by Stephen Kriss
This fall is a season of conversation for Franconia Conference. As the summer winds down and the autumn is upon us, Conference staff are busy with meetings that come before our annual assembly. The Conference’s two task forces and the Faith and Life Commission that have flowed out of our Church Together Statements continue to be accompanied by staff. Aldo Siahaan is walking with the Faith and Life Commission while Ertell Whigham is on sabbatical. Jenifer Erickson-Morales is working with the Addressing Abuse Task Force and John Stotlzfus with the Israel/Palestine Task Force.
In addition, as we prepare for Assembly, we’re coordinating efforts for the upcoming meeting with Mennonite Church USA moderator elect David Boshart on September 10th, open to all members of Franconia and Eastern District congregations and strongly encouraged for all Franconia pastors and delegates. This meeting will aid in preparing us for items related to assembly and discernment. This upcoming conversation and others that staff will be engaging with will include more information on our relationship with each other, with Eastern District Conference and Mennonite Church USA. These all are important conversations, conferring around healthy relationships that both give and receive counsel.
Board and staff are also fielding requests from congregations that may wish to join our Conference and will need consideration at this fall’s Conference Assembly. Some are new groups, others are migrations from other Mennonite Church USA conferences and some from other denominational affiliations. This is careful conversation and conferring work for sure. We’ll know more about the outcomes this fall.
Staff are also beginning to do some work as the board has requested, including analyzing the percentages of the budget used toward our goals of equipping (around 60%). We’re also taking a look at our staff salaries as the board looks toward the upcoming executive minister transition. It’s a time of evaluating and calibrating.
We’ve also spent some important time together as pastors and credentialed leaders. It wasn’t a formal conferring time, but nonetheless a time of gathering together in Princeton for rest and rejuvenation paid for through a grant given to Everence from the Lilly Foundation toward pastoral excellence. 50 of us gathered at the Erdman Center at Princeton Theological Seminary for a day away. We spent a night out on the town for dinner, heard jazz from the gifted Ruth Naomi Floyd, listened to the input from Calenthia Dowdy, a professor at Eastern University and Jon Heinly, a student at Yale Divinity School. Randy Nyce (Salford congregation) and Jeff Godshall (Franconia congregation) offered input and guidance toward healthy finances for pastors/credentialed leaders for the long haul. It was a good 24 hours together.
There is much happening in this space in between. While we prepare for our gatherings later this fall, we’re conferring and discerning. These conversations guide our patterns for life together as we seek to strengthen the life and work of congregations, ministries and leaders. After 300 years, we are still challenged and enlivened by the possibilities around us. We still gather to talk together, believing the Spirit shows up in our conversations, in our work, in our conferring together.
In other Christian traditions, liturgy is called “the work of the people.” In our tradition, where community is almost sacrament, these patterns of conferring are the work of us as a people together. May the Spirit continue to stir as we gather.
My Subaru was overdue for an oil change, so I took it to a local mechanic in Bridgewater Corners, Vermont. I needed my out-of-state car to run smoothly while I serve as Interim Pastor at Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship. “Take a good look,” I said, “this car has a lot of miles on it, over 100,000, and I am putting a lot more miles on it.” He took one look and countered, “With that Outback, you are just getting started!” An Outback, even with PA license plate, fits right into the landscape in Vermont, and Chris the mechanic seemed happy to help.
In a place and time when only 17% of the state’s residents regularly attend houses of worship, the lowest church attendance in the nation, it is no small witness to be known for generating a sense of community ownership of a camp that cares well for local children. When the stories of Jesus are shared in the way of Jesus, a community will remember that camp was invitational, playful, and welcoming.
There is yet another kind of witness that neighbors tell about Vermont Mennonites. I hear it from Charlie Wilson, long-time resident and observer of Taftsville, the hamlet where my interim congregation worships. I am sitting in a presentation at the Woodstock Historical Society, where he is telling stories about Taftsville’s recent past. “If you walk by the Chapel on a summer Sunday morning and the windows are open,” he tells the group, “you will hear the unsurpassed acappella singing of the Mennonites, and at Christmas they serenade the village with carols.”
This past Sunday, Mia, an elementary-school-aged girl from Indonesian Light Church, told me that she thinks she might want to be a pastor. Her mom remarked that this is a relatively new development within the last few months. Though she tagged on that sometimes she wants to be a doctor too. Both tough jobs, I responded. And both things that help people, her mom said. Her mom wondered where the pastoral desire might have originated. There is no doubt in my mind that having Emily Ralph Servant as the congregation’s interim pastor for the past six months has something to do with it. This young girl has experienced that women, too, might be pastors and her life is forever changed. I look forward to the day 30 years or so from now when this young woman might be my pastor, shaped by the city, loved by a congregation, and formed as one who is loved by God.
The Spirit is truly upon us, calling men and women, stirring the young, and giving dreams to those of us who have been on the journey longer. May we be able to live into these possibilities that are for sure beyond even our greatest hopes and imagination. Thanks be to God that the Spirit is undoubtedly still with us and calling among us in the space in between.