National News

Child Abuse Prevention Month

April 14, 2016 by Conference Office

As the month of April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, the conference hopes that you and your congregations will join other religious leaders and government officials around the country to encourage all to take steps to prevent child abuse. Franconia Conference continues to be committed to helping to end abuse and neglect of all people within our congregations and communities. This month with the focus on children Dove’s Nest, a nonprofit organization working to provide information to faith communities for the protection of children and youth, has developed a tool kit for congregations to use.

This kit includes bulletin inserts with information on prevention, prayers and responsive readings, and includes information on how individual members and congregations can protect children and youth and work to end abuse and neglect in their communities. In addition there is a children’s story for use in Sunday School or worship, promotional information about educational tools, and a list of internet resources.

Locally Handmade Comforter Appears in the New York Times

April 13, 2016 by Conference Office

by Barbie Fischer

Often when items are donated to a ministry, the recipient of the donation is unknown. The Vincent Sewing Circle ladies are well aware of this fact as they have been making comforters by hand since 1934 and donating them to people in need, in recent years mainly to Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Having donated numerous handmade comforters over the past 82 years it was exciting for the ladies of the Sewing Circle to discover one of their comforters in a photograph in the New York Times.

On March 22^nd, in the LENS Blog of the New York Times appeared an article entitled, “Dilley, Tex., Home to the Nation’s Largest Immigration Detention Center.” The article is about a multiplatform project known as “Welcome to Dilley” by a creative cooperative known as Black Box. As explained in the article, the project dives into a town at the heart of the national immigration debate, Dilley, Texas. Through the project, Black Box tells the story of immigration detention in the United States by sharing the stories of the detainees and the other residents in the small town where the largest immigration detention center in the United States is housed.

One of the woman featured in the project is Yadira López Lucas. Flipping through the slideshow in the New York Times article and appearing in a New York Time post on Facebook one can see Yadira and her three children sitting on a bed in a Mennonite House in San Antonio. The house is run by Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), in partnership with San Antonio Mennonite Church. The caption reads, “After being released last spring from the Karnes detention center about an hour and a half from Dilley, she [Yadira] had become the Mennonite House’s de facto caretaker as she waited for her case to wind its way through the system. With her were her sons, David and Daniel, and her daughter, Melany.” The comforter that appears on in the lower left-hand corner of the photograph of Yadira and her children was made by the women at the Vincent Sewing Circle. (Click here to view the photo.)

Linda Lindberg, of Vincent Mennonite Church and a member of the Vincent Sewing Circle spotted the photo graph and says, “My reaction to seeing it wasn’t anything special. I just recognized it (the corner of the comforter on the bed at bottom left) and was thankful that I could see the end result of our labor.”

She goes on to say, “I looked further at the picture for my own “proof” to see if it was ours and recognized several pieces of the printed fabric–especially the black with printed flowers on the band around the outside of the patches. I remembered trying to decide what color of thread to sew the fold over with because of the contrast of black and medium blue (I went with blue). The blue backing is part of a very large bolt that we found several of at Goodville Fabric Outlet for less than a dollar a yard and an unusual 110 inch width, so I recognized that also. The pattern of the patches (diagonal stripes where there was enough of one color/print) is typical of the many, many tops Marjorie Benner, of Souderton Homes, has stitched over the years. She also cut smaller patches than is typical for these “refugee” comforters. I have become familiar with the prints/colors of material used in many of our comforters from knotting them, sandwiching them, pinning, and hemming them. So I was quite sure it was one that we had worked on!”

The Vincent Sewing Circle started in 1934 as a place for women to use their skills to help others. Women from several Mennonite Churches in the Pottstown area came together to form the group. Currently the group meets in a home owned by Vincent Mennonite Church every second Wednesday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm and breaks for devotions and lunch. If you are interested in joining the group please contact Vincent Mennonite Church at office@vincentmc.org.

