John Tyson

Taking time for justice: learning from Samantha Lioi

September 19, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by John Tyson, summer writing team

In a recent book, Mennonite Church USA executive director Ervin Stutzman noted that the peace rhetoric of the Mennonite church has shifted focus away from nonresistance and toward justice. This significant change in language suggests that urban, suburban, and rural congregations are undergoing an attitude adjustment toward the neighborhood. Unlike nonresistance, the work of justice is naturally outward-oriented, concerned with the common good and the overall health of the local community.

One reason that congregations have altered their posture toward their local contexts is the influence of missional theology. It has birthed a generation of Christians ready to join what God is already doing in neighborhood, beyond the church walls. Finding ways to merge living the Gospel (justice) and spreading the Good News (mission), though, requires more than an attitude adjustment: it requires time.

This is the humbling lesson that I learn over coffee with Samantha Lioi, minister of peace and justice for both Franconia and Eastern District conferences. Among other things, Lioi’s role includes preaching and teaching and organizing congregational peace representatives, but the essence of her time is spent broadening our common conceptions of the complicated relationship between living out Anabaptist Christianity and seeking justice.

Lioi is passionate about helping congregations see justice in less abstract terms. For Lioi, justice is less about the business of law and politics and more about creating spaces in our busyness to share our lives with unexpected people. Following in Jesus’ footsteps, justice can be as ordinary as sharing mutual food and fellowship across socially-constructed lines of race, religious, or class divisions. A member of the Allentown intentional community known as Zume House, Lioi has seen these practices slowly begin to have a transformational impact on the community. “We’re all so busy that we sometimes lack the attentiveness that is critical to entering mutual relationships with others. It’s important to be reminded that doing justice can’t only be seen as ‘doing for others’ but ‘doing with others’ too,” says Lioi.

Transitioning from ‘doing for’ to ‘doing with’ often proves to be a challenging paradigm shift for congregations in affluent contexts. One reason is due to the reality that injustice and inequality is murkier and less dramatic in suburban, affluent settings. But the bigger reason involves a paradox, one that has to do with time. Affluent congregations are often so busy working to maintain a well-oiled church that they miss opportunities to vulnerably be with their neighbors, to sit among them with Jesus. “Being with others, learning from others, openness to being changed by real human encounters,” Lioi says, “is time consuming and outside our comfort zones.”

For Lioi, Christian faith from an Anabaptist perspective is patiently cultivated in the presence of others. Only from within diverse relationships do we begin to grasp a better sense of our own shortcomings and need for spiritual transformation. Lioi is hopeful that congregations in Eastern District and Franconia Conferences continue to seek encounters which lead us to “become more honest with ourselves, cultivate courage to face our fears, and display a greater willingness to be changed by our neighbors.”

Growing in honesty, courage, and openness is a long journey. It leads toward outbreaks and glimmers of what life in God’s kingdom looks like, what justice in all its fullest is, but it takes time. As the Mennonite church continues conversion about becoming a missional community, seeking to find ways to merge mission and justice, Lioi’s work of shepherding congregations is a true gift.

“Dominance is a blinder:” Introducing Drew Hart

August 13, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by John Tyson, summer writing team

Drew Hart’s journey has pulled him into uncharted territory. His theological work is an encounter at the borderlines between black liberation theology and Anabaptism.

Rarely linked in academic circles, Hart argues that the shared pursuit of justice equips these two traditions to be complimentary conversation partners. Although, Hart emphatically adds, “Anabaptism needs black theology more than black theology needs Anabaptism.”

The origins of black theology can be traced back to the publication of James Cone’s Black Theology & Black Power in 1969. Black theology is a multidimensional approach to theological reflection. Born out of the ongoing experience of oppression endured by the African-American community in the United States, black theology draws from Christianity, the Civil Rights movement, and Black Power. Like feminist, womanist, or Latin American liberation theology, black theology communicates that God is partial to the struggle of those who are the most invisible and least powerful in our culture and society.

The tone of black theology is overwhelmingly constructive. The hope of black theology is not only the radical liberation of the African-American community from racial prejudice, but the emergence of a renewed society, one that provides equal power to all.

Hart’s own engagement with black theology began during his undergraduate studies in Biblical Studies at Messiah College. His discovery of Anabaptism came at the tail-end of his Masters of Divinity work at Biblical Theological Seminary, Hatfield, Pa. Now, as a doctoral candidate at Lutheran Theology Seminary in Philadelphia, Hart is focused on creating scholarship that furthers the conversation between the two traditions that have shaped his faith story.

