Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Conference News

Reflections on the Journey: celebrating the career of Noah Kolb

by

Noah Kolb's Open House
Noah and his wife Sara talk with their guests at the December 11 open house honoring Noah’s years of ministry. Photo by Emily Ralph

by Krista Showalter Ehst, Bally congregation

For Noah Kolb, the journey has moved in unexpected places, bringing challenges and blessings alike. Reflecting on a 45 year ministerial career—the most recent 14 of which he spent in Franconia Conference leadership—Noah says, “I could not have dreamed this path and in many ways it has felt like God has nudged and moved me along step by step.” As Noah anticipates his retirement years, he continues to experience those divine nudgings, offering words of wisdom from his ministerial work.

Noah was born and raised in a farming family in Spring City, Pa. He felt the call to ministry at a fairly young age, and this call was drawn out and affirmed by many people along the road. Noah names teachers, in-laws, mentors, and seminary professors at Goshen Biblical as central to discerning and following his call. Perhaps most significantly of all, Noah’s wife Sara has brought wisdom and counsel—as well as her own gifts of hospitality and relationship-building—that have helped Noah live into his calling. As he says, “I would not have wanted to do the journey without her.”

Noah and Sara Kolb
Noah and Sara were honored at the Credentialed Leaders Appreciation Dinner on December 2 with a fraktur by Roma Ruth. Photo by Emily Ralph.

That journey took Noah and his family to many different ministerial settings.  He spent 24 years in pastoral ministry: beginning part time at Pottstown (Pa.) Mennonite, moving to Swamp congregation (Quakertown, Pa.) for 11 years, and then serving the Bellwood Congregation in Nebraska for 5 years.  The leadership skills he exhibited during those years resulted in his call into conference ministry. After serving as the only Iowa-Nebraska conference minister for a number of years, he returned to the east coast. Jim Lapp, his brother-in-law and a former conference colleague, remembers that transition. “Noah’s strength as a leader arises from his lack of pretense and aspiration for recognition and a genuine humility and gentle spirit,” Jim shares.  “It was his strong churchmanship and character that led us to call him in 2000 to serve as part of the Conference Ministry Team [of Franconia Conference].”

Conference ministry brought its own set of challenges and learnings. For Noah, one significant area of growth was in conflict management. Noah grew up with very little understanding of conflict and became quite anxious when faced with it. As a pastor and conference minister, however, he was quick to realize that “wherever you have two or three gathered, there will be conflict.” Noah worked hard to wrestle with his aversion to conflict and to develop a non-anxious presence. He tried to create safe spaces where people could gather to talk and to share openly about their differences. As is so often the case, Noah remembers his times of helping congregations to move through conflict as some of the most difficult and rewarding moments of his career.

Noah and Bobby
Noah discusses life and ministry with Bobby Wibowo (Philadelphia Praise Center) at the 2013 Conference Assembly. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

As he’s worked alongside congregations, Noah has realized the importance of building relationships. He believes leaders cannot be effective without building trust with their congregations. Undoubtedly shaped by the many mentors in his own life, Noah has worked to build this trust by prioritizing one-on-one relationships with pastors, taking the time to listen to their stories and to know them more deeply. One leader who has benefited from this relational approach is , currently leading Peace Proclamation Ministries International in India and a member of Plains congregation, where Noah and Sara also attend. “Noah has energized me with his natural ability as a servant leader,” says.  “I have seen and experienced in him the qualities of gentleness and love.”

As he moves into retirement, Noah continues to model gentleness, strength, relationality, and the willingness to listen in the midst of difference. “We live with a lot of judgment towards each other and we don’t know how to receive and accept each other graciously as brothers and sisters in Christ even with our diversity,” Noah reflects.  “One of my deep convictions is that we need to work at a greater understanding of God’s grace and mercy—that God has received and uses us amazingly in our brokenness and that we can extend that grace to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. My deep yearning is that we can somehow learn to do that much better—not a sense that anything goes, but an extending of mercy and grace and compassion to each other in the midst of our brokenness.”

Noah and Nancy
MC USA Conference Minister Nancy Kauffmann joins Franconia Executive Minister Ertell Whigham and Eastern District Conference Minister Warren Tyson to pray for Noah at Conference Assembly 2013. Photo by Bam Tribuwono.

While Noah has faced challenges in the last few years of ministry as he struggled with failing vision, his care and giftedness as a pastor to leaders has continued to shine through. “While it is indeed true that he is having a struggle with his physical eyesight, the spiritual eyesight of my brother continues to grow,” said Ertell Whigham, Franconia’s Executive Minister, at the 2013 Conference Assembly in November.  “[Noah is] able to see the needs and the care and the encouragement and the guidance and the wisdom that our brothers and sisters who serve in ministry need.  And so, while indeed there may be some struggles with [his] physical eyesight, I thank God for [his] spiritual eyesight….  I have truly been transformed through our intercultural interaction.”

