Warren Hoffman, Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Convention 2009 in Columbus, Ohio
It’s good to be with you and to greet you this morning on behalf of the Brethren in Christ in North America to speak on behalf of the many smaller Anabaptist groups that share the same faith with you.
As many of you know, one place in the global Brethren in Christ that is in acute distress right now is Zimbabwe where 35,000 of our brothers and sisters in Brethren in Christ congregations along with the entire country are experiencing unimaginable hardship.
About a year ago, we received a letter in our church offices in Grantham, Pa., near Harrisburg, written in the printing of a child with $19 enclosed. This is how it read.
Dear Bishop and BIC people in Zimbabwe,
I am sending this to you because I love you and I hope that you feel better now that you have this money. My name is Anya and I am five years old. I go to Willow Spring Mennonite Church in Illinois. I know that you are very good people and that is why I’m sending this note to you. I’m having a farm stand. I’m selling peas from my garden. I pick them and sell them at my church. Well, sometimes we eat them ourselves. I also get money from my rock shows and guess how much I get from my rock shows? I get one quarter from every person who comes to look at my rock collection. I love you. -- Anya
That’s what she wrote to our bishop in Zimbabwe and what she raised for the people there.
I don’t know what you all are doing to instill in your children, even the youngest ones, that kind of openhanded caring for the whole Brethren in Christ family. But I want to thank you for caring for us and partnering with us so well.
Among those of us who count ourselves as part of this family, you especially are the keeper of the flame – the longstanding biblical connections refined in the fires of persecution so long ago. You among all of us are the critical mass of resources, expertise and engagement that give strength and momentum to whatever it is we do together.
As the Lord answers your prayers this week for the Holy Spirit to blow among you and to breathe into you, I fully expect that the sails of our Anabaptist movement will be filled once again by the wind of the spirit and you will be the ballast that holds us steady in community as the Spirit drives us forward again.
And so I want to thank you. I want to thank the inter-Mennonite agencies and ministries represented here for the excellence of your work for us and on behalf of us. I want to thank you as a faith community here in the U.S. and in Canada as well for dreaming the dream of transformation and now doing the hard, hard work of bringing that into reality as a resounding witness to the gospel of peace we proclaim.
I want to thank the conferences represented here for setting aside your own preferences at times to witness to the life and work of this whole church family.
I want to thank Willow Spring Mennonite Church and all the congregations represented here for faithfully living out the gospel of Jesus in your community and in the world.
I want to thank Calvin Zehr, pastor at Willow Spring, and all the pastors in your congregations who preach Jesus and invite your people to encounter Jesus and live in vital relationship with him and live out his callings in redemptive purposes.
I want to thank Matt and Joy Kauffman, Anya’s parents, for raising their children to love Jesus and walk in his ways.
And I want to thank Anya for picking peas and gathering rocks and sending $19 to help Brethren in Christ people in Zimbabwe.
God bless you all.