Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

missional

Peace Mug Awarded to Dr. Priscilla Benner, MAMA Project

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Becky Felton (right) presents Dr. Benner with the Peace Mug

Feb. 11, 2012 – Dr. Priscilla Benner received this year’s Franconia Conference Peace Mug Award during the Winter Peace Retreat at Spruce Lake.  Dr. Benner has been involved since the early 1980’s in the visioning and creation of the organization named MAMA Project. MAMA, which stands for Mujeres Amigas (Women Friends) Miles Apart, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

MAMA grew out of what Ruth Cole, Dr. Benner’s sister, and others witnessed for themselves during mission trips to Honduras in 1983 and 1984. Her pictures and stories were shared in eight Mennonite Churches in the Franconia and Eastern District Conferences, and with women’s mission groups which then reached out to the Mennonite Women’s Organization of the Honduran Mennonite Church, and a partnership was formed.

Dr. Benner grew up in a community where all the influential people in her life were intensely nationalistic.  She was introduced to the Mennonite peace perspective when she married David Benner, but the horrible things she witnessed in Central America – extreme poverty, war and militarization, fueled by her beloved country – shattered her world view and transformed her life.

From the outset MAMA has focused on families with children living at risk for early death from malnutrition, beginning with the “Superbar” and “Super Cookies” projects. Since then, MAMA has grown significantly, being involved in direct aid with food supplements, nutrition and childcare education, literacy, scholarships; and when crises such as floods occur, rescue, relief, and reconstruction projects. At times, MAMA’s work has included loans, home construction, latrine and water projects, but today most construction is focused on cementing floors in poor homes.

MAMA has also had a significant role to play in the sphere of national health policy and has had influence in Honduras and in other countries by partnering with others and sharing its materials, systems, and perspectives. Dr. Benner says, “We take teams to work in and experience Honduras, and hope and pray that the fire of their own passion for service will be fueled by this experience.”

Peace Mugs, provided by the Peace and Justice Support Network (PJSN) of Mennonite Church USA and awarded by our conference Peace & Justice Committee, honor those among us who demonstrate a lifelong commitment to peace and justice.

Relationships percolate at Top of the World

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By Wil LaVeist of Mennonite Mission Network

Coffee Shop - front profile
Top of the World Coffee Shop’s primary mission is to be “God-honoring in every aspect.” Photo provided.

Entering the front door of Top of the World Coffee in Nepal, the aroma of fresh roasted brew draws you toward the corner of the café.

Across the brick-colored floor and beyond the black metal chairs and tables, a smiling Dale Nafziger works behind the coffee roasting machine, the source of the aroma.

It’s not Starbucks but even better, particularly for the soul. This coffee shop is the vision of Dale and Bethsaba Nafziger, long-term Mennonite Mission Network workers.

“It’s very different. It’s homey and cozy,” says Bethsaba of Top of the World, which they opened Dec. 11, 2011. “We thought a coffee shop would be a wonderful place to be with the people.”

The Nafzigers are fishers of men and women, only their bait is a blend of steaming cups, caring conversation and business integrity. They share God’s love through their business ventures. From selling frozen French fries, pizza and fruit juice to roasting coffee beans and pulling shots of espresso, they model Anabaptist principles and business ethics as a way of bearing witness to God’s love and power.

The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal is in South Asia between India and Tibet. Hindus make up more than 75 percent of the country’s population, while Christians are less than 2 percent. Economic life among Nepal’s 30 million citizens has been improving. While about 25 percent of the population lives on less than the international poverty level of $1.25 per day, or $1,000 annually, a decade ago the rate was 41 percent.

Dale with the Roaster
Dale Nafziger, a long-term mission worker in Nepal, with Top of the World’s coffee roaster. The coffee shop staff roasts all of the coffee the store sells. Photo provided.

Still, conducting business is tough in Nepal, the Nafzigers say. For many business owners—even Christians, unfortunately—paying bribes and avoiding taxes is believed to be as necessary as having customers. Taxes can be as high as paying a worker’s salary, Dale says.

The Nafzigers opened Top of the World (because they are in the Himalaya Mountains) just before Christmas in a residential neighborhood. Patrons have been steadily increasing, they say, but as with any business, it hasn’t all been a piece of coffeecake.

“We had an excellent first day, but after that we quickly confronted the reality of what it means to run a restaurant on a daily basis,” the Nafzigers write in their monthly newsletter update.

Two mission workers, Melissa & Jim*, arrived last September from Texas and from a different agency to join in the venture and handle day-to-day operations. Bethsaba is also a registered nurse and midwife, and both Bethsaba and Dale are leaders in church. Dale preaches and advises church leaders regularly.