Ministerial Update (November 2013)

by

Joy Sawatzky
Joy Sawatzky, pictured here receiving prayers of blessing at Conference Assembly 2012, was approved for ordination at the November 3rd ministerial meeting.  Photo by Andrew Huth.

from Noah Kolb, outgoing Pastor of Ministerial Leadership

The ministerial committee met on November 3rd.  Chris Nickels was welcomed as a new member.  Marlene Derstine was thanked for her completed time of service.

  • Sandy Landes was approved for a license toward ordination at Doylestown congregation as Pastor of Prayer and Pastoral Care.
  • Joy Sawatzky was approved for ordination as Pastor/Chaplain at the Souderton Mennonite Homes.  Joy is a member of Plains.
  • John Bender’s ministerial credentials were received from Allegheny Conference for ministerial leadership at Ripple and Franconia congregations.
  • The ministerial credentials of Emily Ralph and Robert Nolt were approved to be transferred to Lancaster Conference.
  • The license toward ordination for Julie Prey, Joe Hackman, and Scott Franciscus were renewed for another two years.
  • Duane Hershberger’s ministerial status was changed from active to retired.
  • Donna Wilkins’ license for specific ministry was terminated with the end of her responsibilities at Blooming Glen.
  • Mike Ford, formerly youth pastor of Franconia congregation, has transferred to Blooming Glen, working in youth ministries.
  • Walt Morton is serving as an interim pastor at Lakeview.

MCC International Volunteers: Impacting the World

by

Kaputa_Madalitsoby Millie Penner, Mennonite Central Committee East Coast

“We eat together, sing together in both English and Chichewa, go on our nightly walks together, and laugh together like a family of hyenas,” says Eric Bishop of his family’s relationship with Madalitso Kaputa. Eric and Linda Bishop, Souderton congregation, have opened their home to Madalitso, a participant in the International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP). IVEP is a program of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) that brings young adults from other countries to live and work in Canada and the United States for a year. Madalitso is far from his home in Malawi, Africa this year, yet clearly he also has found a family with the Bishops.

During the day Madalitso volunteers at the Dock Woods and Dock Meadows campuses (Lansdale, Pa.) of the Living Branches retirement community. It is clear to his host family and both his supervisors that this work is far more than a short term volunteer assignment. For Madalitso, this work is a part of the calling God has on his life, a calling he works to fulfill with joy and passion. He says, “When I first arrived in the United States, the food, the time change and the people were all new to my life, and I wondered if I would be able to hold on to my sense of mission. But after a month, I feel like I’m at home as my wonderful host family has helped me to remember my mission goal. Through my work at Dock Woods and Dock Meadows, I have come to understand the great call that the church has in taking care of people, especially the elderly. Indeed, this is now the time that the church should be inviting and welcoming all the elderly into her caring and protective service as the salt and light of the world.”

Gerry Moore, who supervises Madalitso at Dock Meadows, agrees that he is focused and effective. “He is eager to visit with each resident and learn their stories. He wants them to know they have a life time of experience to share, a wealth of wisdom and much he can learn from them.”

Dock Meadows and Dock Woods have hosted IVEPers for several years and have seen good fruit from the cross-cultural exchanges that happen through this program. Eileen Burks of Dock Woods says, “A resident just received an email from one of our past IVEPers from Indonesia. They have been in contact for over seven years, and this clearly is one of many great bonds that were formed through this program. Another way that we are enriched is when the IVEPer brings the world to our residents through a cultural class, sharing about their country … family, faith, foods and languages.”

Madalitso will take many gifts with him when he leaves the IVEP program, not the least of which is a better sense of the world community. Linda Bishop, his host mother, says that he already refers to the world as his home, not just Malawi, since he is willing to go wherever God sends him.

And Madalitso will leave just as many gifts with those whose lives he touches here in Pennsylvania. Living Branches residents, his supervisors and his host family will have formed many good memories, relationships and connections that will last a lifetime.

Brokenness and healing in Doylestown

by

VETS DAY 2013 -PRAYER SERVICE DOYLESTOWN
Chaplain George Lindsey and KrisAnne Swartley at Doylestown congregation’s Veteran’s Day prayer service. Photo by Randy Heacock.

by KrisAnne Swartley, Doylestown congregation

On Sunday evening November 10th, a group of people from the community and from Doylestown congregation gathered to reflect on the painful parts of life and to seek hope in God’s Presence.

Chaplain George Lindsey of the local VFW, spoke honestly and with vulnerability about the depression he felt while deployed in Iraq, as well as the PTSD he struggled to overcome when he arrived back home. He also spoke with great confidence about God’s comfort and the many ways God has healed and continues to heal him.  George led us in singing “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand!”

Ron and Robin Miller also spoke about the hope they find in Jesus as they continue to grieve the loss of their son, Brett. They read from Psalm 22, “from birth I was cast upon you, God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near.”

In the candlelight and silence, with broken pieces of slate in our hands to symbolize how broken we sometimes feel, we waited on God. We could hear one another weeping. And then we prayed that God in Jesus would make all things well, even in the midst of suffering.

After the service was over, many of us stayed to talk and pray with one another. It was a healing time of honesty and hope, this beautiful evening that broke down barriers between “church” and “community.”

