Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

coronavirus

A Stimulus Relief Package

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Jesus Meets the Wants Beyond the Needs

by Marta Beidler Castillo, Leadership Minister (Wellspring congregation)

Before Jesus feeds the five thousand (John 6), he sees a great crowd coming toward him and he says to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”  He asked this to test Philip, John says, because Jesus already knew what he was going to do.

Right now, I feel like Philip, who answers, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”  I am wondering where the provision will come from to meet all the needs we’re seeing just in our conference, congregations, Conference Related Ministries, and connected ministries in Mexico and beyond. Maybe it’s a test for us, since God already has in mind what God is going to do.

Luke Beidler and Marta (Beidler) Castillo working together in home office. Photo by Dorothy Beidler

Going back to the story, we remember that Jesus fed them all as much as they wanted with a boy’s offering of five small barley loaves and two small fish.  I am now the small boy ready to offer what I have and stand back to watch how God will bless, multiply, and distribute all that is needed and wanted.

 

A Stimulus Relief Package and the Shalom Fund

by Luke Beidler, Methacton congregation

This week, the Times Herald pictured President Trump signing the corona virus stimulus relief package at the White House.  The article headlined, “Relief checks are a lifeline for some, a cushion for others.”

What do these checks mean for me?  For you?

As I answer this question, I feel my identity as a follower of Jesus, as a member of an Eastern District & Franconia Conference congregation. I strongly feel my commitment to the Anabaptist faith, to feeding the hungry, and to healing the sick. This is exactly the time for us to show our colors, to put ourselves on the front lines together with first responders, doctors, and nurses.  To show ourselves willing to sacrifice that others may live! Can we join all people of faith and the secular community, seeking the welfare of the towns and cities of all the nations? Praying and supporting a fair, just distribution of required resources!

So what does it mean for me and my family?  Can I, as a landlord (I hate that term), be part of the vision to forgive late and unpaid rents, especially for those affected by the virus or loss of job?  Can my wife and I add stimulus to stimulus by matching Everence funds in our local congregation to cover some of the losses of our members and next-door neighbors?   Freely received, freely give!  How about carrying with you envelopes with a hundred dollars to give a stranger who reveals a real need?!

And can we move from our local congregations and counties to pick up the unequal burdens that our urban congregations and their populations face? Pandemics demand an out-in-the-world dynamic. Now is not the time for a scarcity mentality but a joyous generosity to give people hope one day at a time. This is the vision of the Shalom Fund that Eastern District & Franconia Conference has announced for our consideration. In a pandemic, the disadvantages of the homeless, immigrants, and lower income families grow. I would like to see each of us, with passion, pass on and multiply our stimulus checks.  I would like to see each of our conference congregations each give $10,000 for a stimulus relief offering for the healing of the nations.

May the open hand rather than the closed fist be our learning and joy!

Marta Beidler Castillo and Luke Beidler are daughter and father.  If you would like to learn more about the conference Shalom Fund or donate to the fund, please click here.

When COVID-19 Comes to Salford

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by Ashley Miller, Salford congregation

Ashley and Chris Miller (who attend Salford Mennonite Church in Harleyesville, PA) have been going through their own personal experience of COVID-19. Ashley began experiencing symptoms on March 15 and tested positive for the disease. Ashley has courageously and generously written about her experience.  

March 29, 2020

Chris & Ashley Miller and family

I am stepping outside of my comfort zone as I am not one to share on such public platforms. There is fear and mystery that surround COVID-19, and I’d like to share my family’s experience.

Two weeks ago, I started to feel sick with what I thought were flu-like symptoms. I felt tired, achy, low grade fever, chills, and an unrelenting headache. I lost my sense of smell. Within a few days I developed a cough and tightness in my chest which resulted in difficulty breathing. I also experienced a strange sensation that I can only describe as breathing shattered glass in my lungs. It was a very intense pain. I have asthma so some of the symptoms felt familiar to me. As the week went on, I realized my symptoms were getting worse instead of improving. After talking with my doctor, it was agreed that I’d be tested for the Flu, RSV, and COVID-19. I received negative results for the Flu and RSV. After waiting seven days, my test results for COVID-19 were POSITIVE. To my knowledge, I did not encounter anyone who had been exposed or who tested positive, so my case is one that is considered “community spread.”