Reflection on Hope for the Future

March 2, 2016 by Conference Office

Recently, three of our Franconia Conference members took part in Hope for the Future, an MCUSA gathering of leaders of color from across the church. These gatherings are designed to explore the ways that power, privilege, cultural bias and racism function in our denomination. As Franconia Conference continues to strive to be intercultural and give all people leadership opportunities, this event provides a way for our conference to speak into the denomination and also to gain resources to help equip our leaders.

Colleen Brockington, member of Norristown New Life Nueva Vida Mennonite Church attended the most recent Hope for the Future gathering. Read more about her experience at the event here: https://themennonite.org/questions-and-concerns-determination-and-confidence/

Loving Our Muslim Neighbors

March 2, 2016 by Conference Office

by Esther Good

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, France in November, and in San Bernardino, California in December, many have struggled with the question of how we should relate to our Muslim neighbors. Tensions have remained high, exacerbated by the election season, and the answer to this question has reared its head in the form of some ugly anti-Islamic sentiment, including harassment and acts of vandalism against mosques in the Philadelphia area and around the country. Several congregations in Franconia Conference have asked this question in a different way: How can we relate to our Muslim neighbors in a way that is Christ-like?

LovingMuslimNeighbors — Photo by Preston Sean Photography, orig. published by Mennonite World Review, Sept. 16, 2013

Philadelphia Praise Center (PPC) is one congregation that has a long history of interacting with its surrounding Muslim community. Shortly after PPC was first started in 2006, Pastor Aldo Siahaan, himself an immigrant from Indonesia, reached out to the Imam of a group of Indonesian Muslims and offered them the use of the church building for evening prayers during Ramadan. They didn’t accept his invitation that year, but called back the following year and asked to use the space, beginning a longstanding friendship between PPC and what is now Masjid Al Falah.

Lindy Backues, an elder at PPC, joined the church when he and his family were deported from Indonesia after living there for 18 years. “I’ve been ‘sent home’. I know what that feels like,” he says in response to national comments against Muslim immigrants. “I don’t want to send Muslims ‘home’. They’re my friends. So at PPC, we’re trying to be different—to reach out to visitors and guests and the sojourner in our midst. In the process of receiving the other, we become who we are, because God received us when we were the other.”

Salford Mennonite Church also has a longstanding relationship with its Muslim neighbors which began when Salford reached out to them in friendship after the events of 9/11. Out of that gesture began a close relationship with a family from Lebanon who lives nearby. And in turn, that family has walked alongside and assisted Salford as it has resettled Muslim refugees from Iraq and Iran.

After recent Islamophobic rhetoric hit national news, Salford contacted the Imam of North Penn Mosque. “We had a meeting to express that as Christians we desire to have a relationship with him and his community,” says Joe Hackman, Lead Pastor. “We want to let them know that we’re there for them to offer support in whatever form they might need. As Anabaptists, we know what it is to be persecuted because of our faith. So it makes sense that we would want to protect other religious minorities who are experiencing persecution.”

For Doylestown Mennonite Church, which has recently become a co-sponsor for a Muslim refugee family from Afghanistan, the decision to reach out was simply an act of love, says KrisAnne Swartley, Minister for the Missional Journey. “This is just a way for us to live out faithfulness to Jesus.”

The Bible is full of verses regarding loving our neighbors. In Mark 12 as Jesus is questioned by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem they ask what the greatest commandment is, to which Jesus answers in verse 30-31, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” It is great to see Franconia Conference churches living their faith by loving their neighbors.

Esther Good is a member at Whitehall Mennonite Church.

Reflections on Lois Gunden from a Mennonite Jew

February 4, 2016 by Conference Office

by Barbie Fischer

Lois Clemens — Lois Gunden was the first woman to teach Sunday School at Plains.

