Emily Ralph

Transition brings Interim LEADership Ministers

January 19, 2017 by Conference Office

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

January 19, 2017 by Conference Office

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.”

So 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).

Dreams for the future of Franconia Conference

February 25, 2015 by Conference Office

by Emily Ralph, associate director of communication

Dreams are powerful things.

When I was a young adult, one of my dreams (believe it or not) was to work on staff for Franconia Conference. I saw conference ministers resourcing and networking leaders and felt drawn to be a part of it.

So when executive minister Ertell Whigham asked me to join the staff in 2011, I was delighted. I had big dreams for our conference, dreams of growing interculturally, of transformative and adaptive leadership, of a renewed commitment to joining in God’s mission in our neighborhoods and around the world. And I wasn’t the only one.

Dreams are powerful things. When we dream, we work to make our dreams a reality. While wishing can make us complacent and discontent, dreaming funnels that discontent into action, motivating us to bring about the change of our dreams. And in my time in Franconia Conference, I have seen so many people working to bring their dreams into reality.

A pastor in Allentown dreamed of building an intentional community in her home that provided community space for her neighborhood… and Zume House was born.

A congregation dreamed about engaging their neighborhood in new and creative ways… and Doylestown started on a missional experiment that led to new relationships, a community garden, and found surprising places in the neighborhood to share the love of Christ.

After traveling to Cambodia and witnessing the victims of sex trafficking, a pastor returned with a dream of fighting that evil on the home front… and Finland joined with other conference congregations in partnering to educate about and eradicate modern-day slavery.

A congregation dreamed of finding a new expression of church based on their personality and strengths… and Spring Mount discovered new life in Table Church and Walking Church.

A group of Indonesian Christians dreamed of extending healing and shalom to their Muslim neighbors after their own experiences of persecution… and Philadelphia Praise Center hosted Ramadan celebrations.

Dreams are powerful things. Because we dream in the image of the creative, resourceful, enthusiastic God who made us. The God who lived that dream on earth, the God who sent the Spirit to fill and empower and surprise us, the God who is living and active and the perfect expression of ultimate love is still dreaming over us and over our world.

When we dream with God, we join God in working to bring that dream to reality. We might find ourselves doing surprising things—like casting out demons or making friends with exotic dancers. We find resources we didn’t know exist—like bread to feed thousands or tables for community meals. We partner with the unlikeliest of people—like tax collectors, fishermen, and people of other faiths.

Four years later as I move on to other expressions of life and ministry, my dreams for our conference haven’t changed. They’ve matured, they’ve grown. But I still dream that Franconia Conference can be a place where differences are celebrated and cherished as a reflection of the God who made us all. I still dream that Franconia Conference can offer sanctuary for tired leaders and at the same time be a place where we raise up new generations to work for God’s dream together. I still dream that Franconia Conference congregations will partner to join God’s mission in our neighborhoods, reflecting the community of mission in God the Father, Son, and Spirit. We need each other.

Dreams are powerful things. And when we dream together, we change the world.

Emily finishes up her role in March as associate director of communication with Franconia Conference, to pursue other dreams. She’ll continue her role working alongside Mennonite World Conference to prepare for the Global Assembly in Harrisburg through this summer.

Look Around and Be Alert

February 5, 2015 by Conference Office

“Look around and be alert!” Putting an end to human trafficking for the sake of survivors, victims and those at-risk

by Emily Ralph, associate director of communication

The friend sitting next to me was a sex trafficking survivor. We were at a screening of 8 Days, a movie about children who are kidnapped, sold, or tricked into a life of prostitution.

“How was that for you?” I asked her when the film was over.

Not as bad as she expected, she told me, until the one part at the end when the woman arrested on prostitution charges left the police station. She had almost seemed to wilt. “I can’t do this anymore,” she had said as she collapsed into the police officer who escorted her.

My friend looked at me with tears in her eyes. “That was me. I never wanted to do this, but I didn’t know how to get out.” It’s been a tenuous three months, but slowly this survivor is building a new life.

In the women’s room, it wasn’t hard to overhear the conversation happening between two stalls. “I know that was intense,” a mom said to her 14-year-old daughter, “but I wanted you to see that there are real consequences. People are watching. You can’t always have your face buried in your phone as you walk. You need to look around and be alert.”

I wanted to weep that we live in a broken society where we have to teach our children how not to be raped or kidnapped.

