The Mennonite Central Committee Project for January 2009 is Sewing Kits, with many going to Russia and Iraq. Sewing kits are distributed in useful double drawstring cloth bags (11 inches by 16 inches) which you can sew yourself or donate contents that will be placed in a bag by volunteers. Kits can be dropped off at the MCC Material Resource Center in Harleysville. Call the Resource Center at 215-513-9561 for more information.
Contents for Sewing Kits (NEW items only)
1 metric tape measure
2 spools dual use white thread (300 yards each)
2 spools dual use black thread (cotton/polyester, minimum 300 yards each)
1 thimble (medium size)
1 dressmaker’s scissors (good quality)
1 pkg. needles (approx. 25)
1 pkg. straight pins (approx. 100)
1 pkg. hooks and eyes (approx. 12)
1 pkg. sew on snaps (approx. 20-25)
10 assorted safety pins
Thank you for your prayer support of Mennonite education. The Mennonite Education Agency has posted new Prayers for Faith and Learning for the month of January at www.MennoniteEducation.org/PRAYERS.
All are welcome to Evening Song and Prayer in the Taizé tradition at Perkasie Mennonite Church on Sunday, January 11, from 7 - 8 p.m. Using music from the Taizé community in France, as well as hymns of the church, we gather in a candlelit atmosphere for scripture, song, silence, and prayers for our world, communities and loved ones.
A prospective middle student visitation is scheduled for Wednesday morning, January 14 at Penn View Christian School. Families interested in their child visiting for the morning should contact Sandra Harrell, Director of Admissions, at 215-723-1196 or email sharrell@pennview.org to register. Information about Penn View Christian School may be found at www.pennview.org.
“Praying in difficult times” will be the topic of the next prayer gathering of Franconia Mennonite Conference. The gathering will meet at Swamp Mennonite Church on Saturday, January 17, 10:00 a.m. -12:30 p.m. for a time of worship, prayer and teaching. John Shuey, regional representative for the Church Prayer Leaders Network will share with pastors, prayer leaders and anyone who wants to be encouraged in praying through difficulties and helping others to pray. All are invited to come! For more information, contact Sandy Landes, Prayer Ministry Coordinator, at slandes@franconiaconference.org or 215-723-5513, ext. 121.
Karen’s Place, the coffee shop ministry of Doylestown Mennonite Church, will be open on Saturday, January 17 from 7:00 – 10:30 p.m. featuring the singer songwriter Susan Piper. Admission is free. Donations collected will go to Mennonite Disaster Service to benefit hurricane victims in the Gulf area. Join this great time of Christian fellowship and music in a laid-back coffee-shop setting. For more information, please call the church office at 215-345-6377 or visit www.karensplace.org.
Line Lexington Mennonite Church invites you to a “Managing Your Money”simulcast on Saturday, January 24. Come to hear financial experts who will give you the tools to both SURVIVE and THRIVE in today’s economy. Speakers include Dick Towner, primary author of Willow Creek Association’s “Good Sense” curriculum, Dr. Susan McCarthy and Matt Bell. The event is from 11:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Line Lexington Mennonite Church. There will be breaks with light refreshments included. $15.00 per person. Pre-registration is required. Please call the church at 215-822-0446.
Quakertown Christian School will be holding an Open House at the preschool campus and main campus on several dates in January and February. Come and experience classes in the morning sessions or come at 7:00 p.m. to meet the teachers and hear about QCS. Please call 215-536-6970 or visit www.quakertownchristian.org for more information on the following open house dates: Preschool Campus (143 Rocky Ridge Road, Quakertown): Wednesday, January 14 & Wednesday, February 18, 9:30 – 11:00 a.m.; Monday, January 26, 7:00 p.m. Main Campus for Grades K – 12 (50 East Paletown Road, Quakertown): Wednesday, January 14 & Tuesday, February 10, 9:00 a.m. – noon; Monday, January 26, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Pastors, lay leaders, board members, and executive leaders are invited to a leadership forum presented by Eastern District, Franconia Conference’s School for Leadership Formation, and Frederick Mennonite Community. Finding Our Way Together: Leadership in Challenging Times will be led by Rick Stiffney, President and CEO of Mennonite Health Services Alliance. It will focus on the nature of the call to serve as lay and professional leaders and to explore how staff leaders can create effective partnerships with lay boards to carry forward long-range planning in their particular setting. Participants will take away strengthened relationships and teamwork within your leadership team/board/structure, along with an analysis of how to add value to your leadership team. For more information and to register, click on HERE. Contact Jessica Walter at 215-723-5513, ext 127 with questions.