At the onset of my symptoms, I began my isolation period. Despite our best efforts, both my husband Chris and daughter Ava developed symptoms. Their cases are considered presumed positive. Chris’ symptoms were similar to mine but fortunately milder. Ava began presenting with cold-like symptoms and some mild respiratory symptoms. Both are now doing well!

Throughout this experience, I was reminded to rely on my faith and to trust my intuition. As someone who can be anxious, fighting a sickness like this while isolating yourself from your family, doctors, and the world was/is incredibly hard on one’s mental health. I quickly became aware that I needed to utilize the strategies I often discuss with my clients. I turned off the news, limited my social media, and stopped researching “coronavirus.” I changed my mindset from one of fear to one of strength by focusing on healing. I listened to my body and allowed myself to be still, to rest, to heal.

When I initially received the COVID-19 test results, I was hoping for a sense of peace. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings of shame, guilt, and sadness that flooded me with hearing I tested positive. There is no “right’ way to feel; none of us have dealt with a pandemic before, but just as this pandemic has a beginning, there will be an end.

As we focus on our physical health, may we not lose sight of our mental wellness. My hope is that we allow ourselves to hold space for all of our feelings including those of grief, sadness, and fear that we may experience. Continue to find creative ways to connect with the people in your life. Please don’t be afraid to reach out for help.

I offer our story as a sign of hope. I continue to feel stronger each day and must remind myself to be patient as I move towards total healing. I continue to have symptoms which means that we will continue to follow the quarantine protocol but I look forward to moving out of my isolation room and giving my husband and kids a big hug and kiss.

Estos son tiempos y días extraños

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Por Marco Güete, Ministro de Liderazgo de Florida

“Si no puedes volar, corre. Si no puedes correr, camina. Si no puedes caminar, gatea. Sin importar lo que hagas, sigue avanzado hacia adelante.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Estos son tiempos y días extraños. No hay otra manera de calificar lo que está pasando en el mundo. Nuestra libertad se ha limitado, en realidad no tenemos libertad para ir donde más nos gusta ir o donde la necesidad nos pide que vayamos. Si lo hacemos tenemos que tomar precauciones extremas. Este es el momento de ver el lado positivo de la situación, considerando el contexto geográfico, de salud y económico de otras personas y el mío mismo.

Aprender a cocinar con mi hija, Vanessa, y mi esposa, Sandra

El “Coronavirus” nos está haciendo experimentar algo nuevo, raro, desconcertante. Nos entristece, nos hace enojar. No lo podemos negar ni tampoco podemos culpar a nadie.  Aquí está y no se ha ido. Me inspiran las palabras de Martin Luther King Jr. “Sin importar lo que hagas, sigue avanzando hacía adelante.” Yo agregaría: o lo que pase. Es hora de hacer cosas nuevas y diferentes, soñemos de nuevo. “He aquí, yo hago nuevas todas las cosas” (Apocalipsis 21:5)

Holding Our Faith in Tension Between Life and Death

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by Mary Nitzsche, Associate Executive Minister 

For the past four weeks, credentialed leaders have been meeting through Zoom to care, support, and resource one another (learn more here). We have discussed how we are adapting and using new forms of worship, encouraging financial generosity without pressuring or shaming, communicating with our members, offering pastoral care, and navigating end of life and funeral planning challenges.

During this week in particular, we are discovering new ways to walk through the events of Holy Week without being together. Questions emerging from our conversations have included: What about the palm branches we ordered? How do we do footwashing, especially for those who live alone? Do we explore meaningful ways to share communion at a distance or wait until we gather again? Should we postpone our Easter celebration until the pandemic is over?

Hae Lah, Ser Luther, and the twins Em See and Em Thee greeted the Whitehall Palm Sunday truck and were excited receive not only palms but balloons and paper bags with candy and eggs inside! Photo by Rose Bender

In response to these questions, creative ideas emerged: sending an email with instructions for making palms at home to wave during the call to worship; adapting a simple Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service to a Live Stream format; inviting members to submit a one-minute video giving witness to resurrection in the midst of COVID-19 to be played during the Easter service; sending a care package to each family with children as an alternative to an egg hunt.

Perhaps one of the most important questions raised was What do we believe about resurrection in the midst of so much uncertainty, loss, and suffering? The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that illness, loss, grief, and death are a part of our human reality as a global community. We are being forced to acknowledge, not deny or avoid, our human limits, brokenness, and mortality.

Our faith has been shaken. How can a loving God allow so much loss, suffering, pain, and death? Like the crowd that lined the streets to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with waving palm branches, we cry out, “Hosanna, save us Lord.” Do something quick to fix our horrendous mess!!

