The Board of Directors for the new parent company of Souderton Mennonite Homes and Dock Woods Community announced on Wednesday, November 26, that the affiliation of the two communities is finalized, and the new parent company will be called Living Branches. Together, the communities that comprise Living Branches serve more than 1,350 residents and employ 600 team members on campuses in Souderton, Lansdale and Hatfield, Pa.
The name was created by Varsity, a leading marketing firm based in Harrisburg that specifically targets the 55 and over population. Varsity collected information from many residents, staff members, volunteers and leaders, which formed the foundation for the new name.
“Living Branches refers to John 15:5, where Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine and the disciples are the branches, and that if they stay connected to him they will bear much fruit,” explains Edward D. Brubaker, President and CEO of Living Branches. “Our branches are Souderton Mennonite Homes and Dock Woods Community, our strength and inspiration comes from God, and our mission is life-giving to all who live, work and serve in our communities.”
Like both Souderton Mennonite Homes and Dock Woods Community, Living Branches is sponsored by the Franconia Mennonite Conference, an area conference of Mennonite Church USA headquartered in Souderton.
“Through our parent company, Living Branches, we will continue to strengthen the ministries of Souderton and Dock Woods, while also extending the reach of Anabaptist senior care services in southeastern Pennsylvania,” continued Brubaker. “And, of course, both communities are committed to providing consistent, high quality services our residents have come to expect.”
About Living Branches
Living Branches is a not-for-profit organization serving the needs of older adults and families, with roots in the Franconia Mennonite Conference of Mennonite Church USA. It is comprised of two continuing care retirement communities, Souderton Mennonite Homes in Souderton, Pa, and Dock Woods Community in Lansdale and Hatfield, Pa. Through Dock Manor and Dock Village, affordable senior and family housing is also offered to those who qualify for rental assistance. The Living Branches communities employ 600 people who serve more than 1,350 residents.
Along with two other Goshen College students, Sheldon Good, a member of the Salford congregation, wrote an essay for NPR’s “This I believe” project that was selected to be aired on the public radio station in Elkhart, Ind., WVPE-88.1 FM.
“This I Believe” is a national media project engaging millions of people in writing, sharing and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives. National Public Radio (NPR) has aired these short essays since April 2005. “This I Believe” is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow.
Good’s essay entitled “Sharing a Way of Life” explains his particular belief in the value of sharing food. His essay was aired on Tuesday, November 18 and is now available to read online at thisibelive.org.
Essays by Goshen students Annalisa Harder and Julia Baker were also featured on the Tuesday before and after Good’s air date.
The three students wrote their essays for Goshen College communication courses taught by Professor of Communication Duane Stoltzfus, who encouraged students to submit their work for publication or broadcasting.
The 10th annual Damascus Road Anti-racism Analysis Training for the greater Philadelphia region will be held at Vietnamese Mennonite Church, February 27- March 1, 2009.
The training, derived from the Damascus Road Anti-Racism Process of Mennonite Central Committee US, is designed to equip participants with a biblical basis and an analytic framework for dismantling systemic racism in the church and church related organizations and ministries. This event will help participants lay the groundwork for the long-term work of dismantling racism in congregations, conferences and institutions by training teams, leaders, and supporters from those organizations.
The School for Leadership Formation is a co-sponsor of the event, which is recommended for all conference, congregational, Conference Related Ministry & Partner In Mission leaders; it is open to everyone interested in this work. Dismantling systemic racism is an integral part of Franconia Conference’s vision to be missional, intercultural, and transformational in every aspect of ministry.
For more information, in English and Spanish, on this training; including registration, directions, schedule and lodging; visit damascusroad.franconiaconference.org.
The Damascus Road Process (www.mcc.org/damascusroad) of Mennonite Central Committee US provides antiracism educating, organizing, and consulting through congregational and institutional antiracism teams throughout the United States. Additional training and spiritual retreats are available for new and current teams.
For additional information or for comments or questions please contact the event coordinator, Sharon Williams at 610-277-1729 or SharonW@DesignForMinistry.com.