You are invited to the 33rd Annual Truck Driver’s Retreat at Spruce Lake Retreat on February 20 – 22. This time of fellowship and relaxation for truck drivers and their families will include special music by the Ruth Family Trio on Friday night, a group hymn sing and speaker on Saturday morning, a Saturday night concert with Salford Bluegrass and the Salford Village Singers, and a Sunday morning worship service. Register by Saturday, February 7 by calling Sam Shaffner at 717-477-0233 or emailing theesamtheman@yahoo.com. You can also contact Spruce Lake directly at 800-822-7505. The cost for two nights and 5 meals per person is $153.05.
Save the date! Come celebrate the opening of the MCC East Coast Regional Office in Philadelphia on Friday, March 6 from 4 – 8 p.m. at 900 E. Howell Street, Philadelphia. Contact Ruth Keidel Clemens, MCC East Coast Director, with questions at 717-413-7003.
By Gladys Terichow, MCC with Steve Kriss, Franconia Conference
Mennonite Central Committee approved an emergency cash grant of $10,000 USD earlier this month to help the Amira Society, Al-Najd, and Culture and Free Thought Association distribute food assistance to some of the most vulnerable families in the Gaza Strip. The food assistance is scheduled to be distributed to 350 households.
MCC staff has not been able to visit Gaza in recent months however partner organizations in Gaza report that some of the most vulnerable families now use milled animal feed to make pita bread and
discarded plastic pipes as fuel to cook bread and meals. “The situation was very bad in July when we visited Gaza but it is a lot worse now,” said Bassem Thabet, administrative director for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Jerusalem.
Though there is a shortage of food in Gaza and prices are high, the partner organizations will purchase the basic food staples, such as rice and flour, within Gaza. “There are no other options,” said Thabet, noting the economic blockade makes it very difficult to get food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities into the region.
The Israeli government closed all of its crossings into Gaza in early November in response to escalating violence triggered in part by Israel’s attempts to demolish Gaza’s tunnel systems.
The security barriers surrounding Gaza’s economic blockade create large scale unemployment, poverty and feelings of isolation, said Ryan Lehman of Boswell, Pa., MCC’s representative in Jerusalem.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, over 1000 people have been wounded and more than 300 killed in the violence that followed the end of a brokered cease fire this week. In Gaza, hospitals are reported to be chaotic and over capacity. Israel has responded to rocket fire from Gaza with intensity and force over the last few days. According to BBC, Hamas has volleyed fire back toward the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon in southern Israel as well.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11
What was the best Christmas present you ever received?
“Oh wow!” I cried, when I saw the foot long tractor trailer toy truck, complete with realistic turning radius. It had a red cab and green trailer with doors that opened and a little ramp for cattle to climb up on.
I was at my cousins’ house in New Holland, Pa. They had just arrived from Puerto Rico almost a year earlier – all nine of them – and had lived in the attic of our house for three months before finding their own home. I was nine years old and loved playing with my cousin Jose.
I was not expecting to get a gift for Christmas this year because my family wanted to give my cousins the experience of Christmas, complete with the meal, the gifts and the singing. So imagine my surprise when as the names on the gifts where being read and given to each person, that my name was called out.
“Is this right?” I thought. But sure enough there was a long rectangular box, wrapped in beautiful Christmas paper with a bow on top and my name on it. What an unexpected surprise!