Hart’s desire to draw resonances between black theology and Anabaptism is as promising as it is timely. In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin verdict, many Christians concerned about racial justice sought to lament the ruling. Hart has used his vibrant theology blog as a medium to analyze the verdict’s social and political implications in light of Christ’s resurrection and subsequent defeat of the powers of violence. On his blog, Hart writes, “God invites us to be part of his Resurrection world that overcomes the violence and oppression of this current world and to participate in the world to come, where the vulnerability of young men like Trayvon (and our loved ones) will no longer happen.”

As an associate pastor at Lansdale’s Montco Bible Fellowship and a developing teacher, Hart is passionate about helping Christians of all colors follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Indeed, the sub-title of Hart’s blog, “Taking Jesus Seriously,” always means paying attention to – and having the eyes to see – how social power is unjustly determined by race and class dynamics in our present context.

This challenge is especially hard for white Christians, who often take for granted being in positions of social dominance.

“Dominance is a blinder,” says Hart, and the possibility of overcoming racial injustice involves allowing those in positions of social prestige to be haunted by an uncomfortable challenge: “Can we, despite all of our instincts, truly and fully trust the experience of the other?” This question is, for Hart, a question that Anabaptists are uniquely suited to ask as underdogs in the history of the church. Intentionally working to process our social locations through stories and experiences told by the “least of these,” according to Hart, is something Anabaptists have always attempted to do, albeit imperfectly.

As a leader in both the church and academy, Hart is driven by a vision of justice. It is a vision, though, that is energized by a prayerful patience that God’s solidarity with the oppressed and the biblical promise of a reconciled world will overcome injustice. For Hart, the church is “called out” to be an agent of God’s healing so that the watching world might “catch a glimpse of Jesus’ life.” The church’s public witness is most powerful when it engages in, Hart says, “concrete acts of wrestling with a society in relationship to what it might become” rather than accepting what it may be in the present.

In order for the church to bear witness to God’s dream of a just world, the continual work of overcoming internal divisions and tensions is critical. The church worships each and every Sunday under the gaze of a watching world, a world that is increasingly longing for an encounter with the reconciled people of God. With a pastoral spirit and a vibrant theological vision, Drew Hart is a leader who will continue to help us discern how to embody justice in our communities.

Justice in the Streets

August 8, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Mikah Ochieng, John Tyson, & Jacob Hanger, summer writing team

What is justice?

In a famous essay, Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas considers the possibility that pursuing justice is a bad idea for Christians. Hauerwas is not against justice per se, but against theories of justice born in traditions outside of the church, and thus susceptible to social strategies that might contradict the Christian confession that Jesus is Lord. Hauerwas instead encourages Christians to turn to practices of justice inspired by their own scripture and tradition.

With the emergence of each new era, however, those practices take new shapes and forms. Finding an answer to our opening question can only begin by turning to our sisters and brothers who are presently engaged in the struggle to embody the prophetic spirit of Micah 6:8 – to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God in the streets.

This blog is the first in a fall series on justice. The purpose of this project is to explore the stories of various Anabaptist-influenced sisters and brothers engaged in responding to injustice in their personal contexts. Each of our writers resides in a different location: Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and the suburbs by way of Princeton, New Jersey. Through our conversations, we intend to create a learning space to incite further dialogue on this matter. Each story will be different because every context brings its own struggles and solutions.

This project has three primary objectives:

To highlight the evolving narrative of justice emerging in our communities.
To distill common themes present in the public imaginations of individuals who believe justice is relevant to following Jesus in this world, and
to inspire more to seek justice.

Our own reflections will be steeped in our respective contexts. We understand that they provide only a fragmented picture of our communities, yet it is our hope that these conversations produce new learning that can be applied and practiced in a multitude of different contexts.

Successful Conference, Seminary partnership concludes

July 30, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

IME — Steve Kriss (top right) and Derek Cooper (second row, fourth from the right) have partnered for five years to take seminary students on intercultural learning trips, including this spring’s trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Photo by Dennis Dong.

by John Tyson, Salford congregation

Theological educators believe headfirst immersion into unfamiliar cultural terrain is a requirement for preparing church leaders in the context of the twenty-first century. For students at Biblical Theological Seminary (Hatfield, Pa.), a lifelong commitment to intercultural ministry begins at the second year mark of their LEAD Master of Divinity Program.

