Intersections

Stephen Kriss, PPC
skriss@mosaicmennonites.org

New York Times writer, Thomas Friedman is fascinated by the concept of freeware in his book on global economics and movement, The World is Flat. Freeware is a genre of computer software and applications lodged on the web, developed and tweaked by designers and programmers from around the world. Skilled techies who speak different languages find ways to collaborate, create and largely hold themselves accountable through a community of integrity for development and advancement of projects and initiatives. They innovate and contribute often for nothing more than the exhilaration of developing something that is good and useful, motivated by the opportunity to work together in a community with other tech savvy persons connected by shared questions, goals and possibilities.

Franconia Conference was created to confer, to gather, to test doctrine and direction, to discern the moves of the Spirit, to maintain what John Ruth of the Salford congregation has called “the right fellowship.” We’ve been gathering now across four centuries, maintaining and at times extending that right fellowship to persons across the Perkiomen Creek and the Delaware River, north of Route 80 and increasingly south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, south of the Rio Grande and into the world.

Contemporary theologians and theorists suggest that Mennonites have a unique perspective with an emphasis on orthopraxy (right practice/action) rather than orthodoxy (right belief/thought). In this issue of Intersections, how we’re practicing the faith together as a community becomes evident. These activities—sharing resources and learning between congregations, opening spaces for persons with differing abilities, considering the situation of immigrants, responding to needs in northern Pennsylvania—manifest some of the best of our efforts at mutuality, mission and extending grace.

We gather together to meet and confer, for sure. And often in thinking of the conference, we think of committees, organizational structures and decision-making processes. The conference is designed to “maintain our fellowship” in many ways. But in these pages, I see glimpses of ways that we are moving toward “extending the fellowship”: in sending and receiving with communities in Chile and the United Kingdom, in supporting emerging leaders through the Area Conference Leadership Fund and in considering the ways that the Bible reads us and is read by us.

New Testament Bible scholar Laura Brenneman who teaches at Bluffton University, recently visited with Methacton congregation, Christopher Dock Mennonite High School and with emerging leaders at the Germantown Historic Mennonite Meetinghouse. In her discussion at Germantown, we considered the possibilities and responsibilities of freedom in Christ, freedom from fear and movement toward life. It’s a freedom that pulls us toward cultivating responses that extend peaceableness into the world.

I can’t help but think that as we embrace that freedom in this age of connectivity and movement that Friedman describes, that we’ll find ourselves with new possibilities to move to extend and explore our historic right fellowship.
Who might we become together as we share resources, learn and go into the world, creating and contributing toward today’s incarnation of the reign of God? Maybe we’ll find ourselves contributing and problem-solving because it’s exhilarating and life-giving, because we, like God, are creative in our relating and freedom. We might yet be transformed and joyous in our connecting through open and available possibilities that embody and extend the prophet Micah’s call to justice, mercy and grace.

Leon Kratz, Rockhill Mennonite Church
Eastern Mennonite Seminary
I value occasional studies at EMS but I am not currently in a degree program. I find that these brief entries into the academic environment stimulate my mind and equip me for life, including the ministry roles I am a part of. I also appreciate the new relationships that are built with persons from the broader church. One of the ways that I was blessed through my most recent class was in the variety of ethnicities of persons sitting around our table which brought a global dynamic to our conversations. This equipped me with a fuller understanding of God and a broader understanding of Christian experience and increases my hope for the strength, life and future of the church.

Sallie Reed
Eastern Mennonite Seminary
I just finished my first official seminary class and I have learned through my studies that I still have a lot to learn! I hope to find creative and pastoral ways to share and teach the love, hope and peace of God with others.

Aldo Siahaan, Philadelphia Praise Center
Eastern Mennonite Seminary
My hopes for my ministry in the future is that I will be able to equip and raise more leaders, men and women from many cultures who mature in the Spirit and have the heart to win souls and transform life.