I wonder if this might have been something like what those shepherds in the fields might have felt (in addition to overwhelming fear). It was an ordinary night–watching sheep, talking around a campfire and trying to keep warm in the cool night. Suddenly, a voice calls out–and it’s addressing them. What a surprise! Unexpected! Is this real?
The news comes to them that a gift has been given – a savior in the form of a baby; in a manger, wrapped, not with beautiful, ornate Christmas paper, but lowly, humble, swaddling clothes. It’s hardly what they would have expected. Yet as if to confirm that they were not dreaming a multitude of angels appeared, all bearing a word of great joy, the tidings of this grand, good news! Unbelievable!
What about you today? How have you been unexpectedly surprised by a gift given? A gift not earned; not worked for by you; not expected. Just given.
There’s a second part to this wonderful gift given to humanity – and that is the need to receive that gift. Many of us have received the gift of Christ given long ago and continue to do so everyday. Yet, many people haven’t yet received this wonderful, glorious gift. Who around us this year needs a gift? What gift does the One given want to give? How can you and I be the messengers of this wonderful gift of good news for all people?
I’m grateful to my Mennonite/Anabaptist sisters and brothers. I received a gift long ago, unexpectedly, because of these sisters and brothers in the faith. They pulled together a collection of gifts to ensure that everyone in the house that day could hold wide their hands and receive a gift.
May all of us in this Christmas season hold wide the hands of our hearts in receiving, first the gift of the life of God’s son and to be a messenger of the good news that “Unto you a gift is given.”
There is only one Mennonite church here in the United Kingdom, which I have yet to attend. Not surprisingly, then, I’ve recently been trying to explain my Mennonite faith identity to some very curious and sometimes very confused Brits. Somewhere near the beginning of those conversations, I often mention the strong emphasis that Mennonites place on community. It’s this sense of community that I miss here in London. I miss gathered congregations singing deeply rooted convictions of discipleship and peacemaking in effortless four-part harmony, familiar pie and bread recipes handed from one generational table to the next, rich farmland evoking memories of a strong agrarian history, and long lines of families and neighbors who quietly seek to serve God and one another. I do try to offer the general disclaimer that Mennonite communities are rapidly changing and diversifying, and that these rather cliche descriptions would fail to describe many contemporary Mennonite churches. But as a young Mennonite woman growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, they are traditions and associations that are undeniably embedded in my experience of Mennonite community.
Community is a word that is also frequently used in the neighborhood where I’m now living in East London, but it takes a much different shape than I’m accustomed to experience. I’m currently part of a tiny church called E1 Community Church, a church that was planted here 10 years ago by a group of people who had the neighborhood community at the heart of their mission. Knowing that this area tends to be comparatively poor, under-churched, diverse and transient, they slowly sought to find ways of forming a church community that would be relevant and would meet the needs of this context. Several people in the church also take part in a local group called the Geoff Ashcroft Community, where I’ve been spending a few days a week. True to its name, this group is also centered around community, seeking to provide a sense of community and support for those in the area who are isolated and who struggle with mental health issues.
Given this common emphasis on community, then, it seems almost ironic that many of the people I now interact with on a daily basis have no way of comprehending the form of community that I grew up with and often take for granted. Although I perhaps would not have always said this, I am realizing that much of my sense of community is linked with sharing things in common with a tightly knit group of people: a shared history, shared traditions, shared political views, shared core values, a shared understanding of faith and belief in God. Yes, Mennonites of course struggle with disagreements and divisions over theological and political differences, but it seems that there are many places of commonality and shared faith at our core.
There is something beautiful about our strong communal identities, and I think it is one of the gifts that Mennonites can bring to a far too individualized and fragmented world. But it does beg the question of how and whether we can create communities without the presence of shared worldviews and core values. At E1 Community Church and at the Geoff Ashcroft Community, small groups of people come together from radically different worldviews and backgrounds. There is a man who spent most of his adult life in the military, and whose identity is still largely defined by those military experiences; a man who spent 17 years in prison and who is estranged from his family; a woman who has such intense social anxiety that she only ventures outside her home for a few hours each week; another woman who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction while trying raise three kids and to get herself a decent education. Relationships are downright tough in this context, not only because I am interacting with people who have quite traumatic pasts, but also because our lives have simply been so different. I cannot assume anything, let alone assume that people will share my pacifist stance or the approach I take to studying scripture.
