Photo: Phil Kniss, pastor of Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Virginia, speaks during the July 5 adult worship in Orlando. Photo by Vada Snider. 

“Sawubona.” (“I see you.”)

“Ngikhona.” (“I am here.”)

To open the second adult worship session on July 5, worship leader Shannon Dycus, pastor of First Mennonite Church of Indianapolis, invited attendees to greet one another with this Zulu greeting as a reminder that building community involves the act of being seen and being present.

The service moved the focus of the “Love is a Verb” theme from individuals being loved by God to the practice of extending love and welcome to others. Dycus and co-worship leader Sarah Bixler modeled this welcome as they set a table for one another, setting plates and silverware and pouring a glass of water to each other.

Listing people who people may find difficult to love, Dycus said, “To each of these people we are called to speak the words, ‘You are loved by God.’”

Phil Kniss, pastor of Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia, was the featured speaker.

In reference to the convention theme, Kniss said, “Convention planners aren’t giving us a slogan; they are giving us hard work.”

Kniss started out by owning his social location within the church. “We are having a Future Church Summit here, and I’m smack dab in the middle of the church of the past,” he said. “I’m not apologizing for who I am. But we who have the privilege and power must stop and listen longer, deeper and with more vulnerability.”

Kniss said that those who have traditionally held positions of power will need to “become OK having less of a voice and fewer votes in a [church] board room” and he noted that “we are all healthier when we own up to the power we have and give account to others for how we exercise it.”

Pointing to John 3:16, Kniss emphasized that the work of love and transformation “begins by asking how God loves” and that our identity as Christians is one of a people “bound in relationship covenant with the God of the universe, who is love.”

Citing Bible scholar Scot McKnight, Kniss described the process of loving one another as “love in three movements”: God is with God’s people, God is for us and God is inviting us toward a transformed life.

Kniss emphasized that this movement, also described as presence, advocacy and direction, has an order. “Our temptation is to jump straight to giving direction without establishing with-ness and for-ness,” he said. “It takes the most rugged of commitments to invite someone to consider transformation of their beliefs while maintaining relationship integrity.”

Kniss also mentioned that the movement of love is mutual. “The call is not to fix the other. We are called to love each other into Christ-likeness.”

Worship through song and drama

The adult worship band, led by Kent Miller, pastor of First Mennonite Church, Middlebury, Indiana, invited those gathered to sing “Together,” a song written by Nathan Grieser, director of the Shalom Project in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Grieser joined the band on stage for the song. “Difference is a place where God is found,” people sang.

John Bromels, Cincinnati, Ohio, performed a drama enacting the ways that our welcome as the church sometimes falls short.

Joyce Kusuma, Mennonite Church USA Executive Board member, read John 13: 34-35 in both English and Indonesian.