Scott Hackman

Congrats to this year's seminary grads!

May 16, 2013 by Emily Ralph Servant

Congratulations to our Franconia Conference seminary graduates this year. Our conference had five individuals graduate from Eastern Mennonite Seminary: Danilo Sanchez (pictured), Boyertown congregation, graduated with a Master of Divinity; Scott Hackman, Salford congregation, graduated with a Master of Arts in Church Leadership; Emily Ralph, Salford congregation, graduated with a Master of Arts in Religion; Anne Yoder, West Philadelphia congregation, graduated with a certificate in ministry; and Tom Albright, Ripple congregation, graduated with a certificate in ministry.

HARRISONBURG, VA — The following Franconia Conference students were recognized as members of the dean’s list for the spring semester at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Madeline Clemens, a first-year business administration major from Harleysville, Pa. She is the daughter of Douglas and Rebecca Clemens and attends Blooming Glen.

Hannah Clemmer, a senior psychology major from Harleysville, Pa. She is the daughter of Michael Clemmer and attends Towamencin.

Jonathan Drescher-Lehman, a junior biology major from Green Lane, Pa. He is the son of Jon and Sandy Drescher-Lehman and attends Souderton.

Anna Hershey, a senior biology major from Harleysville, Pa. She is the daughter of James and Brenda Hershey and attends Salford.

Brianna Kauffman, a first-year accounting major from Harleysville, Pa. She is the daughter of Steven and Lisa Kauffman and attends Franconia.

Laura Keppley, a senior biology and music major double-major from Boyertown, Pa. She is the daughter of Carl and Alice Keppley and attends Perkiomenville.

Morgan Kratz, a sophomore social work major from Souderton, Pa. She is the daughter of Douglas and Marice Kratz and attends Plains.

Samuel Moyer, a senior nursing major from Harrisonburg, Va. He is the son of Stephen and Naomi Moyer and attends Bethany.

Megan Nafziger, a sophomore nursing major from Mohnton, Pa. She is the daughter of Don and Rose Nafziger and attends Vincent.

Benjamin Nyce, a senior liberal arts and kinesiology & sport studies double-major from Perkasie, Pa. He is the ons of Timothy and Teresa Nyce and attends Deep Run East.

Matthew Nyce, a sophomore Spanish major from Perkasie, Pa. He is the son of Timothy and Teresa Nyce and attends Deep Run East.

Konrad Swartz, a senior English and writing studies double-major from Spring City, Pa. He is the son of Timothy and Rachel Martin Swartz and attends Salford.

Ryan Swartzendruber, a sophomore mathematics major from Sellersville, Pa. He is the son of Conrad and Sharon Swartzendruber and attends Plains.

Aaron Wile, a first-year psychology major from Telford, Pa. He is the son of Daniel and Kristi Wile and attends Franconia.

To qualify for the dean’s list a student must achieve a semester grade point average of at least 3.750 or above and complete at least 12 semester hours of credit.

Eastern Mennonite University is a Christian liberal arts university of about 1,500 students, located in Virginia’s scenic Shenandoah Valley. EMU is guided by the peace principles of Mennonite Church USA, educating students to serve and lead in a global context through cross-cultural study and an interdisciplinary curriculum. Established in 1917, the university offers over 40 undergraduate majors and six graduate programs offering nine master’s degrees. Eastern Mennonite Seminary is part of the university, as is the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. See more at: emu.edu/about.

Reflections for the future Church

July 11, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Scott Hackman, Salford

Post-Christendom class 2012 — Bobby Wibowo (Philadelphia Praise Center), Dorcas Lehman, Tracy and Barbara Brown, Scott Hackman (Salford), and instructor Steve Kriss (Franconia Conference director of leadership cultivation) traveled to the UK last month to study Anabaptism in a Post-Christendom context.

The Anabaptist movement has re-emerged in Post-Christendom Europe and it may give American Mennonites insight into our future.

Last month, I participated in a cross-cultural class through Eastern Mennonite Seminary that took us to Bristol, Birmingham, and London, England. There my classmates and I saw glimpses of hope from the UK Anabaptist movement, where people are asking basic questions about the purpose of church and joining God’s mission of restoration in their context.

Post-Christendom is the transition from the church as the center of power in society to the church on the margins of society. This is often manifested in the embrace of other religions, even as Christianity is declining. The Muslim faith community is growing rapidly in England; an estimated 50% of people attend a Mosque every week.

We went on walking tours to observe what God was doing in the context of each city and how the church was participating. On one of these tours, after a late walk in the rain, we found a cab to take us back to our lodging. The cab driver asked me if I was a Christian from America. I disclosed my identity with hesitation but he looked at me and said, “Did you see me come out of that Mosque where I was praying? I am Muslim and I want you to know we are not all violent people.”