Instead of immediately and miraculously answering the crowd’s cry for salvation, Jesus faced a week of ridicule, hatred, and questioning by the religious and political leaders, betrayal and denial by his disciples, and a brutal and cruel death on the cross.

We are invited to consider the core tension of our faith as Jesus boldly stated, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (New Revised Standard Version, Luke 9:23-24).

The journey from death to life is one of pain, suffering, and loss. This pandemic invites people of faith to hold in tension fear and trust, despair and hope, death and life. The cross and the empty tomb remind us that new life springs forth from death.

After Jesus was crucified, the disciples went into hiding behind locked doors. They were consumed with grief and the loss of Jesus, their teacher. They were uncertain of their future. The first Easter morning, the women returned with the too-good-to-believe news that the tomb was empty and Jesus had been raised to life.

As we take up our cross and daily follow Jesus during this time of COVID-19, what glimmers of hope are you holding onto that point to new life? How can you bear witness to the good news that actions of love overcome evil leading to life in the midst of despair and death?

Whether We Live or Die, We are the Lord’s

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by Gwen Groff, Bethany congregation

Gwen Groff

Lent begins with the reminder, “…to dust you shall return.” In this season we hear Jesus tell his followers, “I’m turning toward Jerusalem. I’m going to die there. Come with me.” It is a counter-cultural invitation. If much anxiety is rooted in our fear of death, we have to stop avoiding death. We are in the right season for this.

In the last sermon that I preached with a physically-present congregation, I quoted Julian of Norwich, using the familiar words in our hymnal. “All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.”

At that time, I had no notion of the journey we were embarking on. I did not know we would not gather the following Sunday. I did not know COVID-19 had already arrived in our small, spaciously populated state.

Julian of Norwich

“All will be well” is not a glib platitude. Julian, born in 1342, lived through three rounds of the Black Plague, the Peasants’ Revolt, and part of the Hundred Years’ War. Before she heard God’s revelation that “all will be well,” she had been so severely ill that she was administered last rites. To say “all will be well” was not an optimistic claim that we will not experience suffering. It was a promise that in our suffering we are held within God’s being.

Since that Sunday, Paul’s assurance in Romans 14:8 has been repeating internally, as I walk, cook, and sit in silence: “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” That also is not a glib promise. It does not deny death or the pain of death. But it affirms that just as God holds us now as we live fully and love life, God holds us as we face death, as we move through death, and as we discover what follows after death.

Those words from Scripture first came alive for me when a friend described her midwest community’s response to the Palm Sunday tornadoes of 1965. She was a child in Indiana when 137 people died and 1200 people were injured on that one Sunday. She experienced, up close, the reality that people you love die, people grieve hard, and relationships with those people and with God continue.

I marveled at her attitude in the acceptance of death. She is a person in love with the world, life, and people. But she has a real sense that death is not the end, and that “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

I have at times thoughtlessly associated the acceptance of death with despair or purposelessness.  A neighbor said to me last week, “If COVID-19 would have happened the year after my husband died, I’d have been out there trying to catch it. But not now. I love life again. I want to live.”

Acceptance of the reality of death is not a death wish. And loving life doesn’t create a fear of death. We may fear death most when we sense we haven’t lived fully.

Another neighbor in the “high risk” category summed this up: “I want to live to be a hundred. But if I die now, boy—we’ve had a good run.”

I take Paul’s words in Romans to mean our life with God somehow continues through death and beyond. Can I hold that hope if my parents (in their 90s), quarantined in a nursing home, fall ill? Can I remember that promise if I am short of breath? And can I maintain that perspective if civilized society starts to disintegrate? How can we, as the body of Christ, behave as if we know that whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s?

A Note from Conrad Martin, Director of Finance

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Many of us feel incredibly helpless as we watch the news. We want to help. We want to find medical supplies for the health workers who are caring for patients. We know of so many who are unemployed or struggling financially due to COVID-19. There are so many requests these days for financial assistance as charities across the nation face a decline in giving. Where to begin? Should we start with those with which we have a personal connection?  Some of the charities in need are just down the street; our congregations have a personal connection with many of these and have even already supported them financially.

