Methacton

How do you cultivate Mennonite spirituality?

September 11, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Dawn Ruth Nelson, Methacton

What is the spiritual commitment that is at the core of our identity as an Anabaptist community and followers of Jesus, who “for the sake of the joy set before him, endured the cross”?

For me, figuring that out far from home, in the middle of the violence of Dublin, Ireland in the 1980s meant integrating other Christian traditions with the practices of my plain grandmother. All these practices – together – have nurtured my life as I try to live out discipleship, peacemaking, and witness.

I think other Mennonites in urban and mobile settings are trying to figure this out, too. I’ve received requests from churches in Toronto, Champaign-Urbana, Evanston, and Montreal to come and talk about spiritual practices, commitment, and depth. They want to talk about how to cultivate a Mennonite spirituality that makes sense in today’s world. (And also, interestingly enough, requests came from Franklin Conference, in central Pennsylvania. Even in our more rural heartlands we are asking the question: How can we be more aware of and intentional about our spiritual practices?).

To be conformed to Christ, to be formed by Christ, we need to spend very significant time with his words and in his presence, corporately and privately. I am convinced of the centrality of Jesus and of the encounter with the Risen Christ through the Scriptures as a way to anchor Mennonites (and all Christians) in [what could be called a] Dark Night transitional time.

Nelson Kraybill, at the time president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), said the “church . . . must be centered on Jesus. . . . Transforming ministry requires sustained encounter with God made known in Jesus Christ. . . . When the risen Lord is the center of our lives, the Spirit will empower us to speak and act in ways that honor the One who shows us the face of God.” The centrality of Jesus Christ is not an unfamiliar theme to Mennonite-Anabaptists, who grew out of medieval movements practicing the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi).

“Finding a centering rather than a fracturing experience” is how one AMBS seminary student described what happened as he worked on spiritual formation in the 1980s at AMBS. Finding a centering experience is key. That is what [spiritual] disciplines and contemplative prayer do for us. Some people find themselves in a tremendous balancing act, juggling their lives, family and profession. They need something to hold everything together—a deep anchoring in Christ. Centering or contemplative prayer allow us to center in on our experience with God, become anchored in Jesus, as a way to give some coherence to an increasingly fractured existence.

1954 Dawn with her Grandma — Dawn with her grandmother in 1954. Photo by John Ruth.

In my grandmother’s life, this coherence was provided by an ordered life that centered around a particular place that never changed for her. The place we meet God now is often “in Jesus” through the contemplative disciplines. Some Mennonites are using these now as spiritual formation tools—silence, solitude, daily personal prayer time, spiritual direction, contemplative/listening prayer, lectio divina.

One suggestion: Teach people in Sunday school how to practice listening prayer and lectio divina. Also offer special weeks of prayer where people commit to reading a Scripture daily, meeting daily for half-an-hour with a spiritual director, and meeting with a group for faith-sharing at the end of the week. Take Sunday school classes on weekend retreats following the suggested retreat outlines in the book Soul Care: How to Plan and Guide Inspirational Retreats. We need a concerted congregational effort to help people learn to pray, to listen to and talk to God, to read Scripture in a listening mode (lectio divina), to ask, What is God saying to me today through this Scripture? And we need to accompany them as spiritual friends or in spiritual direction as they try to pray.

–Reflections on and from A Mennonite Woman: Exploring Spiritual Life and Identity by Dawn Ruth Nelson, available from Cascadia, Amazon, or on Kindle. E-mail Dawn.

Quiet rebellion against the status quo

June 19, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

(To Mennonite Blog #3)

by Donna Merow, Ambler

In a sermon titled Transformed Nonconformist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority” (Strength to Love, 27).

To “Mennonite” is to be creatively maladjusted to a society that promotes materialism, nationalism, militarism, and violence.

I was introduced to the Mennonite/Anabaptist perspective at Providence and Methacton more than thirty years ago. This was the era of Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Doris Jantzen Longacre’s Living More with Less. The lifestyle of simplicity and service such books advocated captured my imagination in a big way. My sister describes me to her friends as “almost Amish,” and, in some ways, I suppose I am. We decided to raise our children without Santa Claus or television. A clothesline replaced the dryer and kept us connected in some small way with the rhythms of the natural world. We built a little house in the woods and lived on one income so I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom until my daughters were in high school.