Through the coffee shop and other business ventures, the Nafzigers aim to show that integrity is important, even if it costs more. As the deadline approached for completing Jim’s business visa, a bit of “speed money” would have expedited the process, Dale says. Jim and the Nafzigers declined to pay the bribe, and Jim’s visa was completed just 10 minutes before the deadline.

Consulting the staff
The Top of the World Coffee Shop staff is intentionally interfaith—Hindus, Muslims and Christians work side-by-side. Photo provided.

The Nafzigers are intentional about hiring people of different faiths and backgrounds. Three Hindus and three Christians make up the coffee shop’s six-member staff. “We meet the staff every day and pray with them,” says Bethsaba. “We never force them to pray with us, but we see them as being happy to come and pray in the morning.”

Bethsaba recalled an experience that illustrates the type of godly relationships they hope the coffee shop will foster. Before they met and eventually married, Reena and Prakash Thapa were working at the Nafzigers’ home. Particularly Reena witnessed the type of love that Dale and Bethsaba bestowed on their daughters, Shova, 14, and Sushma, 12. Reena Thapa felt devalued by her family, which is the case for many women in the culture.

The love she witnessed and received from the Nafzigers led her to accept Christ. Reena and Prakash, a carpenter, fell in love while meeting at the Nafzigers’ and now have a daughter. They now attend “Tejwasi” (Radiant) Church with the Nafzigers.

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The Nafzigers are supported by Franconia Conference congregations including Vincent, Providence, Doylestown, Plains, and Towamencin. Vincent is Dale’s home congregation and he still has family that attend there.  He will be at the June Pastors and Leaders Breakfast talking about what he learned through his business at Top of the World.

*Names changed

Connections: Interview with Ted Swartz

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Ted & CompanyTed Swartz, creator of Ted & Company, is bringing his Peace, Pies, & Prophets Tour to eastern Pennsylvania next week.  In this episode of Connections, Ted talks about his roots in Franconia Conference, the heart behind his show “I’d Like to Buy an Enemy,” and the cool factor–which he may or may not have.

[podcast]http://mosaicmennonites.org/media-uploads/mp3/Ted%20Swartz%20Podcast%20Mix.mp3[/podcast]

Long Haul Hope: Ash Wednesday Thoughts

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Ash Wednesday thoughts on wilderness, identifying with Jesus, and the tenacity of a few Colombian human rights workers

by Samantha E. Lioi

(This blog has been edited for length.  Download the full article here.)

Driven by the Holy Spirit, Jesus is in the wilderness with a lot of people these days.  It’s crowded, and the scarcity of resources keenly felt.  Even so, it is a place of surprising and dogged hope.

Last July I traveled to Colombia for two weeks on a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation.  A truly international group of us – from Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ethiopia, India, and Illinois – became a team who would learn from, accompany, and support the CPT Colombia team and their partners, especially leaders of peasant-farmer or campesino organizations struggling to remain on their land or return to it.

Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.

More than 5 million Colombians have been driven from their homes by armed men paid by international companies who will strip the land of resources until it is barren, then move on to take more.  Colombians who have done small-scale mining on their ancestral land for generations have been driven into a wilderness of displacement, into life as refugees in their own country.  They have organized to advocate for themselves, their communities and their livelihoods, continuing day after day, month after month into years to call for what is right, to demand that their land, their dignity, and their lives be respected.

Since July, I haven’t found very many words to speak about my time in Colombia.  But when I remembered Lent was coming, one of the Ash Wednesday texts from the second letter to the Corinthians reminded me of the Colombian human rights workers.  And it’s also talking to us.

Now is the time to be reconciled, it says – to God, yes, and to each other.  Now is the day of salvation, that is, holistic well-being and abundant life, peace between parent and child and man and woman and paramilitary and campesino, and peace between peoples and nations.  This is the hope of our faith.

So about hope.

Here in the U.S., especially among Anglos, despair is a very different choice than it is in Colombia.  If we give up hope, if we are no longer able or willing to care, if we become paralyzed by the horror and injustice of the truth of so many people’s lives, and if we become overwhelmed by the weight of evil in the world, nothing happens to our homes or our livelihoods.  Something happens to the kind of people we are – our character, our integrity – but we do not, in choosing apathy or hopelessness, immediately put our lives at risk.