There has been a buzz around the past few weeks as news came that Lois Gunden, the first woman to teach a Sunday School Class at Plains Mennonite Church and one of their first elders, was to be honored as Righteous Among the Nations at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. on January 27. She was first given the award in 2013, but only now was the ceremony taking place, the first such official ceremony held in the United States. Lois and three others were honored at the event in which President Barack Obama spoke. She is one of five Americans to ever receive the award. The award is given through the Yad Vashem, a living memorial to the holocaust, a prestigious award in the Jewish community. When I heard the news of the ceremony, it was a joyous moment and one that provided me with a renewed sense of hope.

The past year has been a roller coaster for my identity. With discussion in MCUSA and our conference around the on-going war between Israel and Palestine, the findings discussed at Mennonite World Conference that Mennonites may have played an active role with the Nazi regime in World War II, and the fact that more and more people seem to be assuming that being Jewish means you support the state of Israel, I have been led to often stop and contemplate: is it really possible for me to hold these two pieces of my identity together, can I really be a Jewish Mennonite?

I was raised in an Anabaptist home and when it comes to being Jewish, my family is far more Anabaptist then Jewish. My parents were both raised as Christians and don’t observe any Jewish traditions. However, at a young age I became enamored with stories from the holocaust and reading about the lives of Jews in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I was struck by stories like Lois Gunden’s of people who risked their own lives to save others.

I remember my father once saying that Jesus was a Jew and the Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree, so Judaism is the trunk and roots of Christianity (Romans 11:11-24). It was soon after that that my family allowed me to begin to observe some of the Jewish traditions. These traditions have always been life-giving to me; times of reflection and deeper contemplation on God’s word, often reaffirming my faith in Jesus Christ.

Recently, however, I have found this piece of me often in conflict with my more-predominant Mennonite side and it has been difficult for me to grasp why. James Hamrick, of North Suburban Mennonite Church in Libertyville, Ill., recently wrote an article that appeared in The Mennonite entitled, Jesus was a Jew: A challenge to anti-Judaism in our churches. As I read the article it resonated with me. I have felt this growing tension between my being a Mennonite and a Jew. It is not a new tension — after all I am the descendant of recent German immigrant and a European Jew. Recently, though, as we work to stand with the Palestinians and bring voice to their plight, our words and actions have felt harsh to my Jewish side. As a peace church we work so hard to stand with the oppressed and right now in the Middle East, it is clear the Palestinians are more oppressed than the Israelis. Yet this war has a deep complex root system that I think we often fail to recognize. As Mennonites we also have a deep complex history when it comes to the people involved in this conflict. There is a tension here, a tension to pick sides, yet as a peace church, as peacebuilders, are we not called to build bridges between the sides?

The President began his remarks at the Righteous Among the Nations ceremony with a teaching from the Talmud I have posted in my home: “if a person destroys one life, it is as if they’ve destroyed an entire world, and if a person saves one life, it is as if they’ve saved an entire world.” The teaching says “person”, not Jew, not Israeli, not Palestinian, or any other people group — just person. When I look at my best friend’s husband, I do not see a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, even though that is who he is. I see my brother, my fellow Christian, my friend, a person.

Lois Gunden went to France in October of 1941 in her early twenties to work with refugee children. As deportations began, she protected the Jewish children from inevitable death at Auschwitz. President Barak Obama stated at the event, “The four lives we honor tonight make a claim on our conscience, as well as our moral imagination. We hear their stories, and we are forced to ask ourselves, under the same circumstances, how would we act? How would we answer God’s question, where are you? … Would we have the extraordinary compassion of Lois Gunden? She wrote that she simply hoped to “add just another ray of love to the lives of these youngsters” who had already endured so much. And by housing and feeding as many Jewish children as she could, her ray of love always shone through, and still burns within the families of those she saved.”

As we look to the on-going war between Israel and Palestine, as we go to the margins, as we live out being the peace church we are, sharing God’s love, may we acknowledge our own role good or bad in history and present day, may we learn from the past, and may we remember the story of Lois Gunden and others like her. As she did, may our rays of love always shine through, to all people in all places.

