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Mennonite Church USA Executive Board appoints two to MHS Alliance board August 1, 2006 Executive Leadership encourages participation in nationwide healthcare effort. Following Jesus by being generous.

Mennonite Church USA Executive Board appoints two to MHS Alliance board August 1, 2006

The Mennonite Church USA Executive Board appoints MHS Alliance board members because the two organizations have a covenant relationship and support each other in a variety of ways. The covenant recognizes that MHS Alliance related health and human service ministries are an extension of Mennonite Church USA’s missional calling. It also affirms that MHS Alliance member ministries have accountability to Mennonite Church USA.

“Appointing board members who can contribute to the ministry of our healthcare agencies is one way Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership carries out its covenant relationship with MHS Alliance” said Ron Byler, associate executive director of Mennonite Church USA.

Snyder is retiring after 10 years as President of Bluffton (Ohio) University. Prior to accepting the presidency, she served as vice president and academic dean at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va. Her church work has ranged from congregational and denominational involvements to a term of service in Nigeria with the former Mennonite Board of Missions. She was moderator and chair of the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board from 1999 to 2001.

Jaime (Jim) Alvarez is a district manager for MMA in Goshen, Ind. He was formerly executive director of the Family Business Program and Assistant Professor of Business at Goshen (Ind.) College. Prior to joining the college in 2004, Alvarez served in senior leadership positions, most recently as general manager, at Conagra Foods, Inc. in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“We look forward to the perspectives and expertise Lee and Jim will bring to the work of MHS Alliance” said MHS Alliance president Rick Stiffney.

Mennonite Health Services Alliance is an affiliated ministry of Mennonite Church USA, strengthening and supporting church-sponsored health and human service organizations.

Executive Leadership encourages participation in nationwide healthcare effort

More than 8 million children lack health insurance in the United States, and their parents struggle to find adequate healthcare for them. Without health insurance, their medical care is often unavailable or delayed with negative results. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that of these 8 million children, 3 million are eligible for existing programs that would provide healthcare.

“The campaign encourages parents to include enrolling their eligible, uninsured children in Medicaid or SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) as an important part of getting them ready for the new school,” said Glen E. Miller, M.D., M.A.T.S., program manager for Mennonite Church USA’s healthcare access program.

Covering Kids & Families works to connect eligible, uninsured children and adults with low-cost and free healthcare coverage. It is the nation’s single largest effort of its kind. The foundation’s efforts have helped decrease the number of uninsured children in the United States from 11 million in 1997 to less than 8.3 million in 2005.

“I urge school nurses and other interested persons to take up this worthy cause,” Miller said. “Help is available for many children who now suffer from the lack of ready access to healthcare.”

For information on Covering Kids & Families, visit www.coveringkidsandfamilies.org. For more information on Mennonite Church USA’s healthcare access program, visit www.MennoniteUSA.org/healthcare.

Following Jesus by being generous

Martha Yoder Maust, left, knits while her daughter Ruth looks on. Martha and her husband, Rod Yoder Maust, have chosen to live simply, which has enabled them to enjoy a generous lifestyle. Photo by Dan Hess.

INDIANAPOLIS (Mennonite Church USA)—The Rod and Martha Yoder Maust family sits on the front bench at Shalom Mennonite Church in Indianapolis. There are six of them when Rachel is home from Eastern Mennonite University. Even if Rod weren’t an elder and Martha weren’t Church Council chair, you’d think of them as congregational keystones.

Look the second time and you’d agree that they’d fit comfortably in a traditional synagogue, Rod with his long uncut beard and Martha with clean sturdy Goodwill clothing that bespeaks European rather than contemporary American tastes. In fact, Martha seems to have friends from multiple faith and Racial/Ethnic backgrounds all over the place.

Rod and Martha bought a big fixer-upper in a run-down section of town. They chose it because of the empty lots on either side, which they bought so Rod could plant fruit trees and cultivate a garden.

It’s good that the huge old house has nooks and crannies because they are homebodies. That is, they truly live there, read there, play trumpet and recorders and guitar there, and meet the world at their doorstep. They walk the 13 blocks to Global Gifts and the 15 blocks to the city library.

When Rod isn’t fiddling with his antiques or fussing with one of his instruments he may be found refinishing another piece of molding for the living room ceiling. Meanwhile, Martha is in her fourth semester of Hebrew studies at Christian Theological Seminary. The family enjoys biking on the Monon Trail. All the children are book worms.