Karen’s Place, the coffee shop ministry of Doylestown Mennonite Church, will be open on Saturday, December 6 from 7:00 – 10 :30 p.m. featuring the pop rock fusion Eddy Mann Band. 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.
Join the Christmas Peace Pilgrimage on Saturday, December 13, beginning at 10:45 a.m. For almost 50 years during the Christmas season, people who believe in the importance of peace have been gathering in Nazareth, PA to walk the ten miles to Bethlehem. This pilgrimage, symbolic of the journey of Mary and Joseph, also includes a hymn sing of Christmas carols, a simple supper, and a message on “Walking Away from Fear” by guest speaker Janet Chisholm. To help arrange sufficient bus transportation, please register at www.peacewalk.org. You are welcome to join the pilgrimage even if you have not pre-registered. For more information call Fran Dreisbach at 610-258-7313 or visit the website.
Speaker and mime artist Cary Trivanovich will be the key presenter at Spruce Lake’s WINTER RETREAT on January 30 – February 1, 2009. Cary’s approach to pantomime has been acclaimed throughout the U.S. in the arenas of education and theatre, as well as Christian ministry. He’s also written two books – “Speaking the Truth in Love” and “Sharing Christ with Your Mormon Friends.” The weekend will include outdoor fun, Christ-centered worship, heartwarming fellowship, good food, and a Saturday night drama by the ministry team Maranatha. For reservations, call Spruce Lake at 800-822-7505. ($399/family of four; packages available for other family sizes. Children 5 and under, free.) For more information, visit www.sprucelake.org.
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 December at www.MennoniteEducation.org/PRAYERS
Service Opportunity
Expand your world and your family through Serving and Learning Together (SALT). If you are 18 - 27 years old, consider serving oversees for 11 months through Mennonite Central Committee’s SALT program. Visit mcc.org/salt.
Prayer Request
Jim Schrag, Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA, will be having double bypass surgery, most likely on Friday, November 21. Please remember Jim and his family in your prayers.
Conference Center Closing
The Mennonite Conference Center will be closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28.
Reminder!
If you have not already done so, please check your congregational information listed on Franconia Conference’s website. Please verify that your congregation’s address, phone number, email address, website, and pastors are correctly listed. You can do this by clicking HERE or by visiting www.franconiaconference.org and clicking on “community”, then “congregations.” Reply to office@franconiaconference.org by Monday, November 24 with corrections or confirmation that the information is correct.
Pastor/Chaplain Appreciation Breakfast RSVP
This is a reminder to RSVP for the Annual Pastor/Chaplain and Spouse Appreciation Breakfast by Tuesday, November 25 by emailing office@franconiaconference.org or calling 215-723-5513 ext. 123. The breakfast is planned for Tuesday, December 2 from 8 - 10 a.m. at Zion Mennonite Church in Souderton, PA.
Twenty-Five Hour Retreat
Join the new Learning Community on “Deepening Our Spiritual Lives” for an overnight retreat on December 10 - 11. The retreat will run from 9 a.m. on Wednesday, December 10 through 10 a.m. on Thursday, December 11 at St. Raphaela Retreat Center, 616 Coopertown Road, Haverford, PA (acjusa.org/retreats). “Tending the Center”, a retreat design written by Marlene Kropf, will be led by Dawn Ruth Nelson and assisted by Barbara Shisler. Pastors are encouraged to bring along their congregational leaders for this time of input, exercises, prayer time, and silence. The cost for 3 meals and overnight lodging is $65. Contact Dawn Nelson at dp.ruthnelson@verizon.net to register soon!
On the evening of October 8th Franconia Heritage Family restaurant served a meal of rice and beans, coleslaw and jello served so good that even a famous local chef wanted the recipe for the beans!
That evening 135 caring people met at the restaurant to hear how God brought together a “special forces” team to do battle against one of humanity’s most loathsome enemies: food-depriving intestinal worms in poverty-stricken areas of the world. The weapon of choice in this battle is a small pill costing less than two cents. For that small amount at least five to ten lbs. of “groceries” can be “bought” for a child over a six-month period (the amount the worms would eat if still there).
