Doylestown. Randy has a wealth of pastoral experience spanning the last 35 years and has also served on the Virginia Conference Nurture Committee and as Chairperson of the Virginia Peace Committee. He has been noted for his steady presence and ability to walk with congregations through difficult times, holding space with patience as the Spirit moves making discernment possible.

In regards to his new role as Interim LEADership Minister, Randy says, “I am excited for the opportunity to walk alongside other church leaders as they pursue a Kingdom vision.”

Wayne Nitzsche currently serves as pastor at Perkasie Mennonite Church. He will continue in that role as he joins the Interim LEADership Ministry team. Wayne has been a member of Franconia Conference since accepting the role at Perkasie in 2008. Originally, Wayne was ordained in 1989 through Ohio Conference where he would serve as Regional Pastor for 12 years. Throughout his career, Wayne has served in a number of ministry roles including time under Mennonite Board of Missions, now known as Mennonite Mission Network. Wayne has been noted as having exceptional listening skills and truly strives to model Jesus in his everyday life. He will be working in these next six months with three congregations who face transitions themselves.

Wayne states, “God is with all our congregations. Perhaps God’s presence is most keenly experienced in times of pastoral transition. I look forward to walking with Alpha, Bally and Taftsville through their transition. I’m sure I will be enriched by the ways the Spirit is at work in these congregations. I hope to draw on twelve years of conference ministry experience in Ohio Conference, along with present pastoral perspectives from my pastorate at Perkasie Mennonite.”

We welcome these three to their new roles and are grateful for their answer to serve in this capacaity.

To learn more about the new Interim LEADership Ministers check out their full bios at: http://mosaicmennonites.org/directory/staff/

Weeding and Walking a Celebration of Shalom

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by Emily Ralph Servant, Interim LEADership Minister & Director of Congregational Resourcing

Is pulling weeds “mission?”

I certainly thought so as a teenager, when I spent several summer evenings sitting on the grass, helping my neighbor weed her flower beds and talking about God as she struggled to find her way back to faith.  We were quite a picture, the awkward teen and the twenty-something-year-old masseuse.

Those years were exciting for my family — church planters on Philadelphia’s main line — as children from our neighborhood poured into our basement every week to hear stories about Jesus, play games, and receive our love.  While we were committed to acts of compassion and mutual aid in the name of Jesus, we were also dedicated to verbal evangelism and church planting as the most visible manifestation of God’s mission.

I cherish those memories, even as time and exposure to different faith expressions have given me more varied experience of what mission could look like: in the last few years alone, missional initiatives in Franconia Conference have included  peace camps and community gardens, picnics at the park and Biker Sunday, Sanctuary Churches for immigrants and survivors of sexual abuse, prayer walks, Bible studies at the pool, creation care initiatives, summer camps, disaster relief, refugee resettlement, supporting survivors of sex trafficking, prayer evangelism, working with families in need, a community center, prison ministry, making quilts, veterans ministry,  peace poles, an internet café, bicycle ministry, drive-thru coffee and donuts, and church planting.

All of these expressions of mission point to the Good News: through Jesus, we are invited to share in God’s life; out of the overflowing of God’s life and love in us, we work for wholeness in the world around us.  That is the meaning of the word shalom: wholeness and health, demonstrated in reconciled relationships with God, others, ourselves, and the earth.

“That is why words like peace, justice, righteousness, and salvation are often used interchangeably in the New Testament,” says James Krabill in Fully Engaged: Missional Church in an Anabaptist Voice. “They are all different aspects of what Jesus came to bring, to be, and to do.”  The Church cannot separate witness and work, peace and evangelism.  “The faithful church preaches what Jesus practiced and practices what he preached.  And in so doing, [the Church] announces the whole gospel of Jesus to the broken world he so loved and for which he died.”

James KrabillSo what does it look like to be an Anabaptist church in mission?  According to Krabill, it means “doing what God does, loving the world—all of it—as much as God does, caring deeply for its welfare and working to set right what has gone wrong.”  Krabill (senior mission advocate for Mennonite Mission Network) will join Mennonites in eastern Pennsylvania this February for a conversation on mission and shalom.  “Celebration of Shalom: Stories of the Church in Mission” will feature stories and insights about mission from Fully Engaged as well as interactive storytelling from congregations in Franconia Conference and beyond, celebrating the diversity of God’s Spirit in sharing the Good News through both word and deed.

