Peace Mennonite Archives - Mosaic Mennonites

Project Haven — Scott Roth works on the East Greenville building with Tyler, Cory, and Darian, students from Upper Perk high school. Photo by Tyler Logan.

by Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

The moment that Scott Roth unlocked Peace Mennonite’s old building for the first time in September of 2012, he began to tear up. One of the high school students with him asked why he was so emotional. “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” he responded.

The journey to open what is now Project Haven, a community center in East Greenville (Pa.), had been long and circuitous. Roth, youth pastor of Eastern District Conference’s New Eden Fellowship, had been a part of UPPEN (Upper Perk Prayer & Evangelism Network) and the regional ministerium for years. In 2011, these groups faced a community crisis when a high school student committed suicide. Leaders from the groups met with reprentatives from Upper Perkiomen School District to find out how they could help.

The school district wanted an organization that could be connected with all the major players in the community: school, police, faith communities. And they needed this organization to provide an afterschool program, some sort of a community center that would not just entertain the students, but help to develop character and provide a calm in the storm of their lives.

Meanwhile, Franconia Conference’s Peace congregation decided to close. The members of the congregation, who had been active in their community, wanted the building to be used to continue God’s work in East Greenville. Even as they grieved the end of their congregation, they believed that new life would result. They chose to celebrate their last service together on Easter 2011, dreaming about what God would resurrect in their space.

Peace’s LEADership Minister, Jenifer Eriksen Morales, called a meeting of leaders from local congregations—some Mennonite and some from other denominations—to have a time of visioning together. The leaders met, prayed together, looked at the building, and dreamed about what God might want to do in that place. Seeds were planted and some of the pastors began to think about how their existing ministries might find a home in the old church building.

Even as the pastors were meeting and dreaming, Roth and team of leaders from New Eden were starting an afterschool program called Refuge at the Upper Perk high school. The space was not entirely conducive to the type of activities Roth wanted to do with the students and he continued to look around for a new space. After months of searching and uncertainty, Roth’s dream and the East Greenville building collided.

As soon as plans were finalized, Roth began working with a team of student volunteers from the high school to renovate the building. He formed an advisory team with leaders from his own church and Franconia Conference’s Finland and Perkiomenville congregations. Soon other dreamers began to show up with ideas: the local senior center asked to move into the building and use it weekday mornings when the students were still in school; members of the former congregation joined Roth with ideas of ways to rejuvenate their existing clothing ministry; a member of Family Worship Center organized a bar alternative to utilize the space on Friday and Saturday nights.
“It’s like in Ephesians where it talks about the different parts of the body working together,” Roth said. “If the body [of Christ] works together, we will achieve great things!”

In March—just in time for Easter—Project Haven will move into its new location: three blocks away from the local junior high school and five minutes from the senior high school. While the project still needs supplies like tables and chairs, volunteers for continuing renovation, and financial donations for their ongoing work, Roth is amazed at how God has brought together people and resources so that this dream could come to life.

The dream has come a long way since pastors were praying together about possibilities, Eriksen Morales observed. “I’m excited that the space is being repurposed,” she said with a big smile. “From the beginning, God has been continually ‘bringing into being’—it’s exciting to see what God is bringing into being in East Greenville!”

by Samantha Lioi, Whitehall

When Dave Benner was 13 years old, handing out bulletins in his home church of Finland Mennonite, Harold Fly stopped and said to him, “David! Oh, to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.” This passing comment stuck with him. Welcoming people is important, he thought.

Dave continued to learn hospitality as a gift the church gives in a culture where too few have experiences of welcome they can count on. As a musician who plays banjo, guitar, bass guitar, and mandolin, Dave was creating welcome with church music and worship teams from a young age.

His musical gifts were recognized early on by Leroy Wismer, who brought him to Bowery Mission in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to play guitar in a Sunday night worship service for two hundred homeless men. Though only about 16, Dave was expected to go up front with the men to be available for counsel at the end of the service. “I was scared stiff,” he says, “but my understanding has always been to [offer care] not for results but to plant a seed.”

In the mid-sixties, Dave’s draft board approved an alternative to military service through a Mennonite Voluntary Service unit in New Haven, Connecticut. During this time he met Priscilla, a singer in a women’s quintet performing at a local prison where he also was singing. Thought she wasn’t Mennonite, Dave’s V.S. leader encouraged him to explore the relationship. They married five years later.

Peace co-pastors Duane Hershberger and Dave Benner (right). Photo by Miriam Kline.

In 1970, when Dave was called to serve as Finland’s first full-time pastor, he asked to be permitted to go to school. They agreed he would, and a member of another congregation was willing to pay for his first year at Northeast Bible Institute. Over the years, he acquired explicit and instinctive ministry skills, including learning to notice “the eye drift of a group:” where people looked during a meeting, who they were trusting to lead them.

David needed such skills when, in 1990, he responded to Franconia Conference’s goal to plant 50 churches in 10 years. With six other couples, he and Priscilla and Rich and Fern Moyer started a new community of faith. Shalom Christian Fellowship grew and flourished. With Rich, Dave served as a co-pastor from the beginning, and continued to offer his many musical gifts in worship. Later, Duane Hershberger joined Rich as co-pastor. Shalom became a place where people could belong—where people who had experienced rejection elsewhere received the space and love to become part of a community.

In 2005, after several families had moved away, Shalom took a 6-month hiatus. Dave and Priscilla visited all around and found nothing quite like their eclectic, beloved congregation. They missed it, and Duane did too. They re-opened as Peace Mennonite Church in May of 2006, trying on some new understandings of leadership until they closed on Easter 2011.

Peace built connections in the wider community through the Clothes Line, a clothing giveaway that is still serving folks in town under Fern Moyer’s leadership. Peace also nurtured ecumenical friendships, joining with four other congregations across denominational lines for a community Lenten series, with each congregation hosting a service and every minister participating in leadership.

David continues to play music far and wide—making open space for relationships to grow. Like many before him and many to come, he’s given time and love and labor, planting and watering, and standing back. This pastor’s path of ministry has been winding and joyful, difficult, disappointing, faithful, worth wondering at—the familiar sounds of God’s creative work.

Resurrected space brings new life in East Greenville

Seeds and strings and welcome spaces

Peace Mennonite

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