In light of the current discussions around “variance” within Mennonite Church USA, it is an important time to consider how we understand variance from established denominational doctrine, standards and commitments …
In light of the current discussions around “variance” within Mennonite Church USA, it is an important time to consider how we understand variance from established denominational doctrine, standards and commitments …
Several decades ago in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, says Hyacinth (Banks) Stevens, God was shaping her heart. She was becoming a youngster who shared Jesus in the inner-city streets near her congregation, the former Burnside Mennonite Church. At the same time in the neighboring borough of Manhattan, says Benjamin Stevens, God was shaping his heart as well …
Gospel Fellowship Chapel counts 60 attenders, but the number of lives it has touched over a decade is far greater . . .
Those issues were at the forefront of a gathering of Coming to the Table, a national organization focused on addressing the trauma that remains 150 years after the end of slavery.
“See the contrast between the two halves,” said one of the quilters. “Theirs looks a little more . . . ”
“I lived [in Austin] for a summer, and a bunch of things happened all at once,” Hostetter said.
Conversations across the Mennonite family, he said, “have loaded a lot of rhetorical freight on labels such as ‘conservative’ and ‘evangelical.’ ”
He hopes his history of a group with “conservative” in its name can contribute to current discussion and discernment.
More than five months ago, she quit school when fighting between government and opposition forces began in her family’s Aleppo neighborhood. She and her family hid in the basement as the bombs fell. One day her father, a builder, went out to get some bread and never came home.
“To this day, we have no news of him,” said Damaris, who fled to Lebanon with her mother, aunt, grandfather (who has a heart condition) and four siblings.