God knew that this battle needed passionate, well-trained “warriors” to fight against these hidden enemies. He brought them together in his own way in answer to prayer. Each one has expertise in essential areas.
Worm Warrior Sid Gholson is retired, having worked for Georgia Pacific as a procurement person. His work took him all over the world giving him much experience and knowledge about how the world moves. Sid, and his Warrior wife Crystal, decided to use part of their retirement funds to de-worm children in orphanages around the world. Now they have expanded their ministry beyond orphanages and they have reached 26 countries. They call their ministry, “WOW NOW” or “WIPE OUT WORMS NOW” a name suggested by their ten-year-old granddaughter.
Another Warrior is Aaron Jackson. The 27 year old is the “John the Baptist” of the team, wearing a T-shirt, cotton slacks, a knitted skullcap and red shoes! He gave up his apartment in order to use the rent money he saved to help get Haitian children into orphanages. For a while he slept on the floor of a homeless shelter. Now he travels the world starting orphanages and getting de-worming medication to children. He was asked to appear on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and Larry King Live. As a result, the funds he has raised are sending millions of pills to countries such as Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Sudan, Kenya and Cameroon.
Known as the “Sparkplug”, Warrior Andrew Crawford works for Food for the Hungry in Phoenix, Az. Previously Andrew worked for a pharmaceutical company in their children’s department but he felt a yearning to do something for the poverty-stricken children of the world. The efficiency of de-worming, bringing added food to malnourished children, attracted Andrew to this kind of ministry. Now he and his organization take care of all the many details connected with shipping the pills to the different countries including the cost. He and his organization have now been distributing millions of pills on their own. Their latest goal is to treat 1.5 million families in the country of Burundi - a total of 7.8 million pills for each six-month distribution!
The fourth Warrior is Scott Hendrix. Scott owned a business in Chicago. He sold it because God called him “to work for him.” Within a week Campus Crusade for Christ International contacted him. Now he is in charge of GAiN (Global Aid Network) the humanitarian aid arm of Campus Crusade. Scott and his staff take care of the very difficult custom’s and warehousing issues. But because of their vast experience around the world they know the best routes through the ports.
Thanks to people like Andrew and Scott, 100% of donated funds go to purchasing the pills. There are a lot of “just happens” (God initiatives) in this ministry. One of them was when Andrew and Scott both were delayed overnight in New Orleans due to a canceled flight. They “just happened” to be on the same flight. In the hotel room that night they found common interests and the Worm Project has not been the same since!
Besides other warriors out in the field distributing, there were other warriors present that evening like Beth Beson who flew in from Michigan. She was inspired by Aaron to do something for the country of Cameroon. She is purchasing 1 million pills for that country. Another was Dr. Priscilla Benner and the MAMA Project team. She and the Worm Project are collaborating by sending 2 million pills to Honduras. One other warrior, Howard Schiffer of Vitamin Angels was not able to be present. Their group sends out high-potency Vitamin A capsules (to prevent blindness) also distributed every six months. Now they are piggy-backing the worm pills with their very large distributions.
These warriors work against poverty around the world. If they can keep up to 25% of the children’s food from the parasites, even the food supply of a nation is increased. This team prays for God’s guidance; they see him as the “Great Coordinator,” who wants His children, the least of these, fed.
Recently Peace Mennonite Church of East Greenville (Pa.) invited Freddy Caicedo, a Colombian human rights organizer and educator, to share on his country’s current struggles and how United States policies impact his people. Members of Peace and others from Franconia Conference joined Caicedo on a Wednesday evening in October to hear his story and learn what they could do to help Colombia.
Caicedo has worked alongside union members under death threat, organized with Christian based communities and has exposed human rights violations of indigenous and Afro-Colombians. He gave us an insider’s look at the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which currently is on hold in the United States Congress. According to Caicedo, the trade agreement could more accurately be described as a corporate bail out and would primarily benefit factory owners, large land owners, bankers, narcotics traffickers, the military and the elite of Colombia, as well as multinational corporations. The agreement would also facilitate the exploitation of Colombia’s natural resources and lead to further displacement of whole communities to make way for corporations in areas such as oil, coal, palm oil and logging. Caicedo told listeners of the slave-like jobs that would be created under the agreement including sugar cane cutters who begin work at 3 am and often spend 14 to 16 hours a day in the fields, with no days off, no health care and no retirement benefits. Farmers would be prevented from reusing their own seeds because of a requirement to only use genetically modified seeds and healthcare cost would rise because generic drugs are banned under the agreement.