Jessica Walter, Salford Mennonite Church
Eastern Mennonite Seminary
It has been a winding journey to becoming a seminary student pursuing pastoral ministries. I hope to come out of my learning experiences equipped to build bridges in congregations in turmoil and to walk alongside individuals seeking spiritual guidance and direction. God has taught me, through a class full of honest, thoughtful and diverse ministers, what it means to be a follower of Christ right where I am, right now.

Blaine Detwiler, Lakeview
detwiler@nep.net

I suspect it is a scene that could play out in any given congregation. But on this Sunday morning in 1995 Connie and I, as visitors, took our seats near to the front of a Mennonite church in rural Virginia. Noticeably, across the aisle to our left were several pews filling with older folk. Men moving in alongside one another with their plain coats neatly buttoned to the neck. Women dressed in cape-style dresses and coverings came in and lined up side by side in a pew just in front of the men. Then the worship service began.

I am not usually prone to be looking around during worship. But on this day I could not help it. I began to sense a certain uneasiness to this Sunday gathering. Soon, we were invited to pull the brand new blue hymnals from the racks and to find the assigned page. The spine of our book creaked as Connie pushed it open. The leader was about to introduce a new song.

After we stood and began singing the new song, I stole a quick glance over my left shoulder. I saw three women wearing bifocals, slightly stooped, each with bent index fingers parsing their notes across the fresh page…finding their voices. Behind these joyful women was a pew full of men, their sullen faces facing forward, standing silent with hands clutching the pew in front of them, hymnals still in the rack. Their black covered Bibles lying closed beside them.

We believe the Bible to be an important book to read…for those of us who can. There is a connection between the Bible and its reader. It’s a holy connection, yet one not guaranteed. We confess the Bible has in it a possible authority.

I recently heard authority defined as “that which authors life.” I think that is what I found so compelling about the three singing women that Sunday. In their advanced age they were still very much alive in their new praise. I found out later they were all sisters whose lives were devoted to sewing and service, their work radiating like perfume up and down the rural Virginia valley where they lived. All three were deeply connected to the Author of the book.

I am grateful to Frederick Buechner for pointing me to the subtlety between “peddling” God’s word and “sincerity.” Paul often found himself in the middle of dreary people. To a grumpy congregation in Corinth he urged,“…and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him…For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved…For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity…”

Each Christmas I find myself shopping in Dickson City’s Viewmont Mall. During holidays the center aisles swell with kiosks selling everything from fluorescent pink mobile phones to kitschy calendars. As a shy person I am an easy target for aggressive vendors. Once as I strolled between stores I was approached by a woman displaying a microwave heated neck massager. “Try this on,” she said as she quickly draped the collar-shaped warmth over my shoulders. It was warm. I was easily impressed. I said, “I’ll take one.” As I reached for my wallet she came towards me again with different gadget this time…a spider like scalp massager, “Feel your tension go away when you try this…and we have vanilla candles for relaxation, and scented oils are over there, and…” and it was obvious that she cared much about her selling. She was a peddler.

Bibles get used in so many ways. Not all of them good. Not all of them to “author” life. They get used as amulets for those who are afraid of flying. Oaths of truthfulness are sworn over them by liars. Bible verses appear on placards at protest rallies…on billboards as warnings of a hell to pay. Bibles are used to stake out one’s turf and to defend it. The Bible gets used as a weapon in arguments to wrestle an opponent and to pin them down. People hide money in Bibles along with pictures of loved ones and four leaf clovers as if the Bible itself was a library of lucky and safe. Bibles are printed to proffer, to profit, to peddle.

But when I turned my head to glance across the aisle in worship that Sunday I saw the Bible working its very best. I saw sincerity. I saw three women so full of grace and vigor that I could not help but believe they walked with Jesus every day. It was an authority, not bound in black leather, but written beautifully across their weathered faces and lifted up in their voices. It was a scent so beautifully sweet it lingers with me still.