Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Jessica Walter

What good is anger?

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Jessica Walter, jwalter@mosaicmennonites.org

“What good is anger?” I wondered as I participated in the Damascus Road Anti-Racism Process. I often avoid situations that I know will provoke my anger and agitation. For example, I haven’t watched the movie “Crash” yet because I know it will leave me feeling angry and helpless toward the injustices our society perpetuates. This combination of emotions only leads me to one thing…retreat from the world around me so that I can find a way to recover. But there’s got to be something positive I can do with this emotion of anger, right?

I’m angry for good reason…I’m angry at the injustices of racism, a social construct that was created and/or promoted whether intentionally or not by my ancestors. I’m angry that this social construct has stripped away the valuable cultural resources of my Irish and German heritage only to leave a white American identity that is wrapped up in oppressive conformity devaluing those who are not “white.” I’m angry that I have unknowingly participated in the systemic racism of our society. I’m angry that people I care about are constantly oppressed and that it feels as if there is nothing I can do to truly relieve that oppression.

I have often felt disempowered–as an introvert I felt like the underdog at times out-shined by peers whose extroversion was valued over my quiet steadfastness. But going through this anti-racism process helped me become more aware of just how much power I do have…I am in a position that asks me to tell the stories of 43 churches and 24 ministries, to help shape the types of leadership training provided for the leaders of these churches and ministries and to build relationships with and provide resources for young leaders across the country. I realize that I have more opportunity to influence than I ever imagined I could as a teenager. Though I have struggles to be heard as a young woman leader in the Mennonite Church I have to acknowledge that my voice is more likely to be heard in the broader society than that of my Black, Latina or Asian counterpart.

The weekend after I participated in Damascus Road I headed to Seattle, Wa. to attend “The New Conspirators: What in the world is God doing?”, a gathering of practitioners from four new streams of “renewal” in the church: Emerging, Missional, New Monastic and Mosaic. All but Mosaic are largely expressions of renewal in Euro-centric North American, United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand realities. That is not to downplay the leaps and bounds each of these streams contributes toward bringing the Kingdom that Jesus spoke about into our current earthly reality.

The Mosaic stream however is a largely urban movement of new churches with a missional bent started by young leaders looking for a more multi-cultural church. These churches are young, diverse and often influenced by hip-hop culture in worship expressions.

On Saturday morning of the conference, Pastor Efrem Smith, co-author of “The Hip Hop Church” and Senior Pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Mn., shared with us how Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the “Beloved Community” requires a “Beloved Church.” Pastor Smith stuck it to his mostly white audience speaking on the issues of systemic racism I had just reflected on the weekend before. I sat amazed at how God was bringing my experiences together full circle.

“We have got to embrace and live in to our identity as God’s Beloved!!” he proclaimed. “Forget about trying to get your ‘white card’! Women, forget about trying to get your ‘man card’! We have lost so much of our selves and our cultures trying to all be alike when our only true identity is that of God’s Beloved!”

It was all I could do to hold back the tears coming to my eyes as Pastor Smith’s words spoke into my life. Suddenly I realized my response to “what good is anger?”

Anger is good when it makes you aware of things you hadn’t seen or could easily ignore before and motivates toward positive action. Moved by that sense of anger and loss, I will seek to embrace and re-discover my cultural heritage from the men and women who traveled from Ireland and Germany to escape religious persecution. With my anger, I will acknowledge that I do have power and influence and seek to promote and create possibilities for the variety of under-privileged and under-heard voices around me. More importantly with my anger I will remember that my identity lies in being God’s Beloved and will empower others to acknowledge their own identity as God’s Beloved.

What is missional, anyway?

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What is missional, anyway? Is that really the right question? I mean, let’s break it down: the question implies that we don’t know what missional is. I think that’s more right than many would like to admit, myself included. But the inability to grasp missional is understandable. I spent half an hour today using Google’s search engine to find an easily understandable definition of the word “missional” and was sent down about five bunny holes before I gave up. Its not easily explained and I wonder why that is; perhaps it’s because asking what missional means is the wrong question. If so, then what is the right question?

A few weekends ago I took a trip to the northwest coast to attend the annual bi-national Mennonite young adult retreat, held this year at Oregon’s Drift Creek Camp. The theme of this year’s gathering was “What is missional anyway?” Our speakers were Mary Lou and Rusty Bonham, former pastors and missionaries and current developers of a community-based expression of faith in Portland, Oregon called Old Growth. The Bonhams challenged that thematic question during our first session. They proposed that by the end of the weekend we would have another question to replace this faulty one.

In fact, the whole weekend was one of questions: What are incarnational opportunities I have been overlooking? What would church look like if Sundays (church, the building, the services, the pastors) were reinvented? Am I living in a way that is reconciled with God, myself, others, and creation? Am I mechanically missional (lacking passion and intimacy with God)? How congruent is my lifestyle with my stated beliefs? Where am I challenged to more radically live what I say I believe?