To meet the complex and unconventional demands of intercultural education, Biblical Seminary and Franconia Conference have partnered together to create the Intercultural Ministry Experience (IME). For the past five years, Franconia’s director of leadership cultivation, Steve Kriss, and Biblical’s director of the LEAD program, Derek Cooper, have led a total of seventy-five students on journeys far and wide, from Israel/Palestine to Italy to Cambodia and Vietnam.

For Dr. Derek Cooper, the ten-day trips abroad produce formative insights and questions that dwell with students well beyond their time in seminary. “It is my favorite component of the LEAD program, and students receive a very concentrated educational experience,” said Cooper. “Students always come away from the trip changed, challenged, and more culturally aware. It’s completely transformative.”

“We also talk a lot about contextualization, and we learn much about how the local Christian community addresses issues relating to history, culture, politics, and world religions,” Cooper added.

Josh Meyer, associate pastor of Franconia congregation (Telford, Pa.), participated in the 2011 trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Meyer identified practices of learning and listening as the educational core of his experience. “This was not a mission trip where rich, white Americans did a service project and ‘brought Jesus’ to the forgotten corners of the globe,” he said. “Rather, this was a learning experience where we went as students, not saviors; as listeners, not experts; as those interested in exploring ways in which God was already living and moving and active in the culture, not as those bringing Jesus to a place where, prior to our arrival, God was not present…This approach to cross-cultural study resonated deeply with my own wariness of short-term missions and helped to shape my thinking on how we as people of faith engage with the rest of the world.”

The required IME provided Donna Merow her first opportunity to explore spaces beyond U.S. borders. Now pastor of Ambler (Pa.) congregation, Merow recalled how her trip to Israel/Palestine transformed both her understanding of ancient scripture as well as the present Israeli/Palestinian conflict. “The reality of walking where Jesus did, of visiting his birthplace, the village he called home, the Sea of Galilee, and the site of his death has changed the way I read the Bible,” Merow explained. “Seeing and touching the separation wall, staying in the homes of Palestinian Christians, and visiting one of the multigenerational refugee camps has made me ask hard questions about government policy and church practice.”

For many travelers, encountering weathered, historically nuanced places reveals how tender the balance is between the past and the future. This was one of the major lessons absorbed by KrisAnne Swartley, associate pastor of Doylestown (Pa.) congregation, on her trip to Italy. “I was struck by the history there, and how it is preserved and revered, and how that can be both a strength and a weakness,” Swartley reflected. “The strength is in remembering our story, remembering how the faithful who went before us worked through questions of faithfulness in the midst of change/struggle. The weakness can be that we are so trapped by traditions of the past that we become irrelevant in the present and into the future. I continue to think about this balance, to pray that I remember and learn from the church of the past but also [have courage] to walk into the future bravely, not afraid to let go of what was as the Spirit gives new wisdom.”

While this spring marks the end of the Biblical/Franconia IME partnership, its conclusion is cause for celebration, according to Kriss. “The model proved to be an effective partnership because both the seminary and the Conference benefitted,” he said. The Conference offered resources of intercultural education and global networking, he observed, while the seminary provided students who were positioned to deeply engage. “The surprising outcome,” Kriss said, “was to build relationships with Anabaptist students on campus which helped Conference congregations to have new connections with potential pastors. And these new potential pastors had already been shaped somewhat by Anabaptist ways of engaging the world. It was a fruitful endeavor, not without struggles at times, but one that represents effective and strategic partnering in healthy ways.”

Celebrating ACLF

June 26, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by John Tyson, Salford

A decade ago, Franconia Mennonite Conference leadership noticed a critical problem: seminary-trained leaders were increasingly in short supply. So when Delaware Valley Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), a conference-related ministry, turned over a well-funded college tuition scholarship program to the conference, a solution soon emerged.

Conrad Martin and Donella Clemens of Franconia Conference partnered with Henry Rosenberger and Dave Landis of MEDA to form a committee charged with developing a plan for the use of the newly-received asset. According to Rosenberger, it became quickly apparent that continuing to use the fund for its previous purpose of providing small college tuition scholarships was becoming less meaningful in light of the meteoric rise of college costs.

“At the same time in our Conference history, there seemed to be an increasing number of pastors being called to congregations with little or no Anabaptist training or cultural knowledge of Mennonites,” said Rosenberger. “Concern for the effects this lack of training had in our congregations, I believe, prompted the Board of MEDA to see this fund as a way to enhance the training for persons moving into leadership.”

