GOSHEN, Ind. -- Executive Director Carlos Romero has announced two new staff appointments in Mennonite Education Agency’s Hispanic Pastoral and Leadership Education (HPLE) office. Rafael Barahona of Goshen, Ind., will lead HPLE as a new Mennonite Education Agency (MEA) associate director. Tony Brun of Washington, D.C., has been named staff associate.
Barahona and Brun begin their duties October 1, joining Instituto Biblico Anabautista (IBA) Assistant Director Violeta Ajquejay as MEA HPLE staff. The congregationally based IBA, which has served about 1,000 students, officially became an MEA program March 1. The HPLE office operates in partnership with Iglesia Menonita Hispana (IMH) and Mennonite Mission Network.
IBA is one aspect of HPLE. HPLE’s goals are to coordinate and provide pastoral and theological education to maintain and revitalize Anabaptist identity in IMH congregations, prepare Hispanic Mennonites to be congregational and broader church leaders, provide tools to people already in leadership positions and promote Mennonite higher education among Hispanic youth.
Barahona received a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic ministries with a minor in intercultural studies from Goshen (Ind.) College, and a master of arts degree in theological studies, Christian education from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind.
Since 2005, he has served as director of Leadership Programs and Pastoral Connections at AMBS. Prior to that, he was director of the Hispanic Education in Theology and Leadership program at Goshen College.
Barahona has served as a pastor, youth pastor, interim and resource pastor and church planter in Goshen, Calgary and Edmonton, Alta., and Winnipeg, Man. He also was office manager for the Hispanic Mennonite Convention of the former Mennonite Church. He is a member of Iglesia Menonita del Buen Pastor in Goshen.
Barahona will continue his AMBS duties as director of Pastoral Studies Distance Education and with Journey: A Conference-based Leadership Development program for the next two years. In that interval, his MEA work will be three-quarters time. It will include discovering and developing higher education opportunities (local and distance) for Hispanic Mennonites, leading IBA, promoting Mennonite educational institutions within IMH and the culture of call among students who choose non-theological education, and fund raising.
Brun has undergraduate degrees in pastoral ministry and theology from Baptist Theological Seminary of Uruguay and Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica and master’s degrees in Latin American studies and pastoral ministry from SBL and National University of Costa Rica. He is completing doctoral studies in the Ministry in Mission and Leadership program of Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago.
He has served as a professor and administrator in Uruguay, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Brazil and as a pastor and church leader in Uruguay. At present Brun is a professor at the Servant Leadership School – Festival Center in Washington, teaching courses in theology, the spirituality of liberation and Latin American studies. He is a member of Hyattsville (Md.) Mennonite Church.
In his one-quarter time HPLE position, he will serve as an instructor and resource person for IBA, facilitating workshops, intensive courses and seminars, among other duties.
Ajquejay has served the church since 1988 when she began work as an intern with the Commission on Home Ministries of the former General Conference Mennonite Church while completing her studies at Bethel College, North Newton, Kan. She has an associate’s degree in secretarial studies and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Bethel and is a graduate of the Hesston (Kan.) College Pastoral Ministries Program. Ajquejay attends Tabor Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.
HPLE staff will work from MEA’s main office in Goshen (Barahona), the Mennonite Church USA Newton Office (Ajquejay) and Washington (Brun).
Mennonite Education Agency is the education agency of Mennonite Church USA.
For more information, contact: Carlos Romero, executive director, Mennonite Education Agency, 574-642-3164, e-mail: carlosr@MennoniteEducation.org
History essay contest winners announced
Braden Hiebner
Tobin Miller Shearer
GOSHEN, Ind. – Interracial marriage and a German mythologist and nationalist were the subjects of the winning entries in this year’s John Horsch Mennonite Historical Essay Contest, sponsored by the Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee.
“Looking Past Legality: Interracial Marriage and the Mennonite Church, 1930-1971” by Tobin Miller Shearer took first place in the graduate school/seminary category. A doctoral student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Shearer used the 1954 wedding and marriage of Gerald Hughes, an African-American, and Annabelle Conrad, a white, to examine denominational attitudes toward the most intimate of interpersonal relations even while advocating for racial equality.
“In comparison to other race-related issues, whether congregational integration, social equality or civil rights legislation, the topic of interracial marriage troubled white Mennonites for a longer period, proved more difficult to discuss and involved fewer appeals to scripture,” Shearer wrote.
Second place in the graduate school/seminary category went to Joshua Weaver, a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., for his paper “Awakening to the Realities of Conflict: Mennonite Board of Missions in Israel.” Holly Scott from Penn State University at Harrisburg was awarded third place for “Doves of a Different Feather: Mennonites and the Antiwar Movement During Vietnam.”
In the undergraduate category, Braden Hiebner from Bethel College, North Newton, Kan., took the top prize for “Reintegrating the Life of Wilhelm Mannhardt: A Nineteenth-Century Mennonite, Mythologist, Nationalist, Pietist, and Liberal.”
“It was very well written, and it has an excellent bibliography,” said contest judge Lee Roy Berry. “It was, for me at least, a most unusual topic.”
Robert Weaver, also from Bethel College, was second with “Urban Kansas Mennonites and Homosexuality, 1968-1999.” Nathan Kruger from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) was third with “The Immigration and Settlement of Susanna and Isaak Zacharias: A Contextual Analysis of Their Experience in Canada.”
No first place award was given in the high school category. Melanie Kampen from Westgate Mennonite Collegiate in Winnipeg, Man., garnered second place for “Reasons for the Migration of Mennonites: Russia to Canada, 1870s.”
First place winners each received $100 and a year’s subscription to Mennonite Quarterly Review. Seventy-five dollars was awarded to second place and $50 to third place. All entrants received a one-year subscription to Mennonite Historical Bulletin. Ten students submitted entries to this year’s contest. Excerpts from the two first-place submissions will be published in the October issue of Mennonite Historical Bulletin.
Judges were Berry, political science professor at Goshen (Ind.) College; Rachel Waltner Goossen, history professor at Washburn, University in Topeka, Kan.; and Walter Sawatsky, professor of church history and mission at AMBS.
The annual contest is named in honor of John Horsch (1867-1941), the German-American historian and polemicist who did much to rekindle interest in Anabaptist and Mennonite studies in the 20th century.
The deadline for next year’s contest is June 15, 2008. See the Historical Committee Web site (www.mennoniteusa.org/history) for more information.