I want people to know what missional is because I have seen and heard the beauty of that word. Missional is realizing that salt clumped together tastes nasty but if you mix it in well, throughout the batter, it adds just the right and needed seasoning. Missional is a church community that realizes that inviting people in to their church building isn’t really working so they go out and become church in their community. Missional is a person who doesn’t approach his neighbor as someone who needs to be saved but rather as one who can offer him just as much as the neighbor could offer back.

Saturday evening, as we were finishing up our sessions for the weekend, the “right” question was revealed to us: What is God’s mission and how can I be a part of it, anyway? I had heard this question before in conversations on the meaning of missional. I often wish that we would rephrase our conversation this way instead of getting caught up in the trendy church lingo of missional. What God’s mission is and how we can be a part of it is the real issue.

What is God’s mission for us, our neighbors, our community, our city, our state, our country, and the world? And how can we be a part of this mission? These are the questions I hope we can all ask ourselves and work to find the answers to, no matter how uncomfortable those answers may be.

LEAP: Learning, Exploring and Participating Transformed in Guatemala toward a more focused pace of life

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Jessica Walter

In the middle of July, I packed my bags and headed south to be an Orientation Leader for Eastern Mennonite Seminary’s LEAP program. LEAP, which stands for Learning, Exploring, and Participating, is a three week theological and cross-cultural exploration experience for high school students who have been recognized in their churches as rising leaders. The program guides students from urban, rural, and suburban backgrounds through a week of theological reflection focusing on where God is calling them and then sends them off to experience and witness how God is moving in another culture. This year the LEAP trips included Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico City, and Guatemala (my trip). As an Orientation Leader my job was to act as a chaperone, Resident Assistant, shepherd, guide, moral booster, encourager, friend, and Big Sister.

Just two weeks after I arrived in Virginia, including two long days of preparation and travel, I sat down to a home cooked meal at my new residence in Guatemala with a sigh of happy relief. We were here. We had successfully made it through a travel schedule that started at midnight (meaning leaders didn’t sleep much), three airports, an encounter with Pollo Campero (a well-known Guatemalan fast food restaurant), and a bumpy ride up to the camp where we would stay for the next five days. As we sat down to our meal I looked around the table and realized I was about to spend the next 11 days in Guatemala with some of the brightest and funniest young men and women I had ever met, a co-Orientation Leader whose company and perspective I enjoy, a pastor and her husband who are both thoughtful adults and hilarious big kids, and founding members of the Mennonite Church in Guatemala Gilberto and Rosa Flores. God had orchestrated a dream team for this trip and I was going to take Gilberto’s advice for our group to “enjoy the moment!”

As the days went on and we met moments of joy and moments of trial a theme began to arise among our small team; we all began to question. What is God doing in Guatemala? Where is God here? Where is God in my life? What would I say to someone who wants to know why they should be a Christian? What is God’s calling on my life? What is my purpose? How is this trip changing me? How is God moving even in places where it looks like God is not being honored? How can a people be so faithful in the midst of persecution and poverty? What are the motivations behind a church’s attempt to grow? How do others experience God’s calling? What are experiences with God and how can I recognize them? What are the parallels and the differences between the church in Guatemala and the United States? What does God have in store for the church in Guatemala?

I began to ask some of the same questions that the students on our trip were wrestling with too. One evening in the middle of our trip I sat down on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá with Gilberto and talked with him about the poverty in his native country as we watched women and men wash clothing and themselves in the lake as well as fill barrels for drinking water. As our conversation ended Gilberto went back to reading his newspaper and I sat silently reflecting that I had suddenly changed. I now had a new question that lingers with me: How can I go back to life as normal when I know more about the pain of this world and have allowed this experience to change me?

I am back here participating in my “normal” routine; I write blogs, edit articles, go to meetings, buy groceries, and hang out with friends but I am different. I think even more critically then I did before about where I spend my time and my money. I have found myself willing to sacrifice my hunger for adventure for a slower, more intentional life that values relationships over tasks. It is a focus to live in the moment being present right here, right now. (Click) to see photos.

Bridging the gap between tradition and innovation: Toward a relevant body of Christ

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Jessica Walter, Associate for Communication and Leadership Cultivation

Our Church is skillfully playing out the story of the Exodus. Having eagerly taken the mantle of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, we have left Egypt, bound for the Promised Land. Still, in order to get to that promise we must first experience God’s teaching in the desert in a time of change, confusion, exhaustion, and longing. Like the Israelites, we don’t easily recognize where we are and why we are here. Whether we recognize our state or not, we are in the midst of a massive shift that causes tensions to flair and lines to be drawn.

