formational

Reading God’s word after 25 years

February 18, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

Tarun with his wife Suniti and daughter Tripti.

by Rebecca Hendricks and Karen Moyer, Rocky Ridge

January 19, 2013 was a day of celebration for a lifetime of work when a new translation of the New Testament in a people’s heart language was dedicated in Korba, India. The story of the connection between the translator, Tarun Gardia, and families and churches in Franconia Conference is a divine drama of God’s amazing leading to accomplish his purposes.

It began when Tarun Gardia came to the USA in 1987 to live with Wilbur and Becki Hendricks as participants in the Mennonite International Visitor Exchange Program (IVEP) which sought to promote international understanding (he was assigned as a classroom aide to Quakertown Christian School.)

While Tarun was here, Hendricks encouraged him to participate in a Bible memory program, which opened Tarun’s eyes to see that a real relationship with the God of creation involved his heart. He acknowledged the impact of this exercise, saying, “The Christian love there touched my heart and I gave my life to our Lord. They sent me to [a missions conference where] I heard a Wycliffe Bible Translator speak…. Later they took me to North Carolina to the JAARS Center (a partner in Bible translation). Visiting the Museum of Alphabets at JAARS was the key factor that finally led me to translation as God’s plan for my life. While visiting the museum, I went to the Indian language section where I saw a hand-written verse in my own Chhattisgarhi language pasted on the wall. I was told that the Bible needs to be translated in that language.”

Following his one-year IVEP assignment, Indian and American Christian friends found the necessary support for Tarun to attend seminary in South India and then linguistic study at the Wycliffe center in Singapore. Tarun then returned to the JAARS center in North Carolina, where he received computer training, a skill which would greatly reduce translation time. It was during this time that Rocky Ridge Mennonite Church (Quakertown, Pa.) commissioned him to do this translation and took on his full financial support. Following a language survey, he began actual translation work in 1996.

NTs being distributed at dedication — The Chhattisgarhi New Testaments are distributed.

We marvel at the journey God planned for Tarun, a boy from a small village in India who trained to be a teacher. God took this village school teacher out of his comfort zone to a foreign country where he lived with a family who loved God and then loved Tarun into God’s kingdom. Those years convinced Tarun that not only he, but millions of others, needed God’s Word in their language so that they could become children of God and share this exciting life of purpose and value.

In January, a delegation of four individuals from Rocky Ridge congregation journeyed to India to participate in the ceremony celebrating the completion of Tarun’s New Testament translation. The team flew to Raipur, a city of 1.3 million, where Tarun, his wife Suniti and daughter Tripti (18) live and worked on the translation. The Chhattisgarhi language in this region is the purest spoken form; there are 15 million Chhattisgarhi speakers in the whole state.

On Friday, January 18, the team and the Gardias traveled four hours by train to the town of Korba where the dedication was held with three hundred people in attendance. Entering the courtyard gates, we were overcome with emotion as we noticed the stacks of Bibles ready for blessing and distribution.

The program began with praise music and scripture songs in the Chhattisgarhi language led by several congregations’ worship choirs. Representatives from Wycliffe Bible Translation India and the team from Rocky Ridge honored Tarun and Todd Hendricks brought greetings from his parents, Wilbur and Becki.

Following the program, people flocked to the front to purchase copies of the New Testament. When Karen asked one young man why he was buying two Bibles, he replied, “I got one for myself and one for my older brother. All these years I have been reading the Bible in Hindi, but I want to tell others about God in a language they can comprehend. This will bring them strength.”

Pastor Ravi Baksh and Karen Moyer talk with a young man who purchased two New Testaments--one for himself and one for his brother. — John Kurian (Director-India, The Wycliffe Seed Company) and Karen Moyer talk with young man who purchased two New Testaments–one for himself and one for his brother.

That evening several of us sat with Tarun and asked questions about his journey to completing the New Testament. Tarun reflected, “ Sometimes I was discouraged as I was the only one working on the translation, but two of my uncles would encourage me quite often to keep on going.”

We were awed to experience God’s working in one man and his family’s life and their dedication to answer God’s call. Even when he was discouraged, he was committed to finishing the task, he said, because of his desire “for my people to be saved and have God’s word in their own language, to speak to their own heart.”

Rocky Ridge congregation invites your continued prayer for Tarun and his family in the next phase of their ministry as they seek ways of incorporating this “heart-language” translation into the daily lives of the Chhattisgarhi speakers. Check out Rocky Ridge’s Facebook photo album.