The film director’s sister was a trafficking survivor in South Africa. He thought, when he came to the U.S., he could leave that behind … until he discovered that five of the top ten cities where trafficking takes place around the world are in the U.S. The highest ranked U.S. city is Atlanta, Georgia.

We live there.

The corridor between Washington, D.C. and New York City, with its teeming interstate system, is a hotbed for human trafficking.

We live there, too.

Only one percent of the millions of children forced into sex trafficking every year are ever rescued.

A few crusaders can’t end modern-day slavery. But a few thousand, a few million Jesus-followers with eyes, ears, mouths, flashlights shining into the dark places … together, we’ve got this.

For the survivors, the victims, the at-risk—together, by the power of the Spirit among us, we’ve got this.

We have to.

For more information about bringing a showing of 8 Days into your community, contact Emily: eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org.

Franconia Conference and Mennonite World Conference: intersections of global proportions

January 31, 2015 by Conference Office

by Sharon Williams

Mennonite World Conference (MWC) Assembly, Pennsylvania 2015, is coming to the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, July 21–26. Emily Ralph’s job is to make sure that everyone knows about it.

Emily is the associate director of communication for Franconia Conference and joined the Pennsylvania 2015 leadership team when MWC subcontracted its communications work to the conference. Emily is responsible for many aspects of communications before, during and after the assembly, and is helping to lead a team of 75 volunteers who will produce media coverage for attendees and everyone else around the world. They will provide videography, photography, and graphic design; livestream the worship services; record sessions; do reporting; handle oral interpretation and written translations; engage all manner of social media; and connect with the press.

This assembly’s theme is “Walking with God/Caminemos con Dios/En Marche avec Dieu.” The communication team’s goal is to help build the Anabaptist global community on location and around the world. Another goal is to lay the groundwork for Indonesia 2021, the next global assembly.

Franconia Conference’s commitment to intercultural ministry and relationships is a key component in MWC’s planning. The conference and MWC have cultivated a partnership that dates back at least to the late 1990s when conference leaders exchanged sabbaticals and visits with then MWC president Mesach Krisetya (1997–2003) of Indonesia. Franconia Conference has had strong representation at previous assemblies in Canada, India, Zimbabwe, and Paraguay; Pennsylvania 2015 is an opportunity for the conference to further this partnership of ministry and mission.

Franconia Conference members can be directly involved with hosting this summer’s assembly. Volunteer opportunities include working with Emily on the communication team, doing translation, joining a music ensemble or the intercessory prayer network. Some members will lead workshops and some conference congregations will host tour groups. More congregations are needed to welcome assembly participants for worship on Sunday, July 26, as the Farm Show Arena cannot accommodate the traditional influx of local congregations for the closing worship service.

Information about the assembly and registration is available online. Volunteers who can commit to serving four to six hours each day can request a reduced registration fee if needed. Click here for more information.

All are invited to join the rich diversity of Franconia Conference with global brothers and sisters in worship and fellowship, and recommit to “walking with God” together.

Sharon K. Williams is a musician, editor and congregational/non-profit consultant. She serves the Lord with the Nueva Vida Norristown New Life congregation as minister of worship.

We were made for life

January 15, 2015 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, associate director of communication

Church of the Brethren crisis response has been working with refugees in Nigeria; thousands of their members have been killed and nearly a hundred thousand have been displaced. In all, three million Nigerians have been affected by the outbreak of violence. Photo courtesy of Church of the Brethren.

When a young teacher was murdered in her home down the street from my house last month, I was shocked, horrified, and scared. So I can understand why the Western world has responded with such vehemence to the terrorist attack on a French satirical magazine. It happened in the West, after all, to people who, in some ways, feel very much like “us” living under the protection of a democratic government.

But even as I faced my new reality of a neighborhood that no longer felt safe, I sensed a dawning awareness that my shock at violence committed against someone “like me” in my “backyard” was a privilege. Others in my city and around the world live under threat of violence every day; it shouldn’t happen in my neighborhood but it shouldn’t happen in anyone’s neighborhood.

Our grief is right and good. I grieve the senseless death of this young teacher not because she is like me but because her life matters. And as I grieve her death, I become aware of other losses in my city—in neighborhoods a little farther away to people that don’t feel as familiar. And I’m challenged to consider whether I value some lives more than others, whether identification and “sameness” somehow determines worth.

As I see reports online about #IAmCharlie and “I don’t agree with what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it,” I wonder if I would. Because it seems to me my faith is less about protecting the right to free speech and more about protecting you. Free speech doesn’t give anyone the right to live. But being made by and in the image of God does.