Free trade agreements with other countries have hurt workers and jobs in those countries as well as in the United States. For instance, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico in 1994 has resulted in 2 million Mexican farmers losing their jobs, with migration from Mexico to the US doubling since then. It’s not that trade between countries is wrong, Caicedo explained, it’s just that it needs to be “fair” trade, trade that will benefit the workers and protect the environment.
Caicedo called us, as followers of Christ who seek fairness and justice for all, to action. Caicedo encouraged all to visit Colombia, where firsthand experience often impacts our heart. Witness for Peace, who sponsored Caicedo’s speaking tour, hosts numerous delegations to Colombia and other countries who are struggling with injustice each year. Visit www.witnessforpeace.orgfor more information. He also encouraged us to contact our Representatives and Senators (202-224-3121), especially in the upcoming session of November and December, to vote “NO” on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Or click here to send an email through Witness For Peace’s “Stop the Colombia Free Trade Agreement!” campaign. Information from Mennonite Central Committee on these concerns can also be found here.
“Like Those Who Dream”: Conference pastor publishes book of sermons
Cascadia Publishing House of Telford, Pa, announces the pre-release on November 23, 2008 of Like Those Who Dream, a 200-page book of sermons preached at the Salford Mennonite Church of Harleysville over a fifteen-year span.
The author, James C. Longacre of Barto, Pa, who served in various leadership roles in the Franconia Menninte Conference for four decades, was pastor at the Salford congregation from 1992-2006. His book, subtitled, Sermons for Salford Mennonite Church and Beyond, selects thirty from the more than five hundred sermons he preached during his time at Salford.
Mennonite Seminary President Nelson Kraybill notes the sermons’ “global perspective, dry wit and keen theological insight” that make them “wonderully relevant” to a contemporary audience. Nationally recognized scriptural scholar Walter Brueggeman writes, “Not often do oral sermons ring true in written form … but these do!”
Longacre, who is retired from ministry, will be presented with the first copy of Like Those Who Dream at Salford’s regular Sunday morning service on November 23. The following Friday evening, November 28, 7:00 to 9:00 pm, the public is invited to a book-signing event at the Mennonite Heritage Center, 565 Yoder Road near Harleysville, Pa.
At the signing, Longacre, Michael King of Cascadia Publishing House, and John L. Ruth, a former co-minister of the author, will comment on the uniqueness of this book in the history of the eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite community.
Copies will be available for purchase at the autographing session. Publication and order information is available at Cascadia Publishing House.
For more information on the book-signing event call 215 256 3020.
Contributions of money, non-perishable food (particularly rice and beans), summer clothing, health kits and school kits for Grace Assembly Network in Haiti should be delivered to the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Material Resource Center of Harleysville by Tuesday, November 25. The Resource Center is located at 461C Indian Creek Road, Harleysville, PA. Please pack items in boxes that are taped shut, with a list of items on the outside of the box marked for Grace Assembly Network. Checks should be made out and sent to Franconia Mennonite Conference, 771 Route 113, Souderton, PA 18964 with Grace Assembly specified in the note line. For more information, visit haiti.franconiaconference.org.
All are invited to a book-autographing on Friday, November 28, 7 to 9 p.m., at the Mennonite Heritage Center for Like Those Who Dream, a 200-page book of sermons preached at Salford Mennonite Church over a fifteen-year span. The author, James C. Longacre of Barto, PA, served in various leadership roles in Franconia Mennonite Conference for four decades and was pastor at the Salford congregation from 1992 - 2006. His book, subtitled Sermons for Salford Mennonite Church and Beyond, selects thirty from the more than 500 sermons he preached during his time at Salford. Copies will be available for purchase at the autographing session. For more information on the book signing, call the Mennonite Heritage Center at 215-256-3020.