As a result, the Area Conference Leadership Fund (ACLF) was born. Future leaders from both the Franconia and Eastern District conferences now had a new financial option to help address the costs of seminary and higher education. The committee chose to accept ACLF applications from members in both the Franconia and Eastern District conferences to recognize the involvement of the two conferences in Delaware Valley MEDA.

In 2002, the first scholarships were disbursed and over the past decade, 60 leaders have received financial assistance from the fund. Soon, scholarship recipients began to reflect emerging shifts in the leadership demographics of Franconia Conference: twenty percent of recipients were people of color and one-third of recipients were women. The ACLF allowed Franconia Conference to invest in the future.

As Franconia Conference’s director of communication and leadership cultivation, Stephen Kriss immediately recognized the value of ACLF. “The amazing thing is how many people ACLF assisted who are serving the church both within and beyond Franconia and Eastern District conferences. These gifts were amazing investments in current and future leadership. ACLF enabled us to call forth, train, and equip dozens of leaders effectively, generously, open-handedly,” said Kriss.

Angela Moyer graduation — Angela Moyer graduated from Eastern Mennonite Seminary last year. Photo by Julie Siegfried.

Recipients of ACLF scholarships appreciate the confidence and support of the broader church community. For Angela Moyer, a member of the pastoral team of Ripple congregation, (Allentown, Pa.), the support of ACLF provided the freedom to explore seminary at a comfortable pace. “I never thought I would go to seminary. I started by just taking two classes at a time—I just had a few questions… I had no interest in pursuing a graduate degree. Little did I know how formative seminary would be in finding my identity as a pastor. Receiving funds from the ACLF was the broader church community nudging me, telling me it was okay to pursue this call even when I didn’t believe it myself.”

As the Lead Pastor of Salford congregation (Harleysville, Pa.), Joe Hackman believes that his leadership abilities have been significantly nurtured by the ACLF scholarship. “The ACLF fund allowed me to feel the support of the wider church community. The financial investment the church made for my education has helped me enter into my current leadership role with a greater sense of preparedness and confidence.”

In the words of Rosenberger, a core aspect of the original ACLF vision is to ensure that emerging “leadership was firmly based in Anabaptist theology and nonresistance.” This vision is coming to fruition in the work of Beny Krisbianto, Lead Pastor of Nations Worship Center (Philadelphia). “ACLF is helping me to finish my Capstone Project at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. My capstone project has taught me how to believe that ‘The Culture of Peace’ is still possible,” says Krisbianto. “Inspired by the struggles, prejudices, and broken relationships in my context of ministry in Philadelphia, peace is not theory, too big or unrealistic, but it is God’s calling and it does still work today.”

Despite occasional contributions, the size of the ACLF scholarship was considerably reduced in 2012 and leaders will no longer have access to substantial ACLF scholarships. This, however, does not mean that there is no longer a need for talented future church leaders. According to the Conrad Martin, Franconia Conference’s director of finance, the need for future church leaders is still there, as is the need to assist them financially so that they can pursue a quality Anabaptist education. Contributions into the ACLF continue to be welcomed.

Franconia supports moderator-elect on Phoenix pilgrimage

May 22, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

by John Tyson, Salford

Elizabeth Soto Albrecht will become moderator of Mennonite Church USA at the denomination’s Phoenix convention this July. Phoenix, however, will be only one of her many stops this summer. The scholar and pastor, who calls Lancaster, Pa. home, is embarking on a nation-wide pilgrimage to visit MC USA congregations.

Following brief “send-off” trips to Norristown (Pa.), New York City, and Philadelphia, Soto Albrecht will begin her journey by heading down the east coast to Florida, before venturing west to Phoenix in time to deliver the keynote address on the final day of the convention, July 5. Immediately afterward, she will spend two additional weeks circling up the west coast and across the Midwest before arriving home in Lancaster, PA on July 21.

In light of Arizona’s controversial immigration legislation, the purpose of Soto Albrecht’s journey is to listen to stories of MC USA congregations most impacted by the decision to hold the convention in Phoenix. The legislation includes a “show me your papers” provision which authorizes law enforcement to arbitrarily check an individual’s immigration status. The provision has been accused of permitting a form of racial profiling. “I may not have power to make cultural institutional change, but I can speak,” said Soto Albrecht, originally from Puerto Rico.

On her recent visit to Nueva Vida Norristown New Life, Soto Albrecht expressed her vision of a church remaining united amidst growing diversity. “No more shunning, no more violence … We must learn how to fight for unity.” Soto Albrecht’s pilgrimage will help her to better lead an increasingly diverse denomination into the challenging, often polarizing, terrain of the twenty-first century. “When we return, and I look back, I want to be able to say I was empowered by holding all these stories and those narratives coming from many perspectives and walks of life, but labeled under MC USA, and that they inform and shape me as moderator.”

