Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Perkionmenville

Adopt a Street: Franconia Conference congregations participate in prayer evangelism

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by Emily Ralph

Harleysville, PA — “Doing church is pretty difficult today,” admitted Charlie Ness, pastor of Perkiomenville Mennonite. This wasn’t new information for the other pastors gathered for the June 9 Pastors Breakfast.

“For 40 years I thought I had to build the church,” he said. Then he realized that Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18 that HE would build the church. And it was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders.

Ness, along with Scott Landes of Frederick Mennonite and Peter Smith of Hope Community Church, were sharing their vision for prayer evangelism. On its most basic level, prayer evangelism is talking to God about people before talking to people about God, Smith said.

All three pastors are involved with UPPEN: the Upper Perk Prayer Evangelism Network, a network of churches in the Perkiomen Valley (eastern PA) that works together to bring about transformation in their region. Their most recent project is Adopt a Street, a movement that covers 100% of the streets in their region with prayer.

“Adopt a Street is about changing the spiritual climate in your community,” said Smith. Then he asked, “What would happen is all the streets in your community were being prayed for daily for the next twelve months?” To illustrate his point, he showed a video of the Adopt a Street movement in Newark, NJ. In the first month of Newark’s program, the crime rate dropped by 33%.

Landes has experienced this transformation firsthand as he and his family pray for their street every day. According to Luke 10, there are four steps to prayer evangelism in your neighborhood, he said: first, praying blessings over your neighbors; second, engaging in fellowship with them to create connection; third, ministering God’s love to your neighbors by caring for them; and finally, proclaiming the kingdom by sharing God’s Word.

“Adopt a Street is not a program, but a lifestyle,” Landes shared. It’s about “being available to God for divine appointments each day.”

For more information about UPPEN or Adopt a Street, visit PrayUpperPerk.org.

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[podcast]http://www.mosaicmennonites.org/media-uploads/Adopt-a-Street.mp3[/podcast]

Adopt a Street Handout
Adopt a Street Information Packet

Maná de Vida Eterna springs alive along the Hudson River

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Charles A. Ness, Perkiomenville
perkmc@verizon.net

The Hudson River Valley just north of New York City is a beautiful historic area that attracts both vacationers and residents. Towns with names like, Tarrytown, Ossining, Sleepy Hollow and Croton on the Hudson, have had an idyllic appeal for hundreds of years.

It is also home to many Spanish-speaking persons from a variety of Central and South American countries, including Daniel and Jacky Lopez and their two sons who came to the United States 15 years ago from Chile. Daniel works as a maintenance supervisor at a children’s hospital and Jacky is employed in domestic services.

Years ago the Lord delivered Daniel and Jacky from a life of addiction and healed their marriage. This gave them a passion to share Christ’s love with others who need to know abundant life in Christ. For several years they have had a desire to be part of a church that could effectively reach the Spanish-speaking persons in Ossining. Daniel had led several persons to Christ who found it difficult to assimilate into their existing church. After prayer they decided to begin a new fellowship for these and other persons.

In February 2010 the group began a Friday evening meeting in the Lopez home attended by several persons from their home church and those who had recently professed Christ. It was very small at first but as persons came to faith in Christ they outgrew the Lopez living room. In December 2010 they began renting space in another church building. This new church, Maná de Vida Eterna, has adopted the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective as their statement of faith.

This group got connected to Franconia Conference when Pastor Alfredo Navea from Viña del Mar, Chile, who had been friends with the Lopez family for many years, introduced them to Kirk Hanger, Pastor of New Hope Fellowship, Alexandria, VA, and Charles Ness, Pastor of Perkiomenville Mennonite Church. This began a relationship where Daniel and his family attended Perkiomenville’s annual church retreat in August and persons from Perkiomenville and Franconia Conference have gone to worship services in New York. With Kirk serving as LEAD Minister for Perkiomenville, he and Charlie came together to support Daniel and the Manna of Eternal Life Church.

In December representatives of Franconia Conference, Steve Kriss, and Noel Santiago, persons from Philadelphia Praise Center, along with Kirk, Charlie and several men from Perkiomenville, attended the dedication of their new worship space. It was an encouragement to this emerging church to have representatives from the broader church present to bless this new beginning. In February 2011, Kirk and Charlie assisted with the first baptism. It is anticipated that this summer both the New Hope and Perkiomenville congregations will assist Manna of Eternal Life with outreach efforts which will further enhance the relationship and be mutually beneficial to all the churches.