While the family’s lifestyle may appear to be less-than-extraordinary to some, Rod and Martha have chosen to pursue a way of life that allows them to follow Christ by being good stewards of what has been given to them. It’s a way of life that these Mennonites find fulfilling because it gives them the opportunity to be truly generous with what they have.

To say the Yoder Maust family lives simply doesn’t adequately describe their state. They are an oddity in commercialized America. They do spend money, but differently somehow. They travel, but as a family with a purposeful destination – to Ethiopia (where son Benyam was born), to France (childhood home of Martha’s mother), to Egypt (where Martha’s sister and her husband now live), to Mexico (where Rod’s brother was doing agricultural research) and Mennonite Church USA Delegate Assemblies.

In trying to describe them, one thinks of the saying: “There are two kinds of rich people: those who have lots of money, and those who have few needs.” They fit both kinds; they are doubly rich. And they’ve learned how to solve this “problem.”

Rod is a psychiatrist who works for Midtown Community Mental Health Center. Its clients are low income from the inner city. Martha, a family physician, works for People’s Health Center in one of the city’s most impoverished areas where only 6 percent of clients have insurance. They earn medical incomes, “close to the market rate.”

Because of their priority on family and home, however, each of them has opted to work part-time. Rod works 25 hours per week, which includes time with medical interns and education seminars. Martha works three days a week, which means they both have time for children and chores.

They have money. Enough to max out the allowable pre-tax amount for their 4(3)B pension fund. Enough to pay for one child in college and two in a Catholic high school. Enough to take a family trip every two years. Enough to buy Rod’s grandmother’s farm and adjoining acreage in northern Indiana. Enough to sustain their modest style of living. More than enough.

And the rest of the money?

Rod says they tithe their income for the congregational offering. “That’s the beginning,” he said. Then they direct contributions to numerous church agencies. “I grew up to my grandfather’s dedication to Mennonite education,” says Martha, “so we give to Bethany where Rod attended high school, Goshen College, AMBS and Meserete Kristos College in Ethiopia.”

And then add to this MCC, Heifer Project, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Indiana-Michigan Conference, Columbia Road Health Services and the Nazareth Project. They have a vital connection with each agency they support. For example, the Nazareth Project is a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports Nazareth Hospital where Martha worked as a volunteer for eight months before starting medical school.

Rod keeps a yellow pad where he has recorded their donations in recent years. “If a development officer stops in to ask for $100,000, we must tell them that $100,000 isn’t sitting around here somewhere. But in our lifetime, if we give regularly, it might amount to $100,000.”

Rod, who seldom talks about himself, is unable in this conversation to hide his deep enjoyment of giving. Clearly, writing checks to church agencies isn’t a burden. Although Reuben, their teenage son, grumbles that his parents “overtithe,” Rod obviously takes delight in the opportunity to give. Martha’s demeanor says, “It’s our way of life.”

Thus, they are doubly rich – with money and with few needs.

The Yoder Mausts refer to Ron Sider and his impressionable book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. They also share stories referencing the family’s international experience. Martha: “It’s one thing if I use as my point of reference the doctors in the lounge talking about their yachts and another thing to compare me with Zaire nurses who don’t have enough money to buy their own stethoscope.”

The very mention of Zaire spurs Rod and Martha to think of the huge disparity between rich and poor. “It isn’t right,” says Rod. “Our giving is no where like the widow and her mite. While we do live modestly and our children do sometimes complain, I wouldn’t want to spend more on ourselves.”

As for giving medical services free of charge, Rod and Martha are limited by institutional policies, but both respond when legitimate pro-bono services can be offered.

The parents in this family talk about financial giving. But monetary contributions are not the beginning or the end of this family’s response to God. The whole family, led by the parents, seems to be given as a total unit to the church. Rachel, formerly active in her church youth group, is now at EMU where she will be ministry assistant in her dorm next year. Reuben plays in the congregation’s ensemble. Ruth has participated in Scripture reading and has sent out hand-made cards to members. Each of the children, including Benyam, participates in hands-on projects. Reuben recently helped lay conduit for electrical lines, and Ruth and Benyam helped in a recent remodeling/painting project.

The Yoder Mausts are among many families within Mennonite Church USA who have chosen to make generosity a priority. It’s one of the many ways they joyfully follow Jesus into the world.

“It’s almost embarrassing,” says Martha, “that we can work half time, pay our bills, support our children in school, set aside funds for our retirement, give a lot to charity and there still is money left over.”