Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Sam Claudio

Congregational Profile: Christ Fellowship

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We are an evolving Mennonite fellowship, located in Allentown, PA. We are dedicated to spreading truth and love throughout our city in Jesus’ name.

Christ Fellowship is located on West Chew Street in Allentown, PA.

Our church began when our Pastor, Sam Claudio Sr., was invited by First Mennonite Church of Allentown to join their staff to provide ministry to the surrounding community. As First Mennonite Church’s years of ministry came to an end, we continued in ministry and remained in the building. 

Today, we are a group of approximately 30 people of Peruvian, Colombian, Honduran and Puerto Rican descent. While we are bilingual (Spanish/English), we hold our services in English. This helps us minister to those around us.

Our primary focus is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all those with whom we are in contact. We understand this to be a spoken, taught, lived, and serving message. Thus, all our ministries are understood to be an expression of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Together with Bethany United Methodist Church, we provide food for persons who are homeless or in need of food through our food bank. 

Our building facilities are used by Iglesia Evangelica Roca De Salvacion, a Spanish speaking congregation, and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), a group that provides support to those seeking to overcome addictions.

Members of Christ Fellowship (Allentown, PA) prepare for worship.

Currently we are undergoing some transition in our pastoral leadership but continue with the group of dedicated pastoral leaders that remain on the team.

Please pray with us that our witness and the preaching of the gospel will continue to flourish in the Allentown/Bethlehem region. We also invite you to pray that we would have the needed resources to upgrade our current facilities to make them accessibility compliant and that God would lead us to the persons he has prepared to step into the open pastoral roles.

You are invited to God@Work…shops!

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by John Stoltzfus, Franconia & Eastern District Youth Minister, for the Conference Assembly 2012 workshop planning team

Where is the life of your congregation intersecting with the life of our broader conference fellowship? In what ways are you seeking to grow into the life of the emerging kingdom of God among us? In the new one day schedule for our upcoming Conference Assembly, we each have the wonderful privilege of participating in a workshop addressing a relevant issue and shared mission in our life together as the body of Christ. Everyone, delegates and non-delegates, is invited to consider attending one of these workshops as a way of helping us catch a greater glimpse and vision of what God is doing among us.   We invite you to spread the word in your congregation and invite others to attend both the workshops and the evening worship service.

We hope one of the four offered workshops will be relevant to the needs of your congregational life. We also desire that they give opportunity to build deeper connections with other congregations who are working on the same issues. The workshops will be offered from 10:00-11:30am on the morning of Conference Assembly.  Be sure to register by October 31. We will hold these workshops based on sufficient registration.

It Takes A Congregation…. Restoration, Connection, and Belonging for People with Disabilities

This workshop will focus on how, by including persons who are marginalized, the whole congregation benefits.  Stories of how congregations are responding to people with disabilities including those with autism and intellectual disabilities and veterans with disabilities will be featured. Materials will be provided to enable congregations to focus on belonging for all people.

Presenters:

  • Joe Landis is the founder and Executive Director of Peaceful Living, established in 2000, a not-for-profit agency located in southeastern PA. Peaceful Living serves 80 families in community-based services and offers a congregational coaching program. Joe has been an avid advocate for individuals with intellectual disabilities for 40 years. Joe is a member at Salford Mennonite Church.
  • The coordinator of the Friendship Connection, Loretta Moyer, has been with the program since its start in 2007. Loretta is a member of Rockhill Mennonite Church.
  • Patricia A. Hedrick (B.S. Special Education, M. Ed.), Zion congregation, recently received National Board Teacher Certification as an Exceptional Needs Specialist.  She is currently on sabbatical from her position as a life skills support teacher in the Souderton Area School District. While on sabbatical, she will be studying toward a certificate in Special Education Supervision and working as a volunteer for Peaceful Living.

Missions and New Church Development

This workshop will focus on five areas of missions and new church development:  establishing a prayer-filled missional vision; sustaining and sustainable models of ministry; succession planning; communication; and project-based vs. committee-based funding.

Presenters:

  • Samuel Claudio Jr. is currently the co-pastor of Christ Fellowship Church, Allentown, Pa., an inner-city Anabaptist body of believers seeking to manifest Christ in their community. He has worked as a church planter over the past five years in both the Eastern District Conference and previous ministry areas.
  • With over thirty years of urban ministry experience, Jeff Wright serves as New Church Development Coach and Consultant for the Eastern District Conference of Mennonite Church USA through an arrangement with Urban Expression North America.  Since it was launched in 2009, Urban Expression North America has worked with over thirty urban church planting projects in cities located in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  Jeff currently resides in Riverside, California.

Music – It’s Not Really a Universal Language

This seminar will focus on the biblical vision for God’s people. It will include practical suggestions on how the church can begin “worshipping its way into God’s future” (Rev. 7) by reflecting on current congregational worship patterns and by developing a keener sense of the global faith family through worship that is transcultural, contextual, counter-cultural, and multi-cultural. Time will be given for group sharing of congregational worship experiences.