It’s not that I never experienced fear while I was in Colombia. But my experience of being vulnerable to violence felt so minor compared to the fear of our Colombian partners that it mainly served to help me understand my U.S. passport-privilege more deeply.  Unlike some of our partners, I have no idea what it feels like to receive threats to my life and the lives of my family members, season after season, because I am telling the truth and calling for justice. Recently, the high-profile community of Las Pavas, whose people have returned to their land, has been accused of never having lived there to begin with, and are being prosecuted for invading and occupying private land – victims and survivors turned into criminals.  No wonder one finds Jesus among them.

When I came back home and resumed my day to day U.S. life, I asked myself a lot of questions: Why do this work explicitly as a Christian, when Christians are failing to act like Jesus left and right?  Do I really believe the kingdom of God is coming?  It seems far away.  The wolf lying down with the lamb and not eating it?  Really?  Every tear wiped away from our eyes, and no more death? Really?  The end of death?

The end of death?

But as these next 40 days of Lent stretch out in front of us, I still come back, hauling my doubt and cynicism, desiring to follow Jesus into the desert again.  I must believe this craziness.  The Bible itself–crazy and beautiful and comforting and deeply challenging to status-quos everywhere.  A God who brings life out of death.  A God who receives our most disordered, dysfunctional parts and gets them singing.

Almost as unbelievably, our partners in Colombia keep going.  With a faith and hope I wonder at and don’t quite understand, they keep struggling.  They keep imagining a time of justice, living their belief that people are created with the capacity to treat each other with dignity.  How can I quit if they haven’t quit?  What keeps me from being as bold and persistent as they are?

Somehow underneath my temptations to despair and give up, I do believe that all creatures, all that was made, all the universe, was created from love and for love.  That this love is underneath everything, that there is plenty of it.  That there is a pull, a wind, the Spirit of Jesus whispering among us, and perhaps shouting above the din, “Come with me and be awake to your hope and your fear.”  Beneath the sounds of killing and anxious constant motion, and in the spaces of clarity and quiet within us, the voice of a poor Nazarene teacher pulling us into the new things that are coming.

Now is the day of salvation – wholesale healing.  Now is the time to choose life, to choose a practice, something simple that will enable us, at the very least, to be aware of our own resistance to following Jesus.  To return to our God, or at least to admit we don’t know how, for that is a step toward a wilderness that could teach us something.  God, with a great sense of humor, trusts us.

Remarkable.

Hope for the duration, for the long haul – modeled for us by people who could have given up long ago.

Read a more detailed update on the Las Pavas community

Download a pdf of the full article.

Conference board and staff review vision & finance goals

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by Emily Ralph

board and staff discuss vision
Staff members listen intently as board members take turns in the “fishbowl,” discussing the VFP.  Pictured here are board members (L to R, inside) Rina Rampogu, Beny Krisbianto, Nelson Shenk, and Randy Nyce and staff members (L to R, outside) Steve Kriss, Noah Kolb, and Conrad Martin.  Photo by Emily Ralph.

Franconia Conference board and staff decided last month to phase out the conference’s Vision and Finance Plan.  The two groups gathered at Wellspring Church of Skippack (Pa.) on January 30 for a day-long retreat to discuss vision for the next five years.

Board and staff members reviewed and discussed the conference’s “E-3” vision (Equipping Leaders to Empower Others to Embrace God’s Mission), priorities (formational, missional, and intercultural), and the Vision and Finance Plan (VFP).  The group moved to consensus that the VFP, which was created in 2007 to give recommendations for decision-making about properties, staffing, and the implementation of the “E-3” Vision, had served an important function but had reached the end of its helpfulness.  The VFP was due for review this year.

The VFP worked to align vision with conference resources and was adopted by delegates at the 2007 Conference Assembly, according to board member Joe Hackman, Salford congregation, an original member of the VFP team.  “The plan was intended to frame the work of conference staff – to give a better picture of what conference is doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it,” he said.

Some of the specific goals of the VFP have been accomplished: development rights for the Indian Creek Farm are being sold with plans to pay off a portion of the mortgage on the conference’s Souderton Center property; the conference office was relocated and downsized; new modes of continuing education for credentialed leaders have been implemented.

Other goals remain important and ongoing, specifically the emphasis on healthy and growing churches, leaders, and connections.  “This is what I believe,” said Noah Kolb, pastor of ministerial leadership, as he reflected on the E-3 vision. “God is looking for communities of believers who are able to follow Jesus as he followed God, who are able to read the signs . . . and respond in specific ministries. But who leads [the disciples] with a sense of knowing where to go and what to do and how to listen? . . . It is well equipped leaders.”