A Franconia Conference Missional Operations Grant has provided important seed money for rent and other start up costs for this emerging church. Additionally, Daniel is participating in Eastern Mennonite Seminary’s STEP program which provides training for people who are licensed for pastoral ministry or have been encouraged to consider pastoral ministry—who may not have college, Bible school, or seminary training. STEP combines spiritual and personal formation with content-based learning in Bible, theology, leadership, and ministry skills in a very practical way. Daniel attends a class in Philadelphia one Saturday a month. This is equipping him to be a leader and giving him an understanding of Anabaptist/Mennonite theology and practice.

This Partner in Mission relationship between Franconia Conference, New Hope Fellowship and Perkiomenville Mennonite Church and the Manna of Eternal Life Church is another example of how the Lord is working through relationships to connect congregations and conferences across what may have formerly been seen as boundaries that were not to be crossed. This new paradigm allows for authentic relationships that are both life giving and life sustaining and enables both congregations and the conference to participate in the fresh move of God. The Spirit is flowing from the Potomac River and Perkiomen Creek to the Hudson River to build the Kingdom of God.

Perfect Fellowship

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by Emily Ralph

“We didn’t grow up hearing about this,” one of the bishop’s staff members told me.

Some of the leaders gathered at the Southeast Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s assembly had heard about the reconciliation process, but for others, this was a brand new story.  “In the 16th century, the early Lutheran reformers, furious that the so-called Anabaptists did not share the same theology of baptism, used their influence and power to persecute Mennonite Christians,” Lutheran Bishop Claire Burkat said.  Her words were greeted with an audible response and she nodded her acknowledgement at the horror.  “Not just harass,” she added, “but torture and murder those with whom they disagreed theologically.”

The familiar platform at Franconia Mennonite Meetinghouse was covered by the symbols of the Lutheran faith: the bread and the cup on the altar, the staff and the cross, the large bowl of incense, and candles, lots of candles.  The room was packed with people of all shapes and sizes, men and women, white-haired clergy in collars and trendy young adults.

Pastor Charlie Ness and Bishop Claire Burkat share tears and exchange symbols of reconciliation. Photo by Emily Ralph.

Bishop Burkat was emotional as she offered Pastor Charlie Ness from Perkiomenville Mennonite Church an apology on behalf of her Synod.  And as Pastor Ness accepted and extended forgiveness, he too choked up with the power of this moment.  Twice, the congregation spontaneously rose to their feet to join in with applause.  This action was not just one of denominational leadership—the Lutheran laypeople wanted to participate in the healing as well.

And as I stood there, frantically snapping pictures of their smiles and tears, I felt loved.  Truly and completely loved.

Growing up, I was aware of my heritage.  I was proud of my ancestors who stood firm in the face of persecution and terror.  I ached to have the same strength, the same passion.  I struggled to respect Martin Luther as a hero of the faith when in my eyes he was tarnished by the persecution he endorsed.

I knew the story and I knew it well.  And here I was, surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ some of whom had only discovered this story in the last decade.  Their hearts were broken as they came to grips with an ugly chapter of their history.  And they were reaching out to us for restoration.

As Mennonites, we’ve always identified ourselves as the martyrs.  Our peoplehood is wrapped up in being the oppressed, the rejected.  But as I experienced the grace of these lovely people, saw the seats of honor they gave to our pastors, their submission as we worked on crafting common language, I realized that, for the first time in nearly five hundred years, we were respected, accepted, and loved.  Truly and completely loved.

There is disequilibrium in this place.  How do we function here?  If forgiveness means releasing others from their experience of guilt, if it means no longer lingering in the pain of the past, then how can we forge a new identity that still honors the sacrifices of our ancestors while recognizing that we are no longer rejected, but loved?

This is the task of God’s people, said Bishop Burkat.  “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us (2 Corinthians 5). . . it means [reconciling] those who are at odds with each other, to return to a state of harmony, and receive a former enemy into good favor.”

That morning, we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, both Lutheran and Mennonite, who, in the presence of Jesus, have found that Christ’s blood brings about complete reconciliation.  As they worship God together, these former enemies—saints—of long ago are no longer broken by doctrinal or political differences; they are, even now, in perfect fellowship with the Father . . . and with one another.  What they have experienced for five hundred years, we now realize on earth.

We are no longer persecuted; we are called to defend the oppressed.  We are no longer rejected; we are called to love the forsaken.  “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5 NIV)  May we become a people who extend our healing to the world!

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