Such non-conformity to the standards of culture is only possible if one takes Jesus seriously, not only on Sunday morning but in every encounter and experience throughout the week. This was something I saw modeled in the first “salt of the earth” Mennonites I met. Doing so means thoughtfully considering what following Jesus looks like in decisions big and small—the purchases one makes, the words one speaks, the actions one takes, how one spends his/her time. Should I spend a little more for organic produce? Do I really need that new dress? Can I skip that trip and take a walk instead? How do I speak the truth in love in this delicate situation? Will doing this honor/model Christ?

To “Mennonite” also means taking community seriously. I was rebaptized and became a member of the Mennonite Church on my first wedding anniversary. One of the most memorable questions posed to me as part of this public confession was, “Are you willing to give and receive counsel in the congregation?” The mutual accountability and responsibility inherent in the question continues to remind me that we are in this relationship together. Everyone, I think, needs to have someone in his/her life who loves him/her enough to risk speaking the truth, however painful it may be. The vulnerability this demands of both giver and receiver is powerfully present each Holy Week in the simple act of kneeling before each other to wash feet. But the love symbolized in this annual ritual is evident throughout the year as we celebrate life’s milestones, care for children, prepare meals, clean houses, move possessions, offer advice, or listen with a sympathetic ear.

This spring I did a six-week class on memoir writing at the Mennonite Heritage Center. Our last assignment included considering a possible title for our would-be memoir based on the writing we had done during the class. I called mine “Closet Rebel,” and the Mennonites are largely to blame. I am grateful to those who “Mennonite” at Ambler and Methacton for giving me the space and encouragement I needed for my quiet rebellion against the status quo. They have accepted me wholeheartedly, creatively maladjusted as I am.

Next week, Noah Kolb, a forty-year minister in Mennonite congregations, will wrestle with his splintered heritage of faith and practice. How do you “Mennonite”? Join the conversation by email.

Who am I? (To Mennonite Blog #1)
Serving Christ with our heads and hands (To Mennonite Blog #2)
Quiet rebellion against the status quo (To Mennonite Blog #3)
Mennoniting my way (To Mennonite Blog #4)
Generations Mennoniting together (To Mennonite Blog #5)
Body, mind, heart … and feet (To Mennonite Blog #6)
We have much more to offer (To Mennonite Blog #7)
Mennonite community … and community that Mennonites (To Mennonite Blog #8)

Enter into life with all your heart

December 12, 2011 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, Swamp Mennonite

Luke and Dot Beidler were recognized for their lives of ministry, service, and stewardship at the joint Franconia and Eastern District Conference Assembly on November 11. Everence representative, Randy Nyce, presented Luke and Dot with the organization’s National Journey Award for excellent stewardship of time, money, and service.

“We’d like to return that honor and praise to God,” Luke responded. Dot agreed. “My heart is really warmed by a God that provides paths for us to go on,” she shared. “And as we say yes to the opportunities we have in life, we find God is all-sufficient. . . . Even if what we have doesn’t seem like enough, God makes it enough.”

From a young age, Luke and Dot experienced the sufficiency of God. As children, they moved with their families to Haycock Township (Pa.) to join a mission effort that led to the planting of Franconia Conference congregations like Rocky Ridge, Salem, and Steel City.

High school sweethearts, Luke and Dot married after graduating from Eastern Mennonite College in 1965. They wanted to participate in mission and enthusiastically accepted an inivitation to serve as missionaries in Vietnam with Eastern Mennonite Missions.

In Vietnam, they saw the reality of war up close. Some friends and fellow missionaries didn’t make it home. Luke and Dot struggled with their need to depend on a government to airlift them out when the fighting intensified and their children’s lives became endangered. How should a pacifist respond?

Back in the states, Luke returned to school, this time at the University of Pittsburgh to study anthropology and international education. In that university environment, he and Dot discovered that their Vietnam experience made them particularly sensitive to the anti-war crowd. “We were as hippy as you could be,” Luke recently told a class of seminary students. Then he laughed. “On the inside.”

Luke and Dot young — Luke and Dot Beidler with their son Ken and daughter Marta when they were serving in Indonesia.