Hiding treasures where others may find them

February 12, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Sandy Drescher-Lehman, Souderton

Making safe space for people to experience the love of God has been a passion of mine ever since I can remember. That passion has been given life in camp settings, in prison cells, in our home and yard, in homeless shelters, on bicycle trips, in mental health facilities, and in churches.

Thirty years ago, after a profound experience at a retreat center of God’s love totally enveloping and holding me, my life verse became Isaiah 43: “But now, [Sandy], the Lord who created you says, ‘Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.’” Since that day, I have had the desire to live as many minutes of my life as possible in the heart of that much Love and to help others to connect with that much Love in whatever way they can experience it, thus receiving the healing we all need to become more fully human and to hold more of the Divine.

House of Prayer: Life's Transitions — House of Prayer: Life’s Transitions

A formative book for me was, “Prayer and Temperament” which taught me the different ways that different personalities pray. I resonated with Sue Monk Kidd, when she said “Symbols are the language of the soul” and Paul Tillich who called Christians to the revitalization of their inner lives through the recovery of symbols. I began to notice how not only symbols but color, also, called my soul to go deeper into the wordless heart of God.

Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach encouraged the practice of looking for God in everything. I noticed, as a worship leader, that when all of our senses are called for, people more easily engage in the heart of worship rather than only staying in their head with words and reasoning. And I’ve always loved the stories of Pippi Longstocking, who hid treasures in old tree stumps so she could watch her friends joyfully discover them on their “thing-finding” adventures.

So, when I became one of the pastors at Souderton Mennonite Church, I had the chance to combine all those learnings and passions! Joy Sawatzky and I began inviting people to special times of prayer to begin the Lenten season, combining input with times of silence; spending time alone with God in any of the several prayer centers we created, each with colors and symbols and scriptures. The variety was in the ways participants were invited to use their body or mind or taste buds or ears or sense of smell or sight. When we ended these retreats by “sharing the wealth” of our time with God, we were always overwhelmed to hear how God had come to each person in exactly the way that was most needed – far beyond anything we could have planned or imagined!

Then about 7 years ago, the ideas for different ways to pray suddenly exploded into 50 and then 60 centers, as more people joined the team, creating ways to express and make available to others how they prayed most easily. In experimenting with each other’s favorite methods and colors and symbols for praying, we discovered that when we try new ways of prayer, we sometimes go even deeper into the heart of God than engaging our usual patterns over and over. We organized the centers into rooms of a house – the kitchen (where we pray as we eat), the study (where we pray as we read and write and kneel and listen to music), the playroom (where tactile centers and craft centers help children play their prayers), the bedroom (where it’s enough to just BE; resting in God’s comfort), the art room (where all kinds of things to create wait to be discovered), and the great outdoors (where the sounds and smells and sights of creation invite us to pray in our walking and in noticing God in the world)

And my Pippi-heart loves to hide treasures in places where those who enter may or may not find them! The “House” symbolically calls us to see every room we enter as a place of prayer; every moment we live is another chance to be aware of God’s love and peace and mercy and grace and healing and whatever else we need from the One who created us and continues to create through us!

Souderton’s Lenten House of Prayer will be open February 8-18th, from 9am to 9pm in the congregation’s fellowship hall. All are welcome to visit. For more information or to access other Lenten resources from Souderton congregation, visit their website.

Extravagant, reckless love

February 4, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

“When I was growing up, I was only allowed one scoop of ice cream for snack,” I told my congregation’s children a number of years ago during our Easter Sunday service. I wrinkled my nose as I looked at the piddly scoop of ice cream in my hands. “That’s not very extravagant, is it?”

Such a big word deserved a big illustration, so I pulled out a giant mixing bowl and began scooping ice cream out of a bucket. Eventually, I gave up and just dumped in the whole gallon, much to the children’s delight.

The boys and girls pushed in closer around the kitchen cart with their eyes wide, gasping as I squeezed an entire bottle of chocolate syrup onto the ice cream, giggling and bouncing on their toes as I covered the surface with sprinkles, unable to contain their excitement as I added cans of whip cream and finished it off with a whole jar of cherries.

God’s love isn’t just a scoop of ice cream, I told the children as their eyes remained glued to the overflowing bowl of goodness. God’s love is extravagant—like this giant ice cream sundae. A love so extravagant that it couldn’t stay dead. A love so extravagant that it came back to life again.