There are, however, also incredible blessings that come from this struggle to form community in the midst of diversity. A few days ago, a group of us gathered at Geoff Ashcroft for a Christmas celebration lunch. As we sat together, laughing and sharing food and genuinely enjoying each others’ company, I was moved by what felt like a true sense of gathered community; by what I imagined as being a bit like the meals that Jesus shared throughout his ministry. In such moments, I am consistently amazed by how vulnerable people are with one another, and with the honest transparency with which they enter those spaces. Out of that transparency and vulnerability comes the opportunity to serve and support one another, and to become stronger as a community of faith.
There are blessings in both the shared community and the more radically diverse community, just as there are ways that both need to be challenged. I am just beginning to realize the extent of the difficulties that face the church community here in London, in its quest to form an authentic, common Christian identity while still embracing those with such varied personal identities and experiences. And back home in Pennsylvania, I have a feeling that many churches are struggling to reach beyond narrowly defined identities, to find ways of sharing the blessings of their communities with wider circles of people. I keep wondering how we might find ways to learn from one another. And how we might discover ways to authentically express our Christ-centered, communal identities, while remaining ever attuned to how the Spirit might be stirring new paths in our midst.
Krista Ehst is spending several months learning, serving and visiting among communities connected with the Anabaptist Network in the United Kingdom. She’s a recent graduate of Goshen College and a 2004 graduate of Christopher Dock Mennonite High School. She’s supported by a network of Franconia Conference congregations and individuals while on site across the pond.
Finland Mennonite Church is hosting the Skyline Boys from Virginia for a Southern Gospel Concert on Saturday, January 3 at 7 p.m. No charge for admission. A free-will offering will be received. Like Those Who Dream, James Longacre’s 200-page book of 30 sermons preached at Salford Mennonite Church from 1992 - 2006, is available in time for holiday gifts. The book may be purchased at Salford Mennonite Church for $18.95. Call the church office at 215-256-0778 or stop by Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
Eastern Mennonite Seminary of Southeastern PA is offering the following Spring Courses:Women and Men in the Bible and Church with Mark and Kathy Wenger; Systematic Theology 1 with Brinton Rutherford; The Good News, Culture and Anabaptism with Steve Kriss; Church Planting: Laying Foundations with Stuart Murray; and the following Gateway Course: Bible Survey & Anabaptist Hermeneutics with Marion Bontrager and Mark Wenger. For additional information and registration visit www.emu.edu/lancaster/seminary , call (717) 397-5190 or email lancaster@emu.edu
All are welcome toEvening Song and Prayer in the Taizé tradition at Perkasie Mennonite Church, January 11, 7 - 8 pm. Using music from the Taizé community in France, as well as hymns of the church, we gather in a candlelit atmosphere for scripture, song, silence and prayers for our world, communities and loved ones.
You are invited to join in the public witness: “Heeding God’s Call – A Faith-based Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” for a day of worship, education and action, Saturday, January 17th. This is the culminating event of the Jan 13-17 Peace Gathering held in Philadelphia sponsored by the Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Church USA and the Society of Friends (Quakers). During the Saturday event, participants will: Gather in nine different houses of worship around Philadelphia to pray and learn together; come together for joint worship and a sermon by Dr. Vincent Harding; and march to a notorious Philadelphia gun store to press for an end to the flow of illegal handguns. This is a wonderful opportunity to join with faith communities to take direct ACTION to reduce suffering and death in the Delaware Valley communities! For more information contact Fred Kauffman at jfk@mcc.org or 215 316-8419.
The Mennonite Conference Center will be closed for Christmas from noon on Wednesday, December 24 through Friday, January 2. The office will reopen on Monday, January 5.