“I am a Christian from America and I don’t support our wars against your people,” I responded. In that moment I began to understand our Post-Christendom context, where I could express my identity and have a conversation with my “enemy,” and all because he modeled this transparency with me.

Cross-cultural trip 2012 — Class members investigate a peace garden in the center of Birmingham that stands on a site where a church was bombed during World War II. Photo by Scott Hackman.

On a walking tour in Bristol, we passed a church building that has been re-purposed into apartments and yet another that was used as an elderly care facility. In London, the former church buildings were used for music venues and community centers. These buildings stand as monuments to an era when the church shared power with the state. As this authority is shifting, followers of Jesus are seeing “church” less as a place of worship and more as a practicing community on mission in its local context.

Anabaptists in the UK are asking different questions than the Mennonites of my faith community back home. In one London neighborhood with 90,000 residents, for example, only about .5% of people enter a church each week. We met with the community’s Christians, who asked, “What does the Gospel look like in this context?” After years of prayer and hard work developing relationships with their neighbors, they built a playground in the middle of a marginalized community.

These Anabaptists are asking hard questions: What does the Gospel look like in our neighborhood? What is church when no one understands the basic story of Christianity? Who is the church for? In their persistent engagement, I saw a glimpse of the kingdom; I am encouraged to ask these kinds of tough questions in my context, too.

As I return home, I continue to ponder what I heard and saw. Our neighbors aren’t going to engage in the future church if they can’t bring who they really are to the community of faith. They yearn to belong to a faith community before they will believe or behave differently. They’re not going to believe in a loving God if they aren’t loved. They’re not going to respond to the Gospel if it’s not a liberating move of love in their lives.

Anabaptist followers of Jesus in England have given us a glimpse into our future and it’s one that fills me with grief and hope: grief because of the pain we have caused in the name of Jesus through our colonialism and patriarchy and hope because people are expressing the Gospel message and following Jesus outside of the systems and hierarchy of religion. They are being and becoming the people of God—church—in a context we have not yet but still may encounter as America moves towards its own version of Post-Christendom.

Scott Hackman is part of the missional team at Doylestown Mennonite Church and a student at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, PA campus. He has received assistance in his education through the Area Conference Leadership Fund—to learn more about the ACLF or to make a contribution, click here.

The Garden brings renewal and hope to Doylestown

June 21, 2012 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

The congregation in Doylestown was about at the end of their rope, struggling to find ways to engage their community after years of declining attendance.

Pastor Randy Heacock knew the future didn’t look good: if the congregation continued to do things as they always had, within ten years they could easily die out.

Or, they could try something new and see what happened.

The leadership team began a process of discernment, asking “What does it mean for us, Doylestown Mennonite Church, to lose our life to find the greater life God desires for us?” said Heacock. After six months, they invited the congregation into further prayer and discernment. Heacock began conversations with the congregation’s LEADership Minister, Steve Kriss, and other young and emerging leaders in Franconia Conference.

Slowly they began to develop a plan. Less than a plan, actually, according to Scott Hackman and KrisAnne Swartley, who, along with founding team member Derek Cooper, were hired in April of 2011 to give leadership to this new congregational direction. “KrisAnne and I are organizing on the fly,” said Hackman, “we’re cultivating as we go!”

The new missional team was given flexibility and the support of the congregation as they plunged into the world of their Doylestown community, a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia that rarely allows its deeper needs to show above its suburban chic surface. They took prayer walks, hung out at coffee shops, developed relationships with the church’s neighbors.

Around the same time, a member of the community approached the leadership at Doylestown to ask if they were open to allowing unused land behind their facility to be cultivated as a community garden. Out of that partnership, the Sandy Ridge Community Garden was born.

As the missional team watched the congregation enthusiastically join the gardening project, they began to wonder what it would be like to create a Christian community with a variety of entry points, where people could belong even if they didn’t connect with or commit to Sunday morning attendance.

They were particularly inspired by the life cycle of the garden—every season has life and death, and that’s ok, they realized. Acknowledging those cycles allowed the congregation to join in where they wanted to, to back off when they needed to, to connect and release. They decided to call their new ministry “The Garden.”

By September, The Garden was ready for its first official experiment: a peace walk through Doylestown to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 and proclaim a counter-cultural witness.

Only one community family joined them.

Since this family had been 30-year residents of Doylestown, Swartley asked them to lead the prayer walk. The family guided the missional team around town, eventually leading them to the cemetery where their daughter was buried. In tears, they told the story of their daughter’s murder and shared how much it meant to them that someone was working in the community to build hope.

