For The Record

Submit birth, marriage and obituary records online.

Personal Ads

Meet new friends today!

Advertising

Put your message in front of 19,000 readers.

PDF documents on this site require the free Adobe Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

2008-12-02 issue:

Franconia recognizes 'shifting contexts'

'Come to the Table: Embracing God in Us' theme for conference assembly

by Lora Steiner for Franconia Mennonite Conference

Print Article

For more than 50 years, the churches of Franconia (Pa.) Mennonite Conference have sent missionaries and money to Mexico to plant new churches. This year a church in Mexico City sent missionaries back.

Husband and wife Linker Sanchez and Luz Maria Vargas of the Tierra Prometida congregation were commissioned to work with the Spanish-speaking community in Gaithersburg, Md. The commissioning was on Nov. 7 and part of the opening session for the annual gathering.

“The United States has sent missionaries for many years all over the world,” Sanchez said. “But as you know, God is now sending all the nations of the world to the United States—and we have come here to reach our countrymen in their language and culture.”

More than 200 people, including 130 delegates from conference congregations and related-ministries, gathered around tables at the Penn View Christian School cafeteria in Souderton, Pa., Nov. 7-8. The theme for the assembly was “Come to the Table: Embracing God in Us.”

Unlike previous years, there was no traditional worship time or sermon on Friday evening. Instead, Detwiler invited everyone to sit at tables and “see and hear the movement of Jesus in the faces around us.” Throughout the gathering, there was recognition that churches are working to minister in shifting contexts and that the conference itself is becoming more diverse each year. Among conference churches, services are held not only in Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia but also in Vietnamese. Some congregations have growing numbers of people from various other Asian and African contexts. And while Mennonite conferences have historically been organized by geography, the web of relationships is taking the conference outside those boundaries, and conference staff are working with churches in Delaware, New Jersey, Arkansas, Pittsburgh and Washington.

Delegates voted unanimously to approve Randy Heacock, pastor of Doylestown (Pa.) Mennonite Church, assistant conference moderator and conference board vice chair.