Franconia Conference’s Executive Minister, Ertell Whigham, shares Soto Albrecht’s passion for the work of cultivating a truly united church. “Within unity is both reconciliation and representation,” Whigham said. “Unity requires effort and calls for truth and a willingness to invest in what and who we claim to be or want to become. Franconia Conference believes that Sister Soto’s pilgrimage is one representation of the effort to hear ‘the rest of the story.’”

In support of Soto Albrecht’s journey, Franconia Conference is sending associate director of communication, Emily Ralph, to provide communication support — including a web presence, podcasts, audio, video, and blogging. Soto Albrecht will also be accompanied by her husband, Frank, while Harry Jarrett, pastor at Neffsville (Lancaster, Pa.) and moderator of Atlantic Coast Conference, will provide further social media support for the week leading up to Phoenix.

The soon-to-be moderator is encouraging congregations who are not able to risk going to Phoenix, or are remaining home in protest, to proclaim God’s hospitality in their own communities. “If God has called you to go to Phoenix, go with a prophetic voice. If you do not go, do some symbolic act that week, and send a report to Phoenix.”

Some local congregations are considering the option of doing a prayer walk in their respective neighborhoods on Friday, July 5, the day that Elizabeth will give the keynote address and lead a prayer walk in Phoenix.

Soto Albrecht’s pilgrimage will be chronicled at JourneyWithElizabeth.com, which states that “her journey begins with a single story and ends with a thousand.” In addition to collecting stories from Soto Albrecht’s travels, the website will also serve as a forum for others to share their own stories with Soto Albrecht and the rest of the Mennonite church.

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.”

Toward a bright future

August 21, 2008 by Conference Office

by John Tyson

American philosopher Calvin O. Schrag in his book The Self After Postmodernity describes the emerging “self” as “a praxis-oriented self, defined by its communicative practices, oriented toward understanding itself in its discourse, its action, its being with others.” In less philosophical terms, our understanding of who we are as people is given meaning and direction by our daily conversations with others and the opportunities for action that are created. As humans, we are always making conversation, sometimes even without words. We are always communicating, we are always moving, going somewhere.

The joy of my work this summer has been the privilege to create new webs of conversations and simultaneously jump in the middle of webs that have long been woven. Within these webs of conversation and communication, I’ve been able to further discern God’s speaking in my interconnected spiritual, social, and political life, but more importantly, I’ve witnessed the movement of God’s reign in the midst of communities of women and men striving to follow the ways of Christ in today’s ever-evolving, ever-expanding world. The questions are unending and the challenges never cease, but if in nothing else, the continued conversation leads to hope. As more webs of conversation flower and build hope, the old weeds of pessimism wither and can be forgotten.

The conversations I’ve taken part in are hopeful but they don’t ignore the intense reality of confusion and struggle that is evident in all congregations and their respective local communities. A church willing to jump into the webs of conversation circulating in the communities of the world will no doubt encounter vast struggle and loss. Yet a church that takes this challenge on will recognize the exciting possibilities for creative, transformative ministry. For when conversations lead to redemption in Christ, hope lives on.

My conversations this summer have been all across the spectrum, from discussions about frakturs to globalization to opening the door of hospitality to kids who like vampires. These webs of continued conversation, however bizarre or practical, sustain hope. They give meaning and direction to us as Christian individuals and communities seeking to shed light onto the healing reign of God in our beautifully tragic world awaiting its redemption.

I’ve been in conversation with other young leaders finding their niche in the midst of their immersion into church ministry. I’ve worshiped while in conversation with sisters and brothers translating sermons and songs in a diversity of languages. I’ve been in conversations with subversive Christians seeking to rescue people from our politically numb society. I’ve been in conversations with our elderly folk, learning to reciprocate Anabaptist Christianity in the 21st century, finding that we have much commonality.

As I have learned personally this summer, conversations are hopeful because they breed interconnectedness, solidarity, and communication. They make webs, between those of us who are Christian and our neighbors whom we seek to embrace. These webs of conversation are endlessly loaded with potential and ensure that, if treated with care, the church has a future, a bright one.

John Tyson is a senior at Eastern Mennonite University who attends Souderton Mennonite Church. He interned this summer with Franconia Conference working in leadership cultivation and communication.

John Tyson

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