To read more about the life of Lois Gunden in France click here: https://themennonite.org/feature/righteous-gentile-lois-gunden-righteous-gentile/

For more on how Lois was nominated click here: http://mosaicmennonites.org/lois-gunden-clemens-named-righteous-among-the-nations/

A Conversation On Race

January 21, 2016 by Conference Office

The bill proposing Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) Day as a federal holiday was first introduced to Congress in 1968, four days after Martin Luther King’s assassination. 15 years would pass before that bill was voted into law in 1983. Still not all states recognized the federal holiday. In fact, in 2000, South Carolina became the last state to make MLK Day a paid holiday for all state employees. Previously, employees could choose between celebrating it or one of three Confederate-related holidays. Many states to this day recognize the federal holiday but still do not call it MLK Day, instead opting to refer to it as Human Rights Day, or Civil Rights Day. The contention over recognizing this Federal Holiday seems to highlight the continued tension around race in our country, a topic many shy away form discussing. However, Cyneatha Millsaps, lead pastor of Community Mennonite Church in Markham, Illinois, and Annette Brill Bergstresser, editorial director for Mennonite Church USA, face this topic head on in “Undoing Racism: A Conversation” Posted in The Mennonite Blog this week.

Footnote: Historical information on MLK Day taken from “The History of Martin Luther King Day” by Shmuel Ross and David Johnson

Standing for the Safety of Brothers and Sisters in Philadelphia

January 7, 2016 by Conference Office

By Barbie Fischer

"As a Photojournalist ... I try to freeze the moments so we can look back and see the spirit of freedom and love, the process to be accepted and get a better life. " - Bam Tribuwono — “As a Photojournalist … I try to freeze the moments so we can look back and see the spirit of freedom and love, the process to be accepted and get a better life. ” – Bam Tribuwono

Over the last month Philadelphia has been abuzz with the news that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter planned to reverse the city’s “sanctuary order” that has been in place since April 2014. The sanctuary order protects Philadelphia residents from deportation by preventing the police from collaborating and sharing information with the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. This news impacts the Conference’s city-based congregations, particularly those with significant numbers of recent immigrants including Centro de Alabanza de Filadelfia, Indonesian Light Church, Nations Worship Center and Philadelphia Praise Center (PPC).

Pastor Aldo Siahaan, Philadelphia Praise Center and Conference LEADership Minister, stated that the reversal of this order “affects the safety of our congregation and community.”

As a largely immigrant congregation, Philadelphia Praise Center became a member of the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia more than five years ago. The New Sanctuary Movement is a faith-based immigrant rights organization whose mission is to “build community across faith, ethnicity, and class in [their] work to end injustices against immigrants regardless of status, express radical welcome for all, and ensure that values of dignity, justice, and hospitality are lived out in practice and upheld in policy.”

Pastor Aldo said, “The New Sanctuary Movement is answering and helping with the needs of PPC in terms of immigration matters.”

“We are living in the great country of America and we will work together to make this country even better, and be a blessing to others.” – Bam Tribuwono

On December 11, when Mayor Nutter was to sign the reversal of the sanctuary order, New Sanctuary Movement called on faith leaders to join an action at City Hall to show the disagreement with the reversal of the sanctuary order which organizers of the action said puts families at risk of being torn apart and the language used by the Mayor’s administration about the reversal has perpetuated Islamaphobia that is currently widespread in the country.

Pastor Aldo, along with others from PPC, Fred Kauffman, interim pastor at Methacton congregation and Amy Yoder McLaughlin, pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church, with many others from Philadelphia and the surrounding area, immigrants and non-immigrants, documented and undocumented, answered the call.

Bam Tribuwono, a member of PPC and a photojournalist, was one of those who answered the call to action on December 11^th. He said, “As an immigrant and Christian, I have been in situations where I’ve faced the possibilities of being deported. The immigration system is so broken. For me it’s pretty simple, let’s get back to what Jesus said in Ephesians 2:19-22. Jesus clearly said that we are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens and members of the household of God. We are all family and we have to protect each other. To give sanctuary for those who need protection.”