World AIDS day is on Monday, December 1, and so is the next Half-Price sale at the Care & Share Shoppes in Souderton. Shop in the three shoppes from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Proceeds from this sale will benefit Mennonite Central Committee’s Generations at Risk initiatives. These initiatives touch millions of lives by caring for people with HIV/AIDS. Learn more at mcc.org/aids.
Penn View Christian School’s annual Christmas Benefit Concert will be held on Friday, December 5 at 7:30 p.m. at Franconia Mennonite Church. The concert will feature the Third Grade Choir, General Choir, Select Choir, Middle School Band, Jazz Band, Middle School Strings, Select Strings, Seventh Grade Handbell Ensemble, and the Eighth Grade Handbell Ensemble. A portion of the offering at the Christmas Benefit Concert will be matched dollar for dollar! For more information, please call 215-723-1196.
All are invited to a Christmas service in an 18th century Mennonite Meetinghouse! A service of Christmas carols, scripture readings and candle lighting will take place on Saturday, December 6 at 7 p.m. in the historic Germantown Mennonite Meetinghouse. Come for a Christmas celebration in a simple setting with refreshments afterward, hosted and sponsored by Germantown Mennonite Historic Trust. The historic meetinghouse is located at 6119 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA. For further information, please contact Christopher Friesen at 215-843-0943.
For years, Liberty Ministries has taken Christmas Stockings (bags) to the male and female inmates of Montgomery County Correctional Facility (MCCF). This year Liberty Ministries needs to prepare 1,900 hand-decorated and packaged bags. Bags, decorated by local Sunday School classes, will be filled with prepackaged cookies, candies, toiletries, Gospels of John, etc. Preparation of the bags will take place on Friday, December 12 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Dock Woods Community. The bags will be distributed on Saturday, December 13 from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. at MCCF. If you would like to participate, please contact office manager Deb Gehert at 610-287-5481 or deborahg@libertyministries.us. Donations to help fund this project can be sent to Liberty Ministries, P.O. Box 87, Schwenksville, PA 19473.
Bally Mennonite Church will be serving a Pancake Breakfast in the Church Fellowship Hall on Saturday, December 13 from 7 - 11 a.m. Donations received will provide funds for Mennonite Disaster Service.
The November issue of Peace & Justice News from the Peace & Justice committee of Eastern District and Franconia Conference is now posted on the web at www.easterndistrict.org/pjn0811.pdf. This issue shares about what was learned from recent speakers in our area: Sister Helen Prejean on the death penalty and Freddy Caicedo on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
The 2009 Winter Peace Retreat at Spruce Lake will be held February 13 - 15, jointly sponsored by Eastern District and Franconia Conferences. The adult program on “Restoring Justice: Creating Peace Between Victims & Offenders” will be led by Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz , director of the MCC Office on Crime and Justice. The youth program entitled “Understanding Jesus’ Activism: Can Youth Change the World?” will be led by Mark Reiff, youth pastor at Doylestown Mennonite Church. There will also be children’s activities and time for great winter recreation. For further information contact Becky Felton, 215-536-7935, bbfelton@verizon.net, or see the complete announcement at http://efpjc.ppjr.org/efp092.htm. Registration deadline is Tuesday, January 20, 2009.
Job Opportunities
Franconia Mennonite Conference is accepting resumes for the position of Administrative Services Assistant. This 12 – 15 hour a week position includes working at the conference center front desk, helping to maintain database and website information, distributing bulletin announcements, and generally assisting the Administrative Services Manager. Some light lifting is required. Submit your resume to Melissa Landis at mlandis@franconiaconference.org or mail to 771 Route 113, Souderton, PA 18964. Call 215-723-5513 ext. 123 for more information.
Rockhill Mennonite Church is looking for a part-time church secretary (20 hours weekly) for receptionist work and support to church ministries, using a broad range of computer skills including Microsoft Office, Word, Power-Point, Excel and Publisher. Interested persons can call the church office at 215-723-7780 or stop by to fill out an application (3100 Meetinghouse Road Telford, PA). Please call before you come to make sure that someone will be there.