It was a turning point for The Garden. Although numbers were small, the missional team caught a glimpse of the importance of The Garden’s presence and ministry in Doylestown. “We need to reimagine what failure is in post-Christendom witness,” Hackman explained.

The “failures” have also opened up doors of connection with members of the congregation as the missional team shared their stories on Sunday mornings or through their blog. Members could participate in Garden Groups—home gatherings over food and conversation—or partner with the community garden and other Garden initiatives without pressure or expectations.

Some of the expectations they have surrendered have been formed by years of stories about what “mission” really is, like “we need more young people or a better worship band or a more charismatic pastor,” said Hackman. They came to realize these stories aren’t true. “What we need is to be more of what we are in spaces where people are already,” he added.

Sandy Ridge Garden — Bill Leatherman, Steve Landis and Vernon Althouse of Doylestown Mennonite Church, help one of the master gardeners of Sandy Ridge Community Garden install a brand new fence and gate.

As a result of this developing culture, the Doylestown congregation is experiencing new life and vitality. For years, there was a sense of low self-esteem at the church, a sense of failure, said Swartley. “Now there’s a renewing of their identity as loved people of God. And that makes room for other people!” It’s been inspiring to watch, she added. “They’re awaking once again to what they are and how beautiful they are and their potential.”

Doylestown has not seen a dramatic growth in their Sunday morning attendance, but they have seen an increase in the number of people who call the church their own. From community gardeners at Sandy Ridge to men and women who attend AA meetings in the church’s fellowship hall, members of the Doylestown community will say, “That’s my church!” even if they have never entered the sanctuary on a Sunday morning.

“The agenda is creating space for people to belong to each other and God,” said Hackman. It’s not a church growth plan. “And how does that result in more people coming to your church? I have no idea. But we have more people coming to Doylestown.”

The Doylestown congregation committed to a minimum of three years for this new initiative; Hackman and Swartley have high hopes for the next two years and beyond. “[My dream is] that more than half of the present congregation would try at least one experiment in the next year in their neighborhood. Any experiment,” said Swartley. “That would be super fun and then we’d get together and tell those stories—what we’ve learned, who we’ve met, how we’ve seen God at work.”

And Hackman hopes for growth, but not in the traditional sense. “Whether that growth is Sunday morning, through groups, events, I don’t care,” he said. “Our identity as Christians keeps growing and that creates more room for people looking for God.”

It’s been three years since Heacock realized that something needed to change. And something has. “While I certainly don’t know where all this is heading, I do know God is present, people are open, and lives are being transformed,” he reflected. “That is good enough for me.”

Celebrating Souderton: A missional direction

July 14, 2011 by Emily Ralph Servant

by Scott Hackman, Salford, scott@myohai.com

Celebrate Souderton was a missional faith experiment birthed from the imaginations of the Open Hand Initiative, a group of people who want to help local communities become places of belonging, using generosity and collaboration.

The context of society has shifted over the past several decades and the church has been pushed to the margins. Many people believe this offers an opportunity for the church to reclaim its mission. Celebrate Souderton gave Mennonite leaders the opportunity to take risks and experiment with missional impulses, as we attempted to answer what it might look like to express our faith in a local context during Lent.

The goal of this event was to collaborate with local faith communities, businesses, and non-profits to create space for belonging and opportunities for generosity. On Friday, March 11th we started by hosting a concert and coffee in downtown Souderton. Over 200 people participated in the evening, which included free local music and the opportunity for conversation at Main Street Java. From there, we continued the conversation at Main St. Java with Sunday evening gatherings to share stories about faith in the neighborhood in the context of themes from the Sermon on the Mount. Over 150 unique people came out during these weekly gatherings.

Our final event happened on April 23rd when 12 churches, 13 business sponsors, and several Main Street businesses joined together to celebrate the people in their neighborhood. Over 1,000 neighbors showed up. There were three art galleries displaying art by local high school students, local artists, and those in the community with disabilities (through Peaceful Living). A kids’ station was presented by Salford Mennonite and congregations like Blooming Glen and Souderton Mennonite provided free food. We also took over the main street parking lot for a large KidsZone managed by BranchCreek Community Church, complete with inflatables, hot dogs, cotton candy, and face painting. The youth group of Franconia Mennonite starting things right by dressing up as Scooby-Doo and Elmo to invite the neighbors to join in the fun.

The vision for this faith experiment comes from the underlying impulse to participate in the reign of God by following Jesus. We do this through sharing stories, events, and education. Together we’re exploring the next steps for the common good in the neighborhood whether that’s in Souderton or beyond.

Scott Hackman

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