One thing that has become very evident over the past two weeks is that our churches are more than bricks and mortar.  Our churches are people; they are us. As I read and watch what local congregations are doing during this “crisis”, it is apparent that the church staff are putting in overtime to serve isolated congregations. In many churches, staffing is the largest percentage of a church’s budget. Given that staff are working extra hard during this pandemic, we as an isolated community should put in a little extra effort to support our congregations financially, even if we aren’t meeting in a building. Not only will our church staff be supported financially, but the broader ministry of the church will be enabled to continue as many others need the church now, more than ever.

Through the Valley of Shadows

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Give to the
Shalom Mutual Aid Fund*


Steve Kriss

by Steve Kriss, Executive Minister

My last article was about 10 days ago. We were beginning to glimpse the seriousness of the coronavirus.  We slowly began to reconsider and reschedule events.

To be honest, I wasn’t prepared for the rapid change in the situation that would mean that nearly all our member congregations, from California to Vermont, wouldn’t physically gather. Then, I wrote that I’d still get tacos and pho and go to the gym.  For now, those of us who live in Philadelphia can still get take-out, but, with non-essential businesses closed, I’m doing my workouts in the basement at home.

Leadership is tested in changing situations.  We continue to prioritize localized decision-making across our Conference that is responsive to the needs of the community, emphasizing love of God and love of neighbor.  Pennsylvania Governor Wolf said that our commonwealth has not seen this kind of disruption since the Civil War.  Yet God is with us and the Spirit empowers us to be and share the Good News, even when the best thing we can do is to remain in our homes as much as possible.

In the meantime, nearly all our energy is going into bracing for what might come, honoring our government’s suggestions on best practices around gathering and distancing.  Financial needs have emerged quickly among vulnerable individuals and communities in our Conference.  We will need to act together to share our resources well in the weeks and months ahead.

Across our Conference, we are still meeting.  Many congregations are finding ways to use new technology (like Zoom and Facebook) as well as renewing older technology (like phone calls) to stay connected.  We really do need each other in this time, both to make it through and to maintain hope that there will be life after the crisis.  Conference staff are gathering pastors virtually to dialogue together in English, Spanish, and Indonesian.  We are gathering for prayer weekly and are offering online equipping as well.  We are in this struggle together.

Yet Asian American neighbors are experiencing acts of aggression and racism in this time.  We cannot be people of fear but rather people of love who speak and act in ways that don’t allow racism to flourish in our midst.  I am committed to ongoing accompaniment and advocacy for the Asian American members and communities across our Conference: the peace of our land is dependent on the recognition of God’s imprint on each person.    I encourage all of us to choose our words and actions wisely and sensitively so that we are people of healing and hope.

While many of our Conference Related Ministries have shut down, our human service providers are experiencing higher degrees of need.  Our retirement communities are especially vulnerable and operating at high levels of vigilance.  We will do well to remember Frederick Living, Living Branches, and the Community at Rockhill in prayer.   Ripple Community Inc in Allentown has committed to remaining open and accessible to those people who need food and accompaniment; they’re looking for partners to prepare sandwiches and to help supplement the sudden influx of needs in the community center there.  Crossroads Community Center in Philadelphia has also seen an increase in needs, particularly for food.  As a long-term ministry presence in the Fairhill neighborhood, Crossroads has credibility to provide resources during this time. Together as a conference community, we’ll look for ways to support both of these urban ministries in the coming weeks.

The familiar words of Psalm 23 have become a guide for me in these days: “Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil …. Surely goodness and love will follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  We trust in God’s care, even in this overwhelming time, and we look for ways to express our trust in God while extending God’s love and care for our neighbors.

Watch the video of Executive Minister Steve Kriss on Facebook Live Tuesday, March 24, talking about living our formational, missional, and intercultural priorities in a time of crisis.

*The Shalom Fund supports pastors, congregations and ministries in direct response to the Coronavirus and the ensuing economic crisis.   We will seek to respond to the most vulnerable within our membership and neighborhoods by empowering local ministries to meet real needs with Christ’s love and generosity in a time of fear and anxiety.

Tes Iman Disaat Krisis

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Sebagai immigran yang tinggal di Amerika Serikat,Krisis Corona virus semakin menambah beban yang harus dipikul hari demi hari. Krisis ini adalah ujian iman untuk tetap menaruh harapan kepada Tuhan.
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Test of Faith in the Time of Crisis

As immigrants living in the United States, the Corona Virus Crisis adds to the burden that must be borne day after day. This crisis is a test of faith for us immigrants to keep putting hope and trust in God.

https://www.facebook.com/MennoniteConferenceX/videos/639709853474348/