As a teenager, I never would have imagined the day two years ago that I participated in an early-morning prayer walk to pray for peace and healing after a murder in my neighborhood.  And as a teenager, I might not have recognized the walk as an act of mission.  Yet both my experiences—weeding and walking—were witnesses that, in Jesus, God will make all things right.  That is Good News indeed.

“Celebration of Shalom: Stories of the Church in Mission” will be held on Monday, February 13, 7pm, at Fischer Auditorium, Dock Woods Community, Lansdale, PA.  The event is free and open to all; donations for snacks will support local mission initiatives. For more information, contact Emily (eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org).

Why I Said Yes …

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 . . . to ongoing work and hope

by Stephen Kriss

Mother Theresa called it a “call within the call.”  That’s the best language I’ve found to describe why I’ve said yes to the invitation to the role of Executive Minister with Franconia Conference.   These weeks since the announcement went public I’ve felt surrounded by congratulatory support as well as honest condolences.   The congratulations recognize the largeness of the role and the condolences honor the difficulty of church leadership in this time and space.  I’ve received them both openly and humbly feeling strongly the sense of call between God, the world, our community and me for “such a time as this.”

While I’ve worked now over a decade with Franconia Conference, this appointment still feels like a surprise.  I’d have never guessed moving to Philadelphia after grad school would mean staying this long and finding my heart drawn to the community that we are, that we have been and that we are becoming.   I’ve come to love us from our immigrant congregations in South Philadelphia, to our historic congregations in Bucks and Montgomery County, to our experiments in church life in the Lehigh Valley and our unique blend of Vermonter Anabaptism.   There’s no where like us.   We are poised with interesting and sometimes complicated possibilities.

I’m grateful for the thorough work of the search committee and for the discerning work of the board.   Ertell Whigham, who has served as our executive minister, hands off a stable and financially sound organization.   He is leaving the role after being the first African American to lead a Conference in our national body.  Ertell’s commitment to our ongoing transformation as missional and intercultural people is one that I intend to carry forward.

In my interview with the Conference Board, I said that a marker of success for me will be collaboration.  I’m not exactly sure how we’ll mark or measure this yet, but I’ve seen glimpses of it in our work together in mutuality and sharing resources that give me some clues.   We have a long story together and I’m convinced that our future could be bright.   We’ll need to keep learning (to keep on being disciples) and to invest carefully so that our gift of faith might not simply be safely preserved but multiplied like the resources entrusted to the servants in Jesus’ parable from the Gospel of Matthew.

In this journey, the text “to whom much is given, much is required” has lingered in my head.   I hear it both for me and for all of us.   I receive this work as a gift.   I acknowledge the privileges that are mine and are ours.  These are not simply political, economic or racial/class privileges (though there are those), but privileges of grace, hope, and love.    It is because of these eternal things that last that I have said yes, again this time to the invitation of the Spirit among us.  I look forward to living into this “call within a call” together.  And trust that we’ll continue our faithful legacy of work and hope.

Value-Based Decision Making

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by John Stoltzfus

When our oldest son was 13, he wanted to play in the park football program. Despite some misgivings about the benefits of youth football, my wife and I decided to let him play hoping that he would find a sense of confidence and purpose in a team sport. However, when the schedule came out indicating that some games may happen on Sunday mornings, we knew we had some additional discernment to do. So we engaged our son in conversation about what we would do.

Tim Bentch’s article “Are We Driving Our Children Away from God?” asks some important questions related to the values we as parents are modeling to our children. A frequent refrain among youth pastors is how to do ministry among the “busy schedules” that dominate the calendars of our youth and families.

A recent book, Overplayed: A Parent’s Guide to Sanity in the World of Sports, by David King and Margot Starbuck, asks some of the same questions. They address seven myths about youth sports that are deeply entrenched in our culture. What are the unintended messages we pass on to our children about what we value regarding performance, success, family, community, and justice and equity? What are alternative ways families can positively engage with youth sports culture?

