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2009-01-20 issue:

Iowa congregation reaches out to unchurched family in crisis

Longtime pastorate builds trust in community, enables connections.

by Laurie Oswald Robinson for Mennonite Church USA

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When Manson (Iowa) Mennonite Church reached out to 7-year-old Matt and his younger siblings, the congregation had no idea it would host his funeral 13 years later.

Curt Kuhns, pastor of Manson Mennonite, conducted the funeral at the church in June 2008 for Matt, who died in a job-related grain bin accident. Kuhns also developed a relationship with Matt’s grandfather, Gary, at Golden Meadows, a local retirement community, where he helped conduct Gary’s funeral in the spring of 2007.

The congregation has ministered to this extended family for years in many ways, though none of the family members has joined the church. But that isn’t Manson Mennonite’s biggest concern, Kuhns says. It believes in sowing seeds of God’s love, even if those seeds don’t yield fruit quickly or in ways traditionally thought to mean success.

“Our relationship with Matt and his younger sister and brother goes way back to when they were little kids who sometimes showed up when our doors were open,” Kuhns says.

They attended the Pioneer Club on Wednesday nights, a ministry that reaches out to the community children who do not attend church. That experience led to some participation in junior high Sunday school and youth group.

Kuhns says he wasn’t sure where Matt stood with a lasting commitment to Christ, but he saw signs Matt responded to God. After attending junior high Sunday school, he got heavily involved in skateboarding and stopped coming to Manson Mennonite. Kuhns lost track of him but reconnected with the family again after ministering to Matt’s grandfather.

“I remember Matt being open and sensitive as a junior higher when we talked to the youngsters about making a commitment,” Kuhns says. “I’d be surprised if he hadn’t made some kind of significant connection with God as a result of the exposure he received.

“Many of his friends told about how generous Matt was. One of his friends told how he took that grain bin job to help his mother pay for the mortgage on her house so she wouldn’t lose it.

“A lot of his skateboarding friends came with their body piercings, tattoos of all kinds—and there was not a tie in the whole place,” Kuhns says. “The parking lot after the service got littered with cigarette butts.”

In the face of this funeral crowd, Kuhns says he felt privileged to share Christ’s hope.

“I talked about the promise of our Lord and lifted up the importance of what Jesus has accomplished for us,” Kuhns says. “The family talked with me about how Matt was a daredevil on the skateboard. So I co-opted this idea, and I dared the crowd to try out faith in the spirit of Matt, the daredevil skateboarder.”

Matt’s 19-year-old sister challenged Kuhns on his message. She asked him if he really believed all the stuff he had just said about God.

“I told her, ‘Yes, even though I have my doubts sometimes, too,’ ” Kuhns says. “But I also said that when push comes to shove—because of what I’ve experienced with Christ—this is where I stand. She seemed receptive to what I was saying, but I wasn’t able to follow up with her any further before she moved to another community.”

Building long-term relationships with families such as Matt’s has a strong connection to the church’s Pioneer Club ministry, according to Judy Weller, longtime elder.

“Through this ministry, many of the kids such as Matt end up going to Sunday school and to our youth group for some part of their lives,” Weller says. “We try to expose them to something more stable than they have—often broken homes full of substance abuse, poverty and alcoholism.”

She says occasionally parents and aunts and uncles visit Manson Mennonite as a result of the Pioneer Club. Some of these family members have even participated in the congregation’s mission trips and attended church.

 “It is wonderful to see kids who knew nothing about the Bible rattle off knowledge of all its stories, but we also want to make more significant contact with their parents,” she says. “We also want to become part of their lives more than once a week.”

Kuhns believes his longtime pastorate (19 years) in the community builds the trust that enables him to connect with people like Matt’s family. But he also sees a new growth edge with God.

“It’s time we transition from being a ‘biological’ Mennonite church that welcomes ‘visitors’ to finding ways to incorporate them into the body life of our church,” he says. “Relationships among us are so well established, we don’t even realize when we don’t include new folks in ways that go beyond the initial welcoming.”