Presenter: James R. Krabill served for 14 years as a Bible and church history teacher in West Africa. He is author/editor of various articles and books, including his most recent, Worship and Mission for the Global Church (2012).  He currently serves as Senior Executive for Global Ministries at Mennonite Mission Network.

Believers Baptism:  Faith Formation of Children and Youth

What does faith formation of children and youth with a goal of genuine Believers Baptism look like?  Does faith formation look the same as it did 10 or 20 years ago?  This workshop will highlight several contemporary children and youth ministry models and integrate them into conversations and observations of youth and children within our churches.  This material originates from Angela’s Seminary Capstone Project and she is anticipating not only sharing pieces of her work but also hearing from other voices within the Conference community in regards to this topic. All are welcome to attend including Sunday School class teachers, youth sponsors, pastors, and anyone relating to youth and children.

Presenter: Angela Moyer works on the pastoral team at Ripple-Allentown and as a pediatric occupational therapist (OT) at Good Shepherd Rehab in Allentown, Pa.  She recently moved from Telford to the Zume House (intentional community) in Allentown after graduating from Eastern Mennonite Seminary-PA campus this summer.

Conferences discuss history, consider future in forums

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by Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

Jim Musselman and John Ruth
Jim Musselman, left, and John Ruth, unofficial historians for Eastern District and Franconia Conferences share the history of the 1847 split. Photo by Emily Ralph..

Members of Eastern District and Franconia Conferences of Mennonite Church USA met on March 29 at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School in Lansdale, PA, to continue conversations about a shared future.  This gathering, the first of two forums planned for Spring 2012, focused on developing a deeper understanding of the 1847 split in Franconia Conference that led to the formation of Eastern District Conference.

Although some people think that the merger between the two conferences is a done deal, that couldn’t be further from the truth, according to Ron White, moderator of Eastern District Conference and member of Church of the Good Samaritan.  Conference leadership has been following the delegates’ directive from the 2011 Assembly to move forward in exploring and listening, he said in his welcome.

When White asked how many people from each conference had attended an event or service in a congregation from the other conference, nearly every hand in the room raised.  “See, we’ve already been working together,” said White, “we just haven’t called it that.”

Jim Musselman, Zion congregation, and John Ruth, Salford congregation, unofficial historians for the two conferences, shared presentations on the history of the 1847 split, the tensions leading up to it, and the fallout in the years following it.  The progressives (a group which broke off to later become Eastern District Conference) were looking for modern administration, freedom in dress and conduct, education for pastors, and the creation of publications, said Musselman, Eastern District historian.  The years following the split were tumultuous for the new conference, he said, with further division as differing theological strains emerged.

“Almost every positive thing that the Eastern District leaders wanted eventually came to Franconia Conference,” said Ruth, Franconia Conference historian.  “It just took 100 years longer. . . . It would have come sooner to Franconia Conference if they all would have stayed together.”  In the end, said Ruth, both sides lost: “There was not much creativity in finding ways of love and respect for each other.”

After the presentations, participants talked around their tables to ask questions and reflect on the history. Photo by Emily Ralph

To this day, remnants of the 19th-century division remain in attitudes toward one another.  Eastern District Conference congregations often accepted into membership people who had been disciplined by Franconia Conference congregations, gaining them a reputation as a conference who will “take anybody,” said Musselman; Franconia congregations worried that this acceptance watered down the purity of the church body.

Following the presentations, the gathering broke into table groups to talk about what they had heard, formulate questions, and discuss together the implications of a shared future.  In reporting the highlights of their table conversations with the room, members of both conferences expressed concern about navigating theological differences within conferences and congregations, overcoming generations of “us/them” mentalities, and working through organizational and structural differences.

The group also wondered how there could be healing of the personal wounds that people still carried from the tension between the conferences.  “How can we gain empathy for each other’s narratives in moving forward?” asked Marta Castillo, assistant moderator for Franconia Conference and a pastor at Nueva Vida Norristown New Life.

These next steps will be discussed at a second forum, planned for May 24, 7pm, at Christopher Dock.  Forum 2 will look at present-day similarities and differences in vision and mission as well as strengths and weaknesses of the two conferences and begin a conversation on future possibilities.  A possible third forum may be scheduled if needed.

Sam Claudio, co-pastor of Christ Fellowship, came to the forum to gain further understanding of the histories of the community that he has joined in Mennonite Church USA.  “It’s good to see that I’ve become part of something that is in the midst of coming together, not in the midst of tearing apart,” he told the group.  “As we leave this place, let us remember that we are ministers—all of us, each of us—of reconciliation.  That is our mandate, to be reconciled one to another….  Let us work toward that goal as we leave this place.”

Listen to Forum 1:

[podcast]http://www.mosaicmennonites.org/media-uploads/mp3/Forum 1 (March 2012).mp3[/podcast]

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