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.