They do not give a one-size-fits-all suggestion. Each family will need to make their own tough calls based on their priorities and values and responses to these questions:

  • What do we want to be doing with our money and our time?
  • What relationships are most important for us to honor?
  • What are three to five values we want to name as being important to us?
Courtesy of Towamencin MYF

As parents and/or youth workers it is important that we help keep the focus of our youth on Christ and being disciples. Identifying family values in advance gives you tools for decision making about athletic and other types of extracurricular commitments. As youth workers and pastors we can help keep these values at the forefront for our youth when we see them making decisions. These values may lead to limited or no engagement in certain extracurricular activities, or as seen in a previous Intersectings article, “The Everyday Missionary,” you may find a way to help make disciples for the Lord through extracurricular activities. Either way engagement should be based off the values your family holds.

Here are some guiding values for us to consider as communities of faith. What would you add?

  1. Sabbath. We need to be grounded in a Christian community committed to the sacred balance between work and rest. A life that incorporates Sabbath rest helps us to be more aware of the Spirit of God, more dependent on the providence of God, and more available for relationships of love. What does Sabbath look like in a world where choices abound and technology surrounds us? Sometimes our church youth programs buy into the “more activities and choices are better” mentality and only compound the problem. Let’s confront one of the diseases of our time: we are distracted from the “better” things often hidden among many “good” things.
  2. Accompaniment. How can we come alongside our youth in their journey of discipleship? Our task is to initiate young persons into mature Christian faith through relationships with adults who join them in living the way of authentic discipleship. As elders we can offer youth friendship, guidance and listening ears as they make the passage through adolescence into spiritual maturity. This is the work of the whole church and not just a youth pastor or a few youth sponsors in the congregation.
  3. Discernment. We need to be guided by prayerful discernment attentive to God’s living Word. We practice and teach the discipline of discernment with our youth so as to be responsive to the movement of God’s grace and mission. How can we be less anxiety and fear driven and more Spirit led in our ministry with youth? Involve youth in the decision making process in congregational life. Be open to how God is speaking to and through them to the larger church.
  4. Multigenerational: Make church multigenerational as much as possible. In some of our attempts to do great youth programming we may be unintentionally disconnecting them from the larger body of Christ. Young people at multigenerational focused churches are more likely to remain connected to the faith and become active church members as adults, because that’s what they already are and always have been. When my wife and I were looking for a church home, we were not looking for a church with a dynamic youth program as much as we were looking for a community of believers modeling an active faith that included the nurture of children and youth.
  5. Authentic action: We seek to engage youth and adults in authentic actions that reflect God’s mercy, justice and peace. Most studies of faith and youth point to parent’s faith as the key factor in their children’s faith. What is the shape of our faith that we are passing on our children? What is the one radical thing we are doing because of our faith? Our youth need to see the connection between life and faith.
  6. Baptism: Let’s reimagine baptism and its role in Christian citizenship and discipleship. What does baptism look like in our current context? To early Christians, baptism meant a decisive step of leaving one’s civilian life behind and accepting the commitment of becoming a “living sacrifice” for God’s service. How can we as adults make more of our baptismal promises and journey? How can we give space for the baptism instructional experience and ritual to be more fully robust and transformational?

My conviction is that God is speaking to our youth in every part of their lives. How can we as adults help them respond with the words of Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”?

Are We Driving Our Children Away from God?

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By Tim Bentch, Pastor at Souderton Mennonite Church (originally published in the Souderton Mennonite Church November 2016 newsletter)

As I write, this article, I am already feeling guilty about my own deficiencies as a parent – all the ways I could have helped my children excel in sports, music, and academics. I could do more!  All the missed opportunities to help my children become successful in life! We parents are plagued by guilt and we also feel the constant pressure from our society to be super parents and to turn out super kids.

But, are these pressures and expectations in balance with what we know is the ultimate goal of Christ-following parents – to help our children find Jesus? Are we helping our children find God and doing all we can to model a pursuit of God for them?