Years later, children and adults alike tell me that they still remember the illustration of the extravagant love of God. And that word, “extravagant,” has remained a favorite in my vocabulary.

On a recent Sunday, I visited Souderton (Pa.) congregation for a service celebrating the congregation’s partnership with Urban Promise, a ministry that works with kids in the heart of Camden, New Jersey. The ministry’s director, Bruce Main, shared the story from Matthew 26 of the woman who poured a bottle of perfume on Jesus’ head. The disciples responded with shock: “What a waste!” Most of us, Main suggested, would have responded to that woman’s act of love with the same disgust as the disciples—how could she be so reckless?

As Main encouraged us to love recklessly, I found myself thinking about traditional Swiss-German Mennonite values: living simply, frugally. What a difference there is in how we hear “love extravagantly” and “love recklessly!” While they mean virtually the same thing, extravagance can be controlled: we can weigh the options, evaluate the outcome, and then, when we decide our love will be effective, love extravagantly.

But what Main, and I believe Jesus, is encouraging us to do is to love with risk. To pour our love out in ways that we can’t control, can’t predict, ways that may not be efficient, may seemingly not be effective.

Jesus poured out his life knowing that we might still say, “No thanks.” If we are truly going to join God in God’s mission in the world, we can’t control how people will respond to our love. We can’t prevent our love from being rejected or ignored. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to mission is our fear that our experiments will fail and our money, time, or emotional energy will have been needlessly depleted.

May we instead judge extravagant love by the act, not the outcome. May we see reckless love not as carelessness, but as overflowing compassion. And may our extravagant love draw others to a God who first recklessly “wasted” his love on us.

Imagine Church as Healing Space

January 29, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

EMS SLT 2013 — Vice President and Seminary Dean Michael A. King addressed the gathering crowd during opening worship at the 2013 School for Leadership Training.

by Joan & Michael King, Salford

We tend to see mental illness as something that happens out there, to stigmatized strangers on the fringe of our churches, when in fact mental illness affects our families, friends, loved ones, congregants, and many of us personally. In short, mental illness is experienced by everyone in church communities – by “us” and our loved ones, not just by “them.”

This was a theme of the 2013 School for Leadership Training (SLT) at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS), Jan. 21-23, which was titled “Imagine Church as Healing Space.” The event attracted over 270 participants and resource persons who sought to “hear, hold, and hope” amid mental health challenges.

Hosted and planned by EMS, the event felt historic: multiple participants said this was the first time in a public church context they had felt part of the group, not in spite of but because of their depression, anxiety, bipolar diagnosis, schizophrenia, and more. This was the first time they had felt normalized, not stigmatized, with their journey held in love, not primarily met with silence or marginalization. We see that experience, so easy to report but so rarely experienced, as a key gift the 2013 SLT offered.

Hearing from those with mental and those who love them

A second gift was space to tell and hear the pain mental illness causes both its sufferers and those who love them. Earl and Pat Martin offered searingly moving glimpses of their journey through their son Hans Martin’s development of symptoms of schizo-affective disorder.

Earl shared journal entries he had written during the sleepless nights after Hans was first hospitalized. In these contemporary psalms of lament, Earl raged at a pitiless God who treats his creatures like vermin, snapping off their limbs, leaving them soaked in their own blood. Earl railed at this God as the sick one who should get treatment for insanity. He reported that after he stopped writing of his own volition, spent, his pen kept going and offered words from God, who said that God’s own son was in fact in treatment and was the roommate in a neighboring bed whom Earl had feared would hurt Hans.

Not a cheap hope

A third gift was hope. This was not a cheap hope. Many at SLT, from participants through resource persons, told of confronting the anguish caused by suicide. To name just one example, in a laughter-yet-tear-stirring blending of drama and storytelling, Ted Swartz told of his journey through his comedy partner Lee Eshleman’s battle with depression and of how the suicide to which it drove Lee so shattered Ted’s own life and career that years have gone into rebuilding. Yet precisely in this heartrendingly open naming of the torment, Ted offered hope—hope for himself and hope for those still grieving the loss of their own loved ones.