For more than 50 years, the churches of Franconia Mennonite Conference have sent missionaries and money to Mexico to plant new churches. This year, a church in Mexico City sent missionaries back.
Husband and wife Linker Sanchez and Luz Maria Vargas, of the Tierra Prometida congregation, were commissioned on Friday night, November at this year’s conference assembly to work with the Spanish-speaking community in Gaithersburg, Md, near Washington, DC.
“The United States has sent missionaries for many years all over the world,” Sanchez told those gathered. “But as you know, God is now sending all the nations of the world to the United States—and we have come here to reach our countrymen in their language and culture.”
“We are from many different nations but we are all children of the same God,” said Vargas.
More than 200 people, including 130 delegates from conference congregations and related-ministries gathered around tables at the Penn View Christian School cafeteria in Souderton, Pa. to worship together, discuss a variety of issues in the conference and celebrate newly credentialed leaders. The theme for the assembly was “Come to the Table: Embracing God in Us.”
Blaine Detwiler, conference moderator and pastor of Lakeview Mennonite Church, wrapped himself in a quilt to welcome participants on Friday night. Detwiler told of the quilt he and his wife had received as a wedding present, and how it had been used over the years.
“The beauty of a quilt is in its use,” he said, and suggested that this is also true of Christians.
Unlike previous years, there was no traditional worship time or sermon on Friday evening. Instead, Detwiler invited everyone to sit at tables and “see and hear the movement of Jesus in the faces around us.”
“There is no sermon, not in the traditional sense, because the sermon is going to be in the Anabaptist sense of community—how we are together with each other,” said executive conference minister Noel Santiago. “And doing that in front of a watching world is how the Anabaptists understood the message. In a way, the message is us… It comes out of all of us, together.”
While those gathered did less business than in the past and spent more time learning from each other, some things did remain the same: several rooms were designated as prayer space, and “prayer ushers” were available to pray at any time during the assembly. Ongoing worship was held in the teacher’s lounge, and an indoor prayer labyrinth with a guided liturgy was set up for anyone wanting to meditate. And while worship was held in English, some songs included verses in Spanish or Bahasa Indonesia, the two most common languages other than English spoken by conference churches.
Early on Saturday morning, participants again gathered at their tables—this time to tell stories of how they had seen God acting and how they were embracing the mission in their own churches.
A number of congregations in the conference have connections to Mexican churches and regularly send financial support and work teams or visit each other.
Urban Byler, who attends Whitehall Mennonite Church near Allentown, Pa., noted that his congregation is sponsoring a Karen Burmese refugee family. It has also supported Ripple Effects, a gathering led by Tom and Carolyn Albright for those who don’t have a church and often don’t want to be involved in a traditional church.
Churches have also been learning that to go out into the neighborhood and make disciples—and that crossing of language barriers, cultural assumptions and socioeconomic lines—can sometimes be uncomfortable or require flexibility.
John Ehst, pastor of Franconia Mennonite Church in Telford, Pa., shared that some of the recent converts in their Spanish-speaking gathering wanted a baptism by immersion, so the church held the service in the afternoon at a neighboring Grace Brethren church.
Several pastors said that while they often preach about following Jesus, sharing that love and joining the work of the Holy Spirit, it can be difficult to be missional and reach out as a congregation—especially for “cradle” or “legacy” Mennonites.
“The challenge we face is just talking about our faith,” said one pastor. “We’re good at doing things but not as much at verbalizing our faith.”
“One of the biggest challenges is that in this community,” said another pastor, “Mennonites hang out with Mennonites. They work for Mennonite businesses and go to Mennonite schools… it’s hard to get outside of that.”
In keeping with the theme of mission, part of Saturday was spent talking about an important inward focus of churches: the faith formation of children.
Mary Benner, pastor of youth and children at Souderton (Pa) Mennonite Church, said the goal is to help churches and church schools think about “how we help children and youth become radical followers of Jesus Christ—the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the Jesus of perfect love.”