Franconia Conference gathers to celebrate, pray, confer, listen

by

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.

Christopher Dock joins clothing drive to assist Syrian refugees

by

syrian clothing drive
Christopher Dock senior Johnathan Capp, left, and assistant principal Martin Wiens with some of the collected clothing. (The Reporter/GeoffPatton)

Adapted from an article by Jennifer Lawson, The Reporter (original article)

TOWAMENCIN — The number of Syrians who have fled the violence in their country has surpassed two million, creating a humanitarian crisis in the countries that have set up refugee camps.

Christopher Dock Mennonite High School and the Mennonite Central Committee’s Material Resource Center in Harleysville launched a short-term, intensive clothing drive last month to help the refugees, with assistance from the local community.

About a dozen bags of clothing had already been donated over the weekend before assistant principal Martin Wiens and senior Johnathan Capps announced the effort during the school’s chapel hour on September 16.

“It’s become so politicized, but people want to know, ‘What can I do to help?’ ‘What’s something tangible we can do?’” Wiens said. The students collected blankets, coats, sweaters, long pants, ankle-length skirts, long-sleeved shirts, shoes, backpacks, and toys.

This is part of a larger effort — the clothing drive was coordinated by the Material Resource Center’s headquarters in Ephrata, Pa., and other church communities across the country are also holding drives.

Dock’s involvement seemed fitting because juniors and seniors are learning about the refugee crisis in Bible class and social studies class, Wiens said, and school leadership thought it was important to get students invested in the movement to help.

“They seem pretty interested,” Capps said, adding that he heard from some classmates over the weekend who wanted to know more about the clothing drive and how they could help.

In total, the drive collected nearly 50 cubic feet of donations, which were then sent to Ephrata and processed, then sent to Lebanon, said Sharon Swartzentruber, director of the Material Resource Center in Harleysville.

“We’re trying to get everything to Lebanon before the weather turns too cold, and it takes a long time for shipments to arrive — five or six weeks,” she said.

Although the clothing drive has ended, the Material Resource Center is still collecting hygiene kits and relief kits, which are distributed in areas of crisis around the world, including the Middle East. For more information, please call the MRC at (267) 203-8074.

Ministerial report (September 2013)

by

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.

A window into the life of some Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonites

by

John Ruth Memoirfrom Mennonite Heritage Center

“A first-born and only son, I opened my eyes in a sprawling 122-year-old farmhouse along a pleasant creek in southeastern Pennsylvania,” writes Mennonite historian, John Landis Ruth, in his forthcoming book, Branch: A Memoir with Pictures. As eighty-three year old Ruth tells his story through photos and essays, readers get a rich glimpse of his life but also the Mennonite family and community in which he was raised.

The narrative begins at his birthplace, the 1809 Lower Salford Township farm along the East Branch of the Perkiomen Creek to which, at age 57, he returned with wife Roma and two sons’ families. The early tone is set by the 1940’s photography of his father Henry L. Ruth, a Bucks County-born farmer.  “Those are the scripture verses that little John L Ruth learned by memory when he was a little boy of 4 years old,” writes John’s maternal grandmother in a diary entry included in one of the book’s intimate and evocative photos.

After attending school in Lower Salford and Lancaster County, Pa., and Virginia, in 1950 at the age of 20 the future historian was chosen to be a Mennonite minister by the casting of lots.  Subsequent studies took him to Harvard where he earned a Ph.D. and became a Professor of English at what is now Eastern University, St. Davids, Pa., with a sabbatical as Guest Professor of American Literature at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Back in Pennsylvania, Ruth accepted a call in his mid-forties to work on themes of Anabaptist-Mennonite heritage in a popular rather than academic mode.  His first book, commissioned by Conrad Grebel College, appeared in 1974.  Photographs from the following decades of cross-country teaching, film-making, writing, speaking at historical observances and tour-leading are interspersed in the memoir with scenes from family, church, and the author’s changing southeastern Pennsylvania community.  “In the end this is a love story—love of family, love of community and church—all anchored in an enduring, classic Mennonite faith,”  observes Dick Benner, editor of The Canadian Mennonite.

In small coffee-table-style, each of the 210 two-page spreads opens to a mini-essay paired with a full-page picture.  Ruth chose this format “to explore synergy between a lifetime’s collection of pictures and the words they may call forth.”

The 432-page, hard-bound memoir, priced at $25, is scheduled to be released at book-signings at the Mennonite Heritage Center, Harleysville on November 21 at 7:30 p.m; on November 22 in Lancaster County at Landis Homes at 10:00 a.m., Garden Spot Village at  2:00 p.m., and at a pictorial presentation on “Travel in the Anabaptist Historical Landscape” at the Martindale Reception Center at 7:30 p.m.; on November 23 at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society at 10:00 a.m.  The release in Canada is scheduled for Tourmagination’s 45th Anniversary Celebration at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo on November 28.

Copies will be available for purchase from TourMagination, www.tourmagination.com and the Mennonite Heritage Center (215 256 3020), 565 Yoder Road, Harleysville, PA 19438, www.mhep.org.