Hope was also movingly offered through stories of persons seeking to live recovery-focused lives even amid the diagnosed illnesses once thought to be themselves virtual death or at least imprisonment-in-miserable-conditions sentences. John Otenasek, himself a “consumer,” as he put it, in recovery, led a panel of men (including Hans Martin) and women who told of enduring addictions, joblessness, homelessness, and more. Yet they also spoke of finding hope—often from peers confronting their own illnesses—enabling them to live meaningful and even joy-tinged lives while navigating ongoing bi-polar episodes or hearing voices.

And hope was offered when Tilda Norberg modeled what can happen when we attend to the “God icons” in our lives and dreams. She risked a live Gestalt pastoral counseling session with a courageous Sherill Hostetter. Drawing on insights from one of Sherill’s recent dreams, Norberg led Sherill in working through how her mother’s undiagnosed and untreated mental illness had affected her as a child and even now as a leader. She more fully claimed her own empowered voice as a recently ordained minister and congregational consultant.

Recovery, love and acceptance

Fittingly enough, just days after the 2013 SLT concluded, the New York Times published a hope-filled article on Jan. 27, 2013 by Elyn R. Saks, diagnosed with schizophrenia yet a successful law professor at the University of Southern California. As did many at SLT influenced by the recovery movement in mental health, Saks stressed, “An approach that looks for individual strengths, in addition to considering symptoms, could help dispel the pessimism surrounding mental illness. Finding ‘the wellness within the illness,’ as one person with schizophrenia said, should be a therapeutic goal.”

In a conclusion that movingly echoes the convictions SLT participants took with them, Saks reported: “’Every person has a unique gift or unique self to bring to the world,’ said one of our study’s participants. She expressed the reality that those of us who have schizophrenia and other mental illnesses want what everyone wants: in the words of Sigmund Freud, to work and to love.”

Claiming our stories

When we checked with the Martins to make sure our references to their stories were acceptable, Pat said, “One of the SLT statements that stuck with me… pulled us all into the common task of being human: ‘Recovery is about claiming one’s story. The tools are the same for all of us whether struggling with mental illness or an overwhelming job.’” At EMS we’ll continue to ponder how, whatever the details of our stories may be, we help each other claim them.

Joan K. King is senior integration consultant, The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, and owner of Joan K. King Consulting and Counseling LLC. Michael A. King is dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary and a vice president of Eastern Mennonite University.

Christopher Dock seniors step outside classroom

January 15, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

CD senior experience week — Christopher Dock student Jared Hunsinger at the Alderfer Auction Company with founder Sanford Alderfer, left. (The Reporter/Geoff Patton)

by Jennifer Connor, jconnor@journalregister.com
Reposted by permission from The Reporter

On a Thursday afternoon around 10 a.m., Jared Hunsinger, 17, would normally be in class at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School (Lansdale, Pa.). Instead, last Thursday, he stood observing a live auction of estate items at Alderfer Auction Co. in Hatfield, Pa.

Hunsinger got the opportunity as part of Christopher Dock’s “Senior Experiences Week,” which is a component of each senior’s Kingdom Living Class. Each student sets up his or her own opportunity to shadow someone in a vocational field or participate in a week of service.

“I want to go into business and since my dad knows the auctioneer, I thought this might be a good place to see business in action,” Hunsinger said. He spent the morning talking to customers about what they sought to buy, amazed that some came from afar — including North Carolina.

Sanford Alderfer (Salford congregation), who founded Alderfer Auction Co. in 1959, said, “Jared is just one of those kids with a lovely personality and charming smile. We’ve enjoyed having him around.”

Earlier last week Hunsinger observed a financial adviser. “To be honest it was kind of boring,” Hunsinger said with a laugh. But, that’s partly the point of “Senior Experiences Week,” to get students out in the community feeling out what they like and don’t like in the field they intend to study in college.

Students also have the option to participate in a week of service, which is the avenue Taylor Mirarchi (Plains congregation) took.

“I’m a very service oriented person and like doing more hands-on activities,” Mirarchi said.

Mirarchi spent her week volunteering at the Mennonite Resource Center in Souderton, where she volunteers regularly. She completed administrative work and also spent a lot of time in the quilting room.

“I’ve sorted quilt blocks that are used for quilts sent oversees to refugee camps,” Mirarchi said. “I’m just happy to lend a helping hand.”

On Friday, Mirarchi spent the day at the Mennonite Resource Center in Ephrata, Pa., where all Mennonite donations go to be distributed around the world.

