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Blog Post
Barbara Yoder teaches English as a Second Language at the University of Kansas. Formerly, she worked as an art museum educator at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. She and her husband, Roger Martin, belong to Peace Mennonite Church in Lawrence, Kansas, where they both serve on the worship committee. This piece was written as a companion to Roger's post, The night I didn't fight. My husband and I are driving home late at night, and I’m in tears. We’ve come from the latest meeting of a group of friends who’ve gathered since 2003 to eat hors d’oeuvres and...
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Marty Lehman is the administrative pastor at College Mennonite Church, a large congregation located on the Goshen College campus. Previously she served in administrative roles at various Mennonite organizations; most recently as the associate executive director for Mennonite Church USA Executive Board. She and her husband, Rex Hooley, live in Goshen, Indiana. What does it mean when we say everyone is welcome in our congregation? College Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana is wrestling with this question. Does that mean we welcome the homeless, the addict, the sexual offender, those who don’t tithe, the slum-lord, the gossipers, the over-eaters and so on?...
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Roger Martin conceived and edited Explore, a University of Kansas research magazine that won 12 national awards in 14 years. In 1990 a panel of Newsweek jurors named it one of the nation’s 10 best college/university magazines. After that, he wrote commentaries about KU research that were broadcast on Kansas Public Radio, an NPR carrier, and published in several Kansas newspapers. Woodley Press recently contacted Martin about publishing his manuscript “A Doubter’s Guide to God.” My wife and I get together with a group to yack every couple of months. Since the early 2000s, we have discussed more than 70...
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By Janie Beck Kreider (Mennonite Church USA)—For the past two years, a small group of Mennonite leaders has been gathering to reimagine the way Mennonite Church USA congregations practice communion based on the experiences and perspectives of victims of sexual abuse. This group grew out of a final project that Hilary Scarsella completed in 2012 as part of her Master of Divinity degree at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Indiana. Scarsella, who recently began a Ph.D. program in theology and trauma at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and who co-directed Mennonite Church USA’s Women...
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Kelly Bates Oglesby is grateful to share life with her husband, Herman. She is lead pastor of Parkview Mennonite Church in Kokomo, Indiana. Kelly is committed to cultural competence, reconciliation ministry and pastoral care. Parkview Mennonite Church is comprised of a diverse array of people who trod different special paths to become part of this community. The congregation is rich in love for God and seeks to extend abundant hospitality. Howard-Miami Mennonite Church planted our congregation as an intentional urban outreach. Since 1945 Parkview has been committed to living out faith as a Mennonite congregation. Presently, there is fervent...
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Jonathan Beachy of San Antonio, Texas, has spent a lifetime caring for and being enriched by persons society often rejects. Those persons have included special needs students in Texas, and prison inmates and indigenous persons in South America. As a volunteer with Interfaith Welcome Coalition he has seen the face of Jesus over and over in the faces of refugee women and children crying out for help. "I missed my dad so much, I made a paper airplane to take me to him, but the guards took it away. They said I couldn't have it." – Six year old just released...
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Asia Frye is a seminary student through the Connect program at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She lives in Hillsboro, Kansas, with her husband and two daughters. Their family attends First Mennonite Church where Asia previously served as youth pastor before becoming a full-time student. She likes table top games, climbing, driving in the demo derby, dumb t-shirts, and heirloom tomato gardening. I didn't grow up Mennonite. I don't have a good Mennonite name like Swartzendruber, and not long ago, I was unfamiliar with strange foods like borscht and verenika – let alone whatever you Eastern Mennos eat. No, I...
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Born in New Orleans and raised a pacifist by Baptist hippies, Michael Howes married the first Mennonite he got to know, the Reverend Sue Conrad Howes, who is also a credentialed pastor in Mennonite Church USA. An unashamed nerd with a brain full of pop culture, Michael is intensely proud of his son who is beginning college, and his daughter who's entering high school. He and Sue are excited to begin serving Akron Mennnonite Church as transitional co-pastors in mid-August. He loves listening to and learning from people's lives, especially young adults and those who don't identify themselves as Christians....
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Sara Mwagura lives in Overland Park, Kansas with her husband Joseph, and daughter Liliana. She currently works part-time as an Early Childhood Education and Professional Development Specialist at The Family Conservancy. She has had a variety of roles in the field of early childhood care and education, from teaching in preschools to starting early childhood programs in Mozambique where she served with Mennonite Central Committee for four years. “But do you think Jesus is still dead?” I asked the three, four, and five-year-olds in my Sunday school class after telling the story of Jesus’ death. “No” was the...
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Todd Wynward is an author, small-scale farmer, wilderness educator and Mennonite minister for watershed discipleship affiliated with Albuquerque Mennonite Church. He has been engaged in education reform and social change movements for twenty years, and has spent more than a thousand nights outdoors. He and his wife Peg founded a wilderness-based public charter school in 2001 and are now creating TiLT, an incubator for intentional living in Taos, New Mexico . His new book, "Rewilding the Way: Break Free to Follow an Untamed God", will be released in Fall 2015 by Herald Press. More of his writings and doings can...
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Alma Ovalle Perez is a wife, and a mother of three wonderful teenagers. She is the daughter of Gilberto and Elizabeth Perez. Alma is a high school Spanish teacher, simultaneous interpreter and writer. She sits on the board of Mennonite Women USA representing Iglesia Menonita Hispana and is on the executive committee for Southeast Mennonite Conference of Mennonite Women USA. Alma lives in Sarasota, Florida. From a very young age, languages have always intrigued me. Growing up in South Texas, my world revolved around the constant movement between two languages. Speaking Spanish and English has been a natural part of my upbringing. From the countless...
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In September 2010, Washington Community Fellowship (WCF) embarked on a 40-week worship series entitled, Stories Alive! Narratives Around the Table, based on the six streams of faith Richard Foster describes in his book Streams of Living Water. In February 2015, for his column in The Mennonite, Ervin Stutzman described these six streams: Contemplative—spending time with God in prayer and meditation; Holiness—having pure thoughts, words and actions, and overcoming temptation; Charismatic—welcoming the Holy Spirit while nurturing and exercising my spiritual gifts; Social justice—helping others less fortunate than I; Evangelical—sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and reading the Scriptures; Incarnational—unifying the sacred...
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Mariah Martin is currently a junior at Eastern Mennonite University where she studies nursing and plays field hockey. Though her home base is Greencastle, Pennsylvania, she spent the last semester traveling through Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy through Eastern Mennonite University's cross cultural program. She enjoys long talks, writing, rock climbing and anything outdoors. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career as a nurse midwife and eventually work overseas. In the past semester I did enough to fill a typical bucket list. I rode a camel through the Negev desert. I planted olive trees on a farm in Palestine....
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Meghan Florian is a writer and editor from Durham, North Carolina. She blogs about theology and feminism at www.femmonite.com, and is currently at work on her first book. Meghan is a member of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship. After I had been attending a Mennonite church for about six months, someone asked me if I ever felt like an outsider. I think what she meant was, as someone who was not a “cradle Mennonite” (how people who practice believer’s baptism could manage to miss the irony of such a term is beyond me), did I feel like I fit in – or rather,...
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I was able to pay Yojana's bond last fall in September 2014 (her family and I did fundraising together), and I was able to pick up Yojana the day of her release so she could spend a couple of nights at our house before she traveled to her family in Houston. I am holding an origami swan that she made in detention from folding tiny pieces of paper and sticking the pieces together with "glue" made from toothpaste. She gave this swan to me as a gift and I treasure it! There is so much creativity among...
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