Benner, along with Marlene Frankenfield, conference youth minister, and Sharon Fransen, shared a framework for how families, churches and schools can work together to pass along the faith. The framework was developed in conjunction with regional Mennonite schools, but is intended to help any child whether or not he or she attends a Mennonite school.
“Passing on the faith to the next generation is one of the most important roles of the entire body of Christ,” said Benner. “We want [our children] to develop a costly compassion, and have empathy for a hurting world… We want them to know Jesus so they will keep their hearts soft.”
But Benner also said that Jesus can make us uncomfortable.
“There’s a risk to teaching our children to be followers of Christ, because they will then go and do what we’ve taught them to do,” says Benner, who has two children doing voluntary service. “The reality is, if our kids live the spirit of Jesus, it’s costly. They’re going to be more vulnerable to pain and loneliness, and probably be drawn to the margins of society.”
Benner said that the most important thing churches can do for their children is to pray, be present and pay attention, because even churches appear similar on the surface, they’re all so different that what works in one congregation often can’t be translated into another.
“We feel like when we see another congregation doing something, we think, ‘That’s the answer for us.’ But the most effective thing is just that love relationship—knowing your context, your culture.”
The Saturday morning session covered approval of the 2007 assembly minutes, an update on the Vision and Financial Plan, and nominations for the gifts discernment process. Delegates voted unanimously to approve Randy Heacock, pastor of Doylestown (Pa) Mennonite Church, as assistant conference moderator and conference board vice chair.
It also included time to welcome everyone who had been credentialed in Franconia Conference in the past year. Those licensed for ministry included Arnold Derstine, of the Franconia congregation; Eva Kratz, for prison ministry; Gay Brunt Miller, conference director of collaborative ministries; Jenifer Erickson Morales, conference minister of transitional ministries; Timothy Moyer, Vincent Mennonite Church; Yunus Perkasa, Nations Worship Center; and Aldo Siahaan, Philadelphia Praise Center. John Brodnicki of Mennonite Bible Fellowship was the only newly ordained person, while transfers of credentials were recognized for Dennis Edwards, Peace Fellowship (Washington, D.C.); Chris Nickels, Spring Mount; Mary Nitzsche, Blooming Glen; Wayne Nitzsche, Perkasie; Jim Ostlund, Blooming Glen; and Wayne Speigle, Bally Mennonite Church.
Throughout the gathering, there was a recognition that churches are working to minister in shifting contexts, and that the conference itself is becoming more diverse each year. Among conference churches, services are held not only in Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia, but also in Vietnamese and with some congregations having growing numbers of persons form varied Asian and African contexts. And while Mennonite conferences have historically been organized by geography, the web of relationships is taking the conference outside of those boundaries, and conference staff are working with churches in Delaware, New Jersey, Arkansas, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
Amidst shifts and changes in the church, said Noel Santiago, “We want to be proactive, not reactive.”
At the end of the final delegate session, participants who had come from all over the world paused to partake in the re-membering of the body of Christ, and shared communion.
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“This I Believe” is a national media project engaging millions of people in writing, sharing and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives. 
On the evening of October 8th Franconia Heritage Family restaurant served a meal of rice and beans, coleslaw and jello served so good that even a famous local chef wanted the recipe for the beans!
Caicedo has worked alongside union members under death threat, organized with Christian based communities and has exposed human rights violations of indigenous and Afro-Colombians. He gave us an insider’s look at the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which currently is on hold in the United States Congress. According to Caicedo, the trade agreement could more accurately be described as a corporate bail out and would primarily benefit factory owners, large land owners, bankers, narcotics traffickers, the military and the elite of Colombia, as well as multinational corporations. The agreement would also facilitate the exploitation of Colombia’s natural resources and lead to further displacement of whole communities to make way for corporations in areas such as oil, coal, palm oil and logging. Caicedo told listeners of the slave-like jobs that would be created under the agreement including sugar cane cutters who begin work at 3 am and often spend 14 to 16 hours a day in the fields, with no days off, no health care and no retirement benefits. Farmers would be prevented from reusing their own seeds because of a requirement to only use genetically modified seeds and healthcare cost would rise because generic drugs are banned under the agreement.
Lora Steiner, for Franconia Mennonite Conference