One area we need to take a strong look at is the current sports obsession (though there are many obsessions in other areas). With this in view, I ask the question: Are you driving your children away from God – literally? When you drive your child to a soccer match or practice on Sunday mornings, what is that teaching your child?

My wife and I served in Eastern Europe beginning a few years after the fall of Communism. In many of the countries under Soviet domination, Christians faced discrimination and persecution. In Moscow, I met a talented young musician who played the clarinet beautifully. He was in his late twenties. Why, I asked, didn’t he go to the conservatory of music or to a university for formal studies? He looked at me with a puzzled expression that said, don’t you know? Under Communism, there was no way he could be accepted into a conservatory or a university because he was active in the church – automatic disqualification. But, he chose to be faithful to God by staying active in the local church even though it meant that ‘success’ for him in a musical career or in any other field that required a college education was not possible.

I met an outstanding singer in Timisoara, Romania. He had one of those voices you usually only find in the east – a deep, dark, profound, resonant voice. When I heard him sing, I was incredulous. “Why aren’t you a leading soloist in the opera?” I asked. Again, that puzzled look; don’t you know?  He told me that when he finished conservatory, he was offered a contract to be a soloist with the opera. But, they said, there’s one thing, “You will have to give up going to church. A soloist in the opera cannot be known to be a Christian.” He told them immediately, “No way,” and turned down the contract. Instead, he took a position with the choir of the philharmonic – not nearly as prestigious, but he stayed active in his local church.

I think about many others who made huge sacrifices in order to be faithful to Jesus and to honor him by serving in church. Yet, we choose sporting events over church? Really? When we are driving our children to a practice or a game instead of worship or instead of a Wednesday night youth meeting, what message does that send to our children? Are we saying, we only go to church when there’s nothing better to do?  Are we placing sports, or work, or leisure, above knowing and serving God?  The Bible calls this idolatry.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The patterns that we give to our children will stay with them the rest of their lives. If we are communicating that church is not important now, how can we expect that they will go to church when they are older? If we are modeling for them a faith that requires no sacrifice, then what good is it? What could be more important than our children’s eternal destiny?

Unity in Thanksgiving

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By Sandy Drescher-Lehman, Pastor of Methacton Mennonite Church

Four Franconia Mennonite Conference churches met on the Sunday before Thanksgiving to proclaim the One who unifies them even amidst the diversity of opinions, theology, wealth, and political persuasions among other things. Ideas had been brewing in the hearts of several pastors of small churches in close proximity to each other for some time, to find ways to support and resource each other.  Last summer, that dream became a reality as the pastors began to meet together. One of the outcomes of those meetings was this joint Thanksgiving worship service.

The pastors and congregations of Wellspring Church of Skippack, Frederick Mennonite Church, and Spring Mount Mennonite Church gathered at Methacton Mennonite Church on November 20 for the anticipated and momentous event!  People who usually have plenty of room on their benches, were packed in like smiling sardines.  Singers who ordinarily can identify every voice, were overwhelmed with the grand blend of harmonious praise. A colorful mountain of boxes and cans and bags began to grow in the front of the sanctuary as people streamed in with their offerings of food to be shared with their neighborhood food pantry. An open conversation among the four pastors,  inspired comradery with other churches who also have an average of 15-30 members and who also each share the vibrancy of unique vision and mission intentions, centered around following Jesus Christ. Three pastors were happy to hear Mike Meneses share the Word and four song leaders led their congregations in a round of “Go now in peace,” (#429 HWB).

Friendships were lit and fanned into beautiful flames as we then spent informal time together around the tables of food and drink, with hopes of more joint ventures to come.  Emulating what was shared at Conference Assembly two weeks earlier, we celebrated what is being planted and watered in our separate congregations and were inspired to notice how God calls us to grow into the days before us.

Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship Awarded Solar Grant

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At Fall Assembly, Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship in Vermont was featured in one of the Plant, Water, Grow videos, discussing their creation care initiatives. Part of that includes going solar. This week in the Mennonite World Review, is was announced that they will receive a $10,000 award from Mennonite Creation Care Network to assist in these efforts.

Read the article here; to see their testimony video (second story in the video) from assembly visit: https://vimeo.com/190770169.