Job Openings Care & Share Shoppes is now accepting applications for the following part-time positions: Variety Workroom Associate and Furniture Associate. For a complete job description and a job application visit their offices in the Clothing Shoppe or contact: Sarah Bergin, Executive Director, at sbergin@careandshareshoppes.org
Doylestown Mennonite Church seeks an energetic and friendly Administrative Assistant to support its various ministries. Individual should possess good computer skills, be well organized, and able to work independently. We are looking for 16-20 hours per week with some flexibility. We offer competitive pay. Please call the church office at 215-345-6377 or e-mail resume to randy.heacock@doylestownmc.org.
Understanding the Middle East
Eastern Mennonite University in Lancaster will be offering a field trip to Washington, D.C. entitled Understanding the Middle East on Saturday, February 21. The trip includes a visit to the US Holocaust Museum, a conversation on the Middle East at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and observation of late afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center. The bus leaves the Lancaster area at 7 a.m. and will return by 10 p.m. A packed lunch and Lebanese family style dinner will also be provided. The cost is $120 per person; $200 per two family members. To join the trip, contact Gloria Kniss at gloria.kniss@emu.edu or call 717-397-5190. For more information contact David Miron at mirond@verizon.net or call 717-569-1305.
Gateway Course offered in Spring 2009 Bible Survey and Anabaptist Hermeneutics is the next Gateway course being offered by Eastern Mennonite University in collaboration with Mennonite Conferences in southeastern Pennsylvania. Marion Bontrager, instructor of Bible and theology at Hesston College, will lead the course, bringing the scriptures to life by teaching the Bible as one big story of God’s salvation. Dates for the course are March 13 - 14, May 15 - 16, and June 12 - 13 at Frazer Mennonite Church in Frazer, PA. For more information and registration, visit www.emu.edu/lancaster/seminary/gateway.
Finland Mennonite Church is hosting the Skyline Boys from Virginia for a Southern Gospel Concert on Saturday, January 3 at 7 p.m. No charge for admission. A free-will offering will be received.
Like Those Who Dream, James Longacre’s 200-page book of thirty sermons preached at Salford Mennonite Church from 1992-2006, is available in time for holiday gifts. The book may be purchased at Salford Mennonite Church for $18.95. Call the church office at 215-256-0778 or stop by week days between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
The Mennonite Conference Center will be closed for Christmas from noon on Wednesday, December 24 through Friday, January 2. The office will reopen on Monday, January 5.
About a decade ago, the scales of Anabaptism tipped to what we’ve taken to calling the Global South. This means that there are more Mennonites outside of Canada, Europe and the United States than within the boundaries of European tradition. While we’ve noted this as the relative success of 20th century missionary efforts, we’ve not anticipated a secondary outcome in the midst of global migration—the rapid reshaping of Anabaptism in the European, US and Canadian contexts by persons from the Global South.
Across the Mennonite Church USA, conferences are feeling the pull of this change as migration brings Christians from different cultural backgrounds into our formerly Eurocentric context. In California, what it means to be Mennonite is defined by Indonesian, Latino and African voices more often than EuroAmerican tradition. In Florida, the balance wavers between Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast (Sarasota) which is predominantly EuroAmerican and Flordia’s Southeast Atlantic Coast (Miami) which is mostly Haitian and Latino. The balance in Mennonite Church USA’s midsection (Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas) continues to shift from the Russian and German immigrant communities of Kansas to rapidly growing Mexican American communities in Texas. Fuller Seminary professor and Mennonite leader Juan Martinez suggests that this pattern might be part of God’s intention to invigorate communities through a renewed encounter with the Good News.
For Franconia Conference, our 300 year history has deep roots in Euro-instigated tradition. It’s only been in the last 100 hears of our history that we’ve moved toward figuring a way toward multi-ethnicity. However, within the last generation that reality has accelerated. At times for those of us from EuroAmerican tradition, this change is disorienting, inviting us to move into unfamiliar spaces of having to explain our position as one among an array of expression.