About 85 seniors participated last week, with some venturing much further than the Lansdale area. Linked up with Souderton and Blooming Glen congregations, some students participated in volunteer work in Haiti and Mexico. Other students shadowed congressmen and women in Washington, D.C.

Then, following the week, the entire senior class left for a retreat in Lancaster, where they shared their experiences about what they saw, learned and completed.

“It’s been a really valuable experience for our seniors in the past,” Vice Principal, Martin Wiens said. “We look forward to hearing the tales from this year’s class.”

Worshiping around the table

January 14, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Chris Nickels, Spring Mount

Last summer the members of our worship commission, led by Eileen Viau, were planning for the fall and doing some reflection together. It was less about the monthly details and more of a “big picture” conversation about our identity as a worshiping congregation.

Worship is an expression, and the style of a congregation’s corporate worship can reflect the gifts and talents of the group. Among other things, we asked ourselves, “What are some of the gifts present within the Spring Mount congregation that God might want to use at this time?” And fairly quickly an experiment in doing church began to take shape.

In listening to church members, a sentiment that I heard voiced a number of times was “We should have more fellowship meals.” Those meals have always been a popular event–an atmosphere of comfort and fun. And our congregation is particularly good at facilitating ministry with meals. In the past we created worship and Bible study experiences that included a food element, such as an Anabaptist meal liturgy (with resources from our friend Stuart Murray Williams) and Saturday morning breakfast Bible studies. Every Sunday morning we enjoy an abundance of refreshments for fellowship time, coordinated by our dedicated hospitality team. Stacey Hallahan’s chocolate cake, Lorene Nyce’s monkey bread, and Ruth Reinford’s mango salsa are some of the best culinary treats you can find in the Perkiomen Valley (or anywhere else for that matter). If we were going to experiment with a new kind of ministry, it seemed natural to move in a direction involving food and hospitality.

Our conversation landed on the idea of creating a monthly Sunday morning meal liturgy. I believe Gay Brunt Miller first mentioned the name “Table Church,” which we liked and which certainly fit because this would be “church happening around tables.” Table Church is modeled after Jesus’ table practices and the gatherings of early Christians that we noticed in the New Testament (Acts 2:42). It is a potluck meal (everyone brings a brunch-type food) reminding us that we all participate in the church and each has something of value to share–no matter how big or small the contribution. We sit at round tables, facing one another, in an environment intended for conversation. A simple liturgy was created for this time to guide us as we eat, pray, share, laugh, and reflect on a Bible story together.

There is no sermon at Table Church. Instead, we listen as someone reads the Bible passage aloud and then each table group reflects on it by asking missional questions (adapted from Darrell Guder): What does the passage say about God? About us? What is the Good News in this passage? How does this passage send us out to help in God’s Mission? We may not have a typical sermon at Table Church, but the potential exists for a collective one to emerge as we respond to the Story, to each other, and to the voice of the Spirit. Various people of different ages participate in leading elements of the liturgy, through praying, reading the scripture, and offering a blessing to the group before we depart.

For each Table Church, we print a Spring Mount trivia question in the bulletin as a conversation starter (Example: Name the famous music act that wrote a song about the Perkiomen Creek.*). The questions are a fun way to delve into some of the history of our town. For some of us the answers are new information, while for others they recall memories from the past. It was great to observe one question–about a local park–inspire some reminiscing about the person the park was named for, a friend of a few church members.

It feels like God is doing something among us through Table Church. I think we are continuing to discover the vital ministry of hospitality. We are learning about the place where we meet, the place on whose behalf we are “seeking the peace” (Jer. 29:7). We are further experiencing the value of multi-voiced worship, and how God is present and shapes us as we listen to each other and to God’s Story. We are trying out new recipes and sharing new foods; one table group recently proposed the idea of creating a Table Church cookbook. So far, I think we are discovering that the table can be a fun, meaningful, and even holy place. No wonder Jesus spent so much time there.

*Trivia answer: Hall & Oates

The good news is still breaking

January 9, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Stephen Kriss, director of leadership cultivation

“After a sermon like that, I just want to cry,” commented octogenarian Roma Ruth, reflecting on Salford intern John Tyson’s debut sermon on Sunday. John is an Eastern Mennonite University and Christopher Dock High School grad studying now at Princeton Seminary. His internship represents the best of flourishing conference, congregation, and community relationships. He is learning alongside his old high school history teacher, Joe Hackman, who is now Salford’s lead pastor. I’m serving as John’s official supervisor for the year, a role I’m happy to fill as the conference’s director of leadership cultivation.