On one side of the line are those who identify with the Israelites who began to idolize Egypt. Sara Groves describes the situation in her song “Painting Pictures of Egypt,”

“I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, leaving out what it lacked. The future seems so hard and I want to go back…the past is so tangible I know it by heart, familiar things are never easy to discard…caught between the promise and the things I know.”

The people on this side of the line are unsure of the future. They want to go back to the way thing used to be, preferring “the good old days” and “the way things were.” In this unsureness, it’s easy to forget that change is part of God’s design; just look at like the seasons.

Those on the other side identify with the Israelites who began to mistrust Moses and that the desert experience was mandated by God. As Alan Roxburgh explains in his book The Sky is Falling!?! Leaders Lost in Transition these are “a people for whom transition became the norm.” For them the “way things were” is a disconnected ideal of the past that must be in the past for a reason. They are full of distrust, cynicism, and questions because they see a Christ in the pages of the Bible that means something more powerful than what they see manifested today. They are searching and trying to create a Body of Christ that is real and true to Christ.

As these sides contest for the future the line between us, once just a groove in the sand, is becoming a canyon. Congregations desperately trying to revive the ways of old are slowly dying. New faith communities, defying anything tried and true, come and go with the wind. All the while the world watches and finds us less stable than the changing times and increasingly irrelevant.

Our problems lie in an inability to communicate with each other and work together to form a relevant Body of Christ. These problems exist because of fear, stubbornness, and pride as we prefer the misery of today over the mystery of tomorrow. In our stubbornness and resistance to change, we dig in our heels and close our hearts dismissing each other’s ideas and questions as ridiculous. Pride keeps us from moving, knowing that opening ourselves to each other might suggest that we’ve been wrong in the past.

To become a community that can truly call itself the Body of Christ we will need to put aside these things and communicate with each other. We must build relationships that are open to accountability, honest enough to voice our fears, trusting enough to let one another lift us up, humble enough to give and receive grace, and above all infused with God’s love. Making it a priority to care for each other truthfully and lovingly in action, not just words, will require personal sacrifice of comfort and a willingness to go beyond surface issues. To do this we need to recognize, cultivate, and encourage people who are able and willing to reach across the canyon to develop these relationships.

A bridge is already under construction that brings together the strength of the past with current innovation to create a relevant Body of Christ. But we are barely grasping what it is we need to do because it will take almost all of us to create something that is powerfully real and true.

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Taking the Risk Beyond Shoulder Tapping

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jess.jpgI recently participated in a conference at Eastern Mennonite Seminary entitled Beyond Shoulder-tapping: Developing Meaningful Experiences in Ministry for Emerging Leaders. As participants, we were called a “think tank” of congregations and individuals that stand out among their peers in cultivating and developing leaders. We came together to share our stories of leadership, swap ideas of development, and stoke the passion we all have to continually bring up new generations of leaders.

My role in the conference was to offer the story of my calling and to highlight the themes of the things I had been hearing from our young adults since I began working at Franconia Conference. Two other young leaders shared their stories as well. We were charged to not only share about how we were encouraged on our journeys but also about the challenges we faced. Our stories were each different but they shared some themes. These included the importance of faith formation, recognizing that the clear leader is not always the best choice and highlighting the importance of viewing the Bible as a revolutionary text therefore sparking new creativity. But perhaps the most important and encouraging theme that arose from our stories were the examples of people who supported us in and trusted us with the tasks of ministerial leadership. What helped us most were the people who recognized a gift in us and encouraged us to use it by offering us a role.

As the conference went on and leaders from various congregations told the stories of their leadership development models this theme of our personal stories was repeated again and again. One man who was a participant in Walnut Creek (Ohio) Mennonite Church’s student pastor program, said the more he was loved, the more he wanted to do. It became obvious to me that these churches had taken a risk in order to reap the rewards of new leadership. They took the risk to let go of the controlled “tight ship” atmosphere that dominates many churches and put their trust in the ability of the inexperienced.

Reflecting on this experience, I feel honored to have been a part of it. I was in the company of great minds who took their ideas and put them to work. These are leaders who understand the value of being a growing leader while growing up leaders. They give up the paradigms of the past by letting go of having complete control. These are people who not only recognize but also have made room for one of the most important things I’ve heard young adults say: that we want to be an integral part of the leadership now. We want to plan, shape, participate and lead our churches, willingly engaging their challenges, in the hopes that they’ll continue on in meaningful and relevant ways. There are too few churches who allow space for the hopeful possibilities that the young and inexperienced can bring. Too few who are willing to take positive steps toward a life renewing future.

I am challenged to figure out how we can help each other share ideas and how the conference can assist its congregations in becoming places where growing leaders grow up leaders among themselves. What do the congregations of Franconia conference need to begin to develop an atmosphere that promotes leadership cultivation? What do individual leaders need to help make this a priority in their churches? What would help us all to let go and take the risk?