The challenge in the midst of this shift–which includes Spanish-speakers at Franconia congregation, a significant population of persons from South Asia at Plains, growth in urban congregations like Norristown and a growing network of communities rooted in the recent immigrant experience–is that the shift in the global Christian community is increasingly in our conference meetings, in our Sunday morning worship. While it may be invigorating in theory–in practice it requires a change of mind and heart. The stranger no longer is only someone to be encountered far away but the stranger (those with different surnames, different food preferences, different ways of experiencing God and encounhtering the world) is increasingly a part of us.
This requires much from the EuroAmerican community—a willingness to listen, to learn, to embrace, to empower, to share and to reimagine ourselves as not only part of a globally diverse family, but part of a locally incarnated family of faith with differing traditions and ethnicities that honor God and the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. It requires all of us to reimagine our ways of leading and being to be one way of doing things—not the only way. This emerging reality invites us to admit that Christ alone is the Way—and that we’ve been called together to represent the possibilities of inbreaking Shalom in which God’s love is made real in the world, through flesh and blood, in the midst of hope and fear.
“Would you mind straightening your grandmother’s painting before you sit down?” my grandfather asked. “Not at all,” I replied, “so long as you give me a guided tour.” Every morning my grandfather begins his day by staring at my grandmother’s painting of her childhood home in Perkasie, vividly remembering stories, furniture and food that was part of the “Yoder House.”
After he had finished describing what he remembered about my grandmother’s home, I asked if we could “walk” through my grandparents’ former residence in Allentown.
I often think of this house in Allentown—grilling with my grandfather in the backyard, eating Christmas and Easter dinners around the picnic table in the basement, and walking to J. Birney Crum Stadium to watch high school football games. Many of my favorite childhood memories took place in and around that house.
As my grandfather and I “walked” through the living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms, his office, and the basement, I became aware, not only of special memories that were made in those rooms, but of how that house was significant to my spiritual formation.
My grandparents moved to Allentown in 1946 to help with the Allentown Mission, and although Souderton and Allentown were not separated far by geography, Allentown was a world away from where they were raised. By choosing to live in a community where neighbors didn’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch or understand the significance of head coverings, my grandparents were forced to become self-reflective. “What does it mean to maintain a Mennonite identity in a neighborhood that doesn’t have other Mennonites?” and “How do we effectively communicate who we are?” were questions that challenged their spiritual formation in ways they did not experience in Souderton. Life in the city ensured the continual presence of these questions in their lives, and the ways they attempted to answer these questions made spiritual formation a dynamic, on-going process for their children and grandchildren.
One place I observed my grandparents communicate their faith was on their front porch. Many summer evenings my parents, along with my grandparents, aunts and uncles would sit and talk on the porch while my cousins and I would play “run-down” in the front yard. When folks from the neighborhood would pass by on walks with their dogs or families, one thing was certain: they didn’t pass by without receiving a greeting from my grandfather. Sometimes conversations took place at a distance with simple greetings and pleasantries exchanged, while other times neighbors joined us on the porch for conversation and Diet Coke or iced tea.
The front porch was used as safe place for my grandparents and their neighbors to exchange snapshots of their lives. But more than a place to practice cordiality, the front porch was a place to practice the spiritual discipline of hospitality. Neighbors knew they was always a seat for them on the porch—it was a place where they would feel welcome, and a place where they could be heard. In the same way that my grandparents’ intentional choice to live in Allentown provided important questions that impacted my spiritual formation, their demonstration of hospitality on the front porch was also significant to my faith development. It was here where I witnessed clear examples of how to practice hospitality and how to do outreach.
When the weather changed and the porch furniture was brought in for the season, spiritual formation took place inside. Many winter evenings my siblings and I were picked up at school by my grandparents and spent a few hours doing our homework at their home while my parents were at work.