(Click on thumbnails to see images — all photos courtesy of Bam Tribuwono; used with permission © bambang tribuwono photography)

The action included speakers at a rally in front of City Hall, along with a time of prayer. A few New Sanctuary Movement leaders went into City Hall and requested to speak with Mayor Nutter. At that time, others in the movement blocked the entrances to the building to raise awareness about the possibility of Mayor Nutter signing the reversal of the sanctuary order.

“I’ve been attending a few New Sanctuary Movement rallies,” said Pastor Aldo, “but at this one the police were very harsh and I had never seen this before, how the police pulled on the protestors.”

When asked about his reasons for attending the action, Pastor Aldo said, “As a Christian this is the way that we show our care about foreigners and strangers. From Matthew 25, we are told to welcome strangers and foreigners; maybe we are entertaining angels or Jesus. As a Mennonite and a Christian we need to act the words of God — not just read them and meditate on them. That is why it is important for Christians to support this kind of movement, standing with our immigrant brothers and sisters.”

Fred Kauffman, stated the he had heard of the action being planned at City Hall but had not planned on going until the night before at a Kingdom Builders Network Bible study when he learned of Pastor Aldo’s involvement with the organization coordinating the action. He said, “At that point I knew that I had to go, because this was an important action to Pastor Aldo and the people in his congregation. At the action I was pleased to see Pastor Amy Yoder-McGlaughlin as well as Pastor Aldo and other friends that I knew. I prayed for the protesters risking arrest, ‘May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’”

Mayor Nutter did not sign the reversal on December 11^th, but did do so three days later. Without the sanctuary order, Pastor Aldo says, “we live in fear and live under the radar. We hide. I need to comfort and protect my congregation and make sure they are ok. How can I tell them to be a blessing if they live in fear and hide themselves?”

With a new year, came new hope, and a new mayor. Mayor Jim Kenney took office on Monday, January 4^th and one of his first actions as mayor was to reinstate the sanctuary order. Many rejoiced over this news.

Pastor Aldo has said it is important that those among us who are immigrants feel welcome and supported. This can be done through prayer, fellowship and supporting the efforts of people like the those in the New Sanctuary Movement.

A current campaign of the New Sanctuary Movement that could use support is their efforts to have driver licenses accessible to undocumented people in Pennsylvania. Eleven states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico currently offer driver licenses to those who are undocumented. Not having access to a driver’s license means that a person undocumented risks deportation anytime they drive — whether to go to work, school, to access health care, or to buy groceries.

To learn more about New Sanctuary Movement visit: http://www.sanctuaryphiladelphia.org/. To visit PPC, Indonesian Light Church, Centro de Alabanza or Nations Worship Center, visit the conference directory here for service times and locations; all are willing to translate their services into English as needed.

MDS Monitors Flooding in the Carolinas

October 8, 2015 by Conference Office

(Statement From Mennonite Disaster Service)

“As the disaster continues to unfold in the Carolinas and surrounding states, our thoughts and prayers are with the people in the midst of flooding from drenching rains. MDS representatives are in touch with churches and our contacts in the area and other faith-based organizations. We are watching and gathering information and taking appropriate steps to determine where and when we might respond. More information will be posted [HERE] when available.”

Contributions are being accepted and designated as “Carolina Floods”.

While the rains may have stopped, South Carolina still faces a host of concerns, including cresting rivers and failing dams. Though it is still an evolving situation, our prayers and assistance are clearly needed. Few service opportunities are as memorable, humbling and impactful as working on a disaster relief site. Anyone can volunteer! Those skilled in construction and/or leadership are essential, but they can use and train any adult volunteer, regardless of skill. Volunteers need to be willing to reach out to people in need, risk becoming a part of a new experience and serve with a positive and Christ-like heart. While projects in the Carolinas are yet to be organized, there are currently numerous short and long term opportunities with MDS.

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