And God weeps. Over a schoolteacher murdered in her home, over journalists executed in their office, over thousands of women, children, and elderly massacred on the streets of Nigeria, over each target and victim of a U.S. drone strike. God weeps, not because they are heroes, not because they are innocent or guilty, not because violence shouldn’t happen in their neighborhood, not for any other reason than that human life is precious and we are made to live.

I am not Charlie. I am not a child in Nigeria. I am not a neighborhood schoolteacher. But I am a follower of Jesus, the divine “other” who so valued the treasure of human life that he came to earth to stand in solidarity with humans everywhere. We are made by God for life and life abundant.

In this week, like every other, God grieves lives lost. And so do we. Together, we stand in solidarity with this God who stands in solidarity with us.

Franconia Conference announces upcoming staff change

December 17, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Stephen Kriss, director of communication

With a stable team of LEADership Ministers in place, Franconia Conference will be adjusting administrative and communication staffing into the first half of 2015. After 15 years of ministry leadership and administration, Gay Brunt Miller (Spring Mount congregation) announced her intent to leave the conference sometime in early 2015. Brunt Miller has served alongside three different executive leaders and submitted her intent to resign early to allow the Conference to transition smoothly while she explores new vocational possibilities.

Emily Ralph, associate director of communication, relocated to Lancaster in 2013 where she began a pastoral position at Sunnyside Mennonite Church. After serving Franconia for four years, she intends to resign her Conference role by March 1, 2015. Emily will continue communication work with Mennonite World Conference through the global assembly in Harrisburg this summer.

“Gay and Emily have poured their hearts and souls into the ministry of Franconia Conference and we’ve been blessed by them and through them; I have been especially blessed in my role as executive minister. Communication and administration have undergirded the strength of conference ministry over these last few years,” said Ertell M. Whigham, Franconia Conference Executive Minister.

The hiring process for administration and communication roles will begin immediately with an intention to have some overlap within both roles. Staff changes in communication and administration open the possibility for the role to be shaped to serve the conference’s current needs.

Settling into our legacy

May 8, 2014 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, associate director of communication

Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University. Photo courtesy of EMU.

All meaningful conversations should happen around a table filled with good food. This particular Sunday afternoon, as we laughed together and swapped stories, the conversation inevitably drifted to human sexuality.

“Is this what your legacy is going to be?” I asked Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University. The university has been in the midst of a listening process to discern the future of their hiring practices related to faculty and staff in same-sex relationships. Just that morning, Loren had visited my congregation to share an update.

“I think it will be,” Loren responded, a little resigned. As a former pastor of Franconia’s Salford congregation (Harleysville, Pa.) and a former president of Hesston College, Loren’s life has led him through many other challenges of leadership as well as his share of victories. It’s not that he didn’t feel the issue of human sexuality was important, but, as he went on to explain, he had hoped that he would be remembered for more than just this one issue: as someone who was deeply committed to the Christian education and formation of his students, the development of his institution, and the future of his church.

He’s not alone in his feelings; I have heard many leaders sigh about how this topic is dominating conversation or jokingly wish that they had reached retirement before it had come to a head. Some are concerned that the conversation is distracting us from the mission of the church while others feel that this decision is essential to our missional understanding.

It’s easy to try to outrun this conversation or to avoid it altogether. As we look to the future, however, many of us are aware that we will be remembered not only by the decision we make but by how we behaved during this time of discernment: Did we lead toward division or unity? Did we foster rhetoric or dialogue? Did we model non-anxious compassion, confident humility? Were others able to look at us and see a glimpse of Jesus?

Franconia Conference has designated a year in which we are building relationships across congregations, finding ways to share in mission and ministry, and learning to understand one another more clearly. By investing in the difficult work of relationships, we hope that we will be able to engage in this conversation in 2015 with a deeper respect of and love for one another.

Will the controversy around same-sex orientation define our legacy as leaders? Perhaps. But maybe it will also be only one piece of a legacy that includes a new model of relating, a new passion for joining God in God’s mission in the world, a new commitment to unity and discernment.

May we be committed as much to the process as the outcome and may we seek our own formation as followers of Jesus gathered together in a community of faith, a sign to the watching world that we are Christ’s disciples (John 17).

Have a question for Loren Swartzendruber? Then come out for a conversation sponsored by Eastern Mennonite University on May 15 at 7pm at Towamencin Mennonite Church (Kulpsville, Pa.). This gathering is for all credentialed leaders in Franconia and Eastern District Conferences.

Emily Ralph

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