Homework always seemed easier, or at least more fun, at my grandparents’ house. My brother usually worked from a small table in the kitchen, while my sister and I studied from the dining room table where many helpful resources were at our disposal. For example, my grandmother allowed us to use her prized electronic spell-checker that she used to write her weekly newspaper column. Whenever we came across an unfamiliar country in Social Studies homework, or an unusual organ in Biology homework, we followed the example of my grandmother and researched it extensively in the Encyclopedia Britanica. And finally, if my grandfather was home during our homework sessions, he would play the role of archivist, and search in his office through magazines, books, or personal records that might help with our line of inquiry.
The way my grandparents valued questions I posed in their house was spiritually formational. The way in which they helped me search for fifth grade homework questions displayed a quiet confidence that big questions should be raised. As I grew older and my big questions were not easily found in encyclopedias, I never doubted the inherent value in raising big questions. My grandparents taught me that raising big questions doesn’t lead us away from faith, but draws us closer to God’s reality.
I doubt my grandparents are aware of how their Allentown home shaped me, and I’ve never heard either of them use the term “spiritual formation.” Although they moved away from Allentown almost five years ago, I’m grateful for times like last Saturday, when we get to “walk” through their home again. Their house in Allentown will forever be part of my spirituality. Because of its location, the front porch, and evenings spent doing homework, I will always be challenged to ask how I am making use of my current living space for the spiritual formation of my family and community.
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What was the best Christmas present you ever received?
There is only one Mennonite church here in the United Kingdom, which I have yet to attend. Not surprisingly, then, I’ve recently been trying to explain my Mennonite faith identity to some very curious and sometimes very confused Brits. Somewhere near the beginning of those conversations, I often mention the strong emphasis that Mennonites place on community. It’s this sense of community that I miss here in London. I miss gathered congregations singing deeply rooted convictions of discipleship and peacemaking in effortless four-part harmony, familiar pie and bread recipes handed from one generational table to the next, rich farmland evoking memories of a strong agrarian history, and long lines of families and neighbors who quietly seek to serve God and one another. I do try to offer the general disclaimer that Mennonite communities are rapidly changing and diversifying, and that these rather cliche descriptions would fail to describe many contemporary Mennonite churches. But as a young Mennonite woman growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, they are traditions and associations that are undeniably embedded in my experience of Mennonite community.
There is something beautiful about our strong communal identities, and I think it is one of the gifts that Mennonites can bring to a far too individualized and fragmented world. But it does beg the question of how and whether we can create communities without the presence of shared worldviews and core values. At E1 Community Church and at the Geoff Ashcroft Community, small groups of people come together from radically different worldviews and backgrounds. There is a man who spent most of his adult life in the military, and whose identity is still largely defined by those military experiences; a man who spent 17 years in prison and who is estranged from his family; a woman who has such intense social anxiety that she only ventures outside her home for a few hours each week; another woman who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction while trying raise three kids and to get herself a decent education. Relationships are downright tough in this context, not only because I am interacting with people who have quite traumatic pasts, but also because our lives have simply been so different. I cannot assume anything, let alone assume that people will share my pacifist stance or the approach I take to studying scripture.
I often think of this house in Allentown—grilling with my grandfather in the backyard, eating Christmas and Easter dinners around the picnic table in the basement, and walking to J. Birney Crum Stadium to watch high school football games. Many of my favorite childhood memories took place in and around that house.
One place I observed my grandparents communicate their faith was on their front porch. Many summer evenings my parents, along with my grandparents, aunts and uncles would sit and talk on the porch while my cousins and I would play “run-down” in the front yard. When folks from the neighborhood would pass by on walks with their dogs or families, one thing was certain: they didn’t pass by without receiving a greeting from my grandfather. Sometimes conversations took place at a distance with simple greetings and pleasantries exchanged, while other times neighbors joined us on the porch for conversation and Diet Coke or iced tea.
The way my grandparents valued questions I posed in their house was spiritually formational. The way in which they helped me search for fifth grade homework questions displayed a quiet confidence that big questions should be raised. As I grew older and my big questions were not easily found in encyclopedias, I never doubted the inherent value in raising big questions. My grandparents taught me that raising big questions doesn’t lead us away from faith, but draws us closer to God’s reality.
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