But their heart was still for mission and in 1976 the Beidlers joined Mennonite Central Committee in a partnership with local missionaries in Indonesia. Their years on the island of Borneo shaped their identities as they learned about true simplicity: living without electricity, washing clothes and bathing in the river, and eating whatever food was available.

When their children reached high school age, Luke and Dot returned the family to Pennsylvania where the teens enrolled in Christopher Dock Mennonite High School. Luke served as the Missions Secretary for Franconia Conference while Dot taught at Penn View Christian School.

After ten years of serving in the conference, Luke and Dot were ready to move back to the fringe. Luke was invited to serve as an associate pastor of Nueva Vida Norristown New Life in 1995 and, one year later, he and Dot purchased a home next door to the church building. It had been converted into apartments by a former missionary to provide low-income housing. The Beidlers felt called to continue this mission.

For the last 15 years, they have lived alongside their residents and they have come to love their home as well as their neighbors. Luke tends the gardens around their building and the church property. “We feel safe in community with a household,” Dot believes. “Urban issues have taken on faces as we live in this place. We hope to grow old here. “

Dot has worked for 15 years in a before- and after-school program in Norristown. Luke continued in his pastoral role at Nueva Vida until 2007 while also serving at Methacton beginning in 2003. Although he formally retired in March, he and Dot continue to worship at Methacton. Ministry, for them, is a life-long calling.

“Get involved in a local congregation, serve in every way you can, take opportunities to cross cultures and learn from others at home and abroad,” they encourage young leaders. “Enter into life and faith with all your hearts.”

Church leaders discuss ways to build bridges with Muslims

May 14, 2011 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph

Dr. Andrew Bush leads a conversation on building bridges between Christian and Muslim faiths. Photo by Emily Ralph.

Norristown, PA — “The greatest challenge the church is facing today is the rapid rise of Islam around the world.” It was a bold statement, but Dr. Andrew Bush, a missionary, church planter, and professor of missiology, believes that this challenge is one the church is called to engage.

“As representatives of Christ we stand at a historic hour in which we have the opportunity to show the true love of Jesus to the Muslim world,” said Bush at a workshop on improving Muslim-Christian relations held at Methacton Mennonite Church on May 5. Bush is a professor at Eastern University in St. David’s, PA and attends Methacton Mennonite Church.

The growth of Islam is not just on foreign soil–Pennsylvania has one of the largest Muslim populations in the US. Courtney Smith of Lansdale, Pa., noted that several of her neighbors were Muslim. And that her ongoing conversations have at times left her unsure about the relationship between Islam and Christianity. “Muslims insist that we worship the same God, the God of Abraham,” Bush responded. But if that’s the case, “we have different understandings of God.” Islam believes that Jesus was the world’s greatest prophet, next to Muhammad, but it rejects Christ’s divinity and crucifixion, believing instead that Jesus was taken up alive to God.

And that, Bush said excitedly, is where conversation can begin. “Jesus is alive—we both agree on that.”

Jesus is highly respected in the Muslim faith as a teacher, moral leader, and even the Messiah. The tragedy, in Bush’s view, is that in the rejection of the cross Muslims miss the victory of Christ’s work. Considering the story Jesus told of the shepherd searching for his lost sheep, Bush pointed out, “Jesus is probably spending more time among Muslims than among us.”

Friendships with Muslims begin with the conversion of your own heart, according to Bush. Those who want to build relationships must become students of Islam, learning to understand the faith as Muslims understand it. Although the Bible also has verses that are hard to explain, Muslims are often harassed for portions of the Quran that Westerners consider offensive. But keep an open mind, Bush encourages, because “you can’t judge a religion by its worst verse.”

Islam has already made up its mind about Jesus, so why should we care about building bridges? “It is the revelation of the love of Jesus that compels us,” responded Bush, a former missionary to Mexico and the Philippines. “My concern is that Muslims hear the gospel of Jesus, see the gospel of Jesus. . . experience Jesus.”

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Listen to highlights from the May 5th breakfast with Dr. Andrew Bush:

[podcast]http://mosaicmennonites.org/media-uploads/mp3/Building Bridges with Muslims (full).mp3[/podcast]

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