Roma’s family helped to start the small mission church in Somerset County, Pa., where my family first connected with the Mennonites. Now, almost thirty years later, I am the one cultivating new generations of leaders. In the seven years I have worked for the conference, it has been both a challenge and a joy to do this kind of work, helping a historic community navigate into the realities of next-generation leadership. I’ve worked with dozens of interns, students, pastors. I continue to witness amazing and sometimes disturbing things. It’s not easy to be a next-generation leader in the church. There are lots of bang-ups and bruises. What amazes me, though, is the willingness of young people to invest in our broken but beautiful communities in spite of, and sometimes because of, this very brokenness.

Roma told me that her tears were from the realization that John’s sermon spoke powerfully to issues of the Good News, justice, and peace that are close to her heart. She recognized in the sermon yet another turning of the page. It’s a gracious realization that God continues to call forth new leaders in nearly 300-year-old congregations in a half-millennia-old tradition in ways that are both resonant and discordant with the past, but nonetheless harmonizing with the way of Christ across the generations.

I am becoming more and more aware that the Spirit is increasingly calling leaders across ethnic lines, calling women, calling people born outside of the Mennonite fold into our contexts of worship and ministry. These men and women are highly skilled, highly committed, willing to be vulnerable, willing to contribute without thought of compensation, often living somewhere between patient and zealous, believing in both constancy and change. Of course there are still areas of growth, but overall the gifts of next-generation leaders are like the gifts of the magi—appropriate, overwhelming, full of mystery and grace.

It is fitting that John’s sermon was on Epiphany, a time of celebrating the gifts of those coming from another place, marking the inbreaking of salvation, wise to the ways of the world, bearing with them what they hope will witness to a beautiful new beginning embedded in a real and historic story. Our community’s challenge is to have the courage, wherewithal, and imagination, along with the spiritual rootedness, to understand and celebrate that God is still with us and that, as John said in his sermon and Roma affirmed this last Sunday at Salford, “the good news is still breaking.”

Living in grace and difference

January 3, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

Marking 25 years of credentialing women in Franconia Conference

by Emily Ralph, Salford

My most vivid memory from the fall of 1987 was sitting in a circle with my preschool classmates taking turns shaking a jar of cream an impossibly long time until it became—wonder of wonders!—butter. There isn’t much drama when you’re four: arguments over who plays with who on the playground, the boredom of lying wide awake on the mat during naptime, joy at seeing Mom again at the end of the day.

Marty Kolb-Wyckoff was the first woman licensed in Franconia Conference. Photo by Andrew Huth.

While I was building with blocks and coloring pictures in that Ohio preschool, history was in the making 400 miles away.

Delegates from Franconia Conference had spent several years in conversation and discernment, listening, talking, and praying about the question of women in leadership. That fall, without much fanfare, delegates voted to allow congregations to request credentialing for female leaders. In fact, the decision was made so quietly and gently that the newsletter announcement a few months later only took up three inches of column space.

This past Assembly marked the 25^th anniversary of this decision. I am still in awe sometimes that this happened in my lifetime. As a licensed pastor in Franconia Conference, I think about how different my life would be now if that decision hadn’t been made. I am so grateful to those leaders who wrestled with a difficult issue and came to a graceful and gracious decision together.

That’s the beauty of the “women in leadership” conversation that Franconia Conference had in the 1980s—it was conducted with love and respect for the diversity of opinion within our conference. Unlike some other conferences, Franconia didn’t lose a single church when that decision was made. And this gives me incredible hope.

Twenty-five years later, we’re still having difficult conversations and there will be new difficult conversations twenty-five years from now. But the Spirit of unity, the Spirit of love, not fear—that is, the Spirit of Jesus—is with us today, just as that same Spirit was with conference leaders twenty-five years ago. This Spirit allows us to find unity not just despite our differences but as we acknowledge and celebrate our differences.

Logan, Emily, and Cadi — Emily with her nephew and niece–how will they reflect on today’s conversations in 25 years?

I don’t know what the future holds; I don’t know what decisions we will be making in the coming years. But somewhere nearby, there are little boys and girls swinging, and building Lego castles, and maybe even shaking jars of cream into butter who will someday reflect on our conversations—may they be inspired by our devotion, our integrity, our perseverance, and most of all, our love for one another.