Lora Steinerlsteiner@franconiaconference.org
Peace Fellowship meets in a place rather incongruent with its name: a local Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall.Peace Fellowship, an emerging partner congregation with Franconia Conference, is a multiracial congregation located in the northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. It sits east of the Anacostia River in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood, right on the border with Maryland.Like many churches, Peace didn’t want to just be located in a random neighborhood; it wanted to be in a place where it could reach out to the community around it, therefore, geography has always been important. From the start, the church has been intentional about locating itself on the east side of the city, which has significantly higher rates of poverty and crime.“The church has a real mission for the community and neighborhood,” says Keith Lyndaker Schlabach. He and his wife, Rachelle, began attending Peace about a year ago and he says that outreach, as well as the diversity of the congregation are what drew them in.Ellen Adjei also liked the multiracial character of the church, as well as its emphasis on social justice and “how that fits with being an evangelical.” She says most of the time, people who are interested in social justice aren’t Christians, and she’s been encouraged by the way in which Peace combines those aspects of faith.Peace is a fairly small congregation, and church elder Raymond McGhee says that being small brings its own challenges. Sometimes Peace doesn’t always have the resources or expertise necessary to address the problems it sees so it works with organizations like Jubilee Jobs, which provides job training and placement services.The diversity of the congregation also brings challenges. Recently, members held a dialogue about race and class. McGhee says the the church wants to openly acknowledge and address the differences.Yet members of Peace are continually energized by the possibilities. “We’re really excited about what God’s doing in this church,” says McGhee.Peace began meeting six years ago in the home of pastor Dennis Edwards and his wife, Susan. As the church grew, it moved to a rec hall, then to the VFW hall, and is now hoping to purchase a house which was confiscated because of drug activity and is located just a few blocks from where Peace presently meets.Pastor Edwards began the church after leaving his position at Washington Community Fellowship, a Virginia Mennonite Conference-affiliated congregation located on Capitol Hill. Edwards came to Washington Community Fellowship after his advisor told him about an opening at a multiracial and multi-denominational congregation in Washington, D.C. When he became the lead pastor, Virginia Conference leadership offered to ordain him and Edwards, who was already ordained in a different denomination, accepted.“All of my Christian life I’ve had an affinity…to what I later would learn are Anabaptist values.”When Edwards left, he says he wasn’t sure what he was going to do; he only knew that he wanted to live somewhere east of the river.“I felt like…I needed to be more deliberate in fulfilling that call in my life,” says Edwards, “and living in a neighborhood and being in a community that needs some tangible witness of the gospel.”Friends—including members of Washington Community Fellowship—encouraged him to plant a church, but Edwards was hesitant to do so because he had started a church in New York City and knew how difficult church planting could be. Eventually, though, Edwards began holding Sunday evening worship in his home.Edwards says the emphasis on building relationships and being present in the community requires a strong commitment on the part of Peace’s members.“We may discourage some people because we tell them it is about building relationships,” says Edwards. “I know we have lost some people because of that—not in a mean way, but they realize it’s going to take awhile, that they need to be deliberate about it. So some people have not stayed around because they found it to be awkward for them personally.”Peace Fellowship is celebrating its sixth anniversary this summer with a party for the community, one that includes food and games, as well as an introduction to their Vacation Bible School program. Church elder Lynne Eggert says that churches in the area have generally been more inwardly focused, so Peace wanted to do something a little different, “We wanted to have something that showed the community love.”