The board and staff agreed that the main role of conference structures and staff was to equip, resource, and connect congregations, conference related ministries, and leaders.  To do this, the VFP will be phased out with new immediate, short-term, and longer range priorities established.  Conference Board will develop these priorities to be reviewed and implemented by staff.

“The church is the primary vehicle for God’s expression in the world,” said board member Jim Longacre, Bally congregation, as others nodded in agreement, “not individuals, but a community.”  The role of the conference, he suggested, is to do only what congregations can’t do alone.

And, added assistant moderator Marta Castillo. Nueva Vida Norristown New Life, to focus on God’s mission. “As we pray for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we know that the church is only an instrument in God’s hand and our work is to be a part of missio Dei [mission of God],” she said.  “At this time, for Franconia Conference, it means that we have to change.”

Even in a time of change and movement, some things will remain the same, said Ertell M. Whigham Jr., executive minister.  “The ageless goals are . . . equipping healthy and growing leaders.  That doesn’t change—it doesn’t matter how many years have passed.”

February 22 (Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent) has been set aside as a day of prayer and discernment for conference board and staff as they continue to seek God’s vision for the conference together.  Please continue to be in prayer for conference leaders; contact Sandy Landes, prayer coordinator, for more information on how you can support this day in prayer.

Former missionaries encourage missional imagination

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Alan and Eleanor Kreider
Eleanor and Alan Kreider: "We become what we worship." Photo by Emily Ralph.

Authors Eleanor and Alan Kreider, longtime missionaries to the United Kingdom, encouraged leaders toward missional imagination at a monthly pastors’ breakfast on February 10.

It is only by worshiping a God who is missional that God’s people can become missional, according to the Kreiders.  We become like the God we worship, Alan said, “What kind of God are we worshiping? The deeper we get into God, the deeper we get into mission.”

They pointed to Herm and Cindy Weaver, parents of a young mission worker who was killed by a 16-year-old boy who was texting while driving.  The parents forgave the boy–and it made headlines.  “They are shaped by their worship of a God who forgives them to be people who are forgiving in their world,” said Alan.

The Kreiders, who published Worship and Mission After Christendom in 2011, believe that worship fans mission.

The Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program, which started in Canada in 1974 and is now an international agency, began because one person asked “Wouldn’t it be neat?” said Eleanor.

“‘Wouldn’t it be neat?'” Alan added. “There is the missional imagination coming into play!”

Handouts from the Kreiders

The Krieders’ PowerPoint presentation

Pastoring after the Storm

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by Gwen Groff, Bethany, bethanym@vermontel.net

Hurricane Irene
Route 100 in Plymouth, Vermont after Tropical Storm Irene tore through the region. Photo by Brandon Bergey.

A friend told me a story about a minister who went down to the train station every morning to watch the trains pass. Finally someone asked why he did this. Was he considering throwing himself in front of one of them? Was he wishing he could hop on one and get out of town? Was he praying for the people as they passed through? The minister said, “I just love to see something moving that I don’t have to push.”

Although I’m not much of a pusher, I can sometimes identify with the desire to see movement for which I’m not responsible. But the community response to Tropical Storm Irene, which hit Vermont on Sunday, August 28, 2011, was a moving train I was not pushing. Instead I felt I was running to catch up with what was already on the move.

I was out of town when the storm hit. My husband Robert and I were at the beach in Maine celebrating our 20th anniversary when Irene poured eight inches of rain on our town and washed away roads, bridges, power lines, homes and land.

In Maine the seas were high but we saw little rain or storm damage. We were oblivious to Irene’s impact until we happened to meet some other Vermonters on the beach who told us that our governor had declared a state of emergency. We started paying attention to the news and trying to phone home. We couldn’t reach the friends who were keeping our kids but our neighbors told us not to bother trying to come home early. The roads to our house were closed and the road between us and our children was washed away.

I called our neighbors to ask how they were doing. When I talked with one member of the family she said, “It’s like a war zone here. No power, boulders in the middle of lawns, houses washed under the bridge up the road . . .” When I talked with her husband, he said, “It’s like a big party here. There’s no power so we’ve got the grill going, there’s lots of stuff thawing in the freezer we need to eat up . . .”

When we got home on Tuesday, we started seeing the damage in our neighborhood and hearing the extent of the damage in our small state. Five people drowned, 1400 were driven from their homes. Two hundred bridges were damaged and 530 miles of roads shut down.

With power still out and roads around us yet closed, we had little to do but walk around to our neighbors and see what needed to be done. Some people immediately got busy coordinating relief supplies and equipment. We were asked if we could use the church vestibule as a distribution point, but it soon became clear we’d need a bigger space, and the Grange (town) hall next door became the local hub of activity.

I was slow to catch up with what my role should be in this situation. I mostly listened a lot as people shared their stories. When electricity was restored I baked bread and took it to neighbors who had been evacuated and people who were cleaning mud out of their basements. Many were sorting and drying out their possessions.

Several people suggested Bethany have a special service. Vermont is a notoriously secular state, and only one other time—after 9/11—did people in this community ask for a worship service. But the week after Irene several people said they would like time to come together and pray. One person from the community suggested that we have a Eucharist but use water instead of the usual elements. Water is what caused us so much trauma. But water is also what we most needed, clean water to drink, water to wash our hands and shower and flush, water to cleanse the contaminated soil.

So we gathered and sang and prayed and had a water ritual. I had planned several readings and songs to follow the ritual, but sharing the water was the start of people sharing stories, and that went on for more than an hour. People didn’t want to leave.

Mennonites are used to being the experts in relief and disaster services. Motivated by our faith, we are good at helping. But after Irene we saw everyone helping their neighbors. Who knew so many Vermonters had heavy equipment stashed in their sheds? People in our town joyfully brought out whatever big rig they had and repaired roads, built makeshift bridges, refortified river banks, and removed debris. One neighbor said, “They’re like boys playing in a sandbox.”

People became more expressive of their compassion. Neighbors who normally barely waved at each other had conversations and came into each other’s houses and helped sort through one another’s chaos. Neighbors in isolated pockets shared meals and water, sump pumps and generators. In this community of independent, self-sufficient Vermonters, people gave and accepted help.

For some, fear lingers. The sound of water brings anxiety. And many people are exhausted by the process of haggling with insurance companies and FEMA. But the community has become more kind and connected, and there is no turning around that train.

God’s new thing in 2012

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by Ertell Whigham, Executive Minister

As I think through all of the ways that we have heard and seen the testimony of God working among us in our communities and congregations in 2011, I continue to be encouraged by the unlimited possibilities of what can be accomplished when we share our God-given time, talent and resources with a genuine spirit of cooperation. In this issue we recount some of what has come about over the last year and I notice that God is continually calling some new movement forward.

Revelation 21:1-8 tells the story of God doing a new thing. It’s a new Heaven, new earth, new relationships and more. This is not merely recycled, but fresh, recent, unused, unworn. The basic message is that through an encounter with God–nothing has to remain the same. We are not merely stretched or reconstituted but transformed. It is important that we understand that my suggestion of a new experience is not in any way saying that what God is doing or has done needs to be updated or improved but should be seen as an invitation to allow our total being to be transformed by God’s new thing. We also know that God alone brings forth new creations, even in our new human inventions we are simply repurposing elements that God has made in the past. New creations require the Spirit to bring life.

This past year much has happened that has enabled us get a taste of God’s new thing. Sometimes what may seem to be the same experience is indeed new when we allow God to give us a new attitude or help us to see through new lenses. For example when I read the story of how the community worked together in Vermont following the devastation of Hurricane Irene, for me, it gave a new meaning to the history and tradition of “barnraising”. Or when I see the collaborative efforts of Plains and Perkasie congregations and our Conference partnership with Eastern District as we work through our shared vision for youth ministry, it opens the ways for many new possibilities and models for ministry. In reading of Indian Creek’s initiative and listening to the experiences of all of our CRM’s, I know that even with long and faithful ministries, it’s possible for God to interrupt and create something new.

In this issue, Jim Laverty and Rina Rampogu write of what Conference board and staff heard over this last year of listening carefully to the life of congregations in the Conference. We are a varied assortment of God’s expressions of love, struggle and faith. In this same struggle, a long struggle at that, we notice that congregations are also feeling God call forth new things from their midst. It is this very thing that Franconia Conference, as we are together, must nurture to call forth, to do our best to be prepared for and transformed by God’s new thing among us. This means new relationships. This means seeing differently. This means changed perspectives. This doesn’t mean that our past is discredited, but recognizes that God is in fact asking us in this space and time to be transformed, to let that new thing occur, to no longer simply be stretched like elastic only to snap back into the same shape, but to be transformed like alchemy through the touch of God that makes all things new.

The year 2012 is not an ending as the world claims around us, rather a beginning in which God makes everything fresh and full of hope again through the life of Christ, the power of the Spirit and the ongoing witness of God’s people. Isn’t it amazing, our God, the same yesterday, today and forever, makes every day new, can renew all things and is even expecting to transform our lives, our hearts, our congregations, our ministries, and our relationships so that the message of Jesus Christ might break forth through us even in 2012.