Officials with the businesses held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday morning to celebrate an upcoming $3.8 million expansion project at their 731 Mount Clinton Pike location.

Deb King, general manager of Harrisonburg — which includes Booksavers and neighboring fair-trade retailer Artisans’ Hope under its umbrella — said the project should add about 8,000 square feet of space to the approximately 19,000-square-foot former Ray Carr Tire building. [Read more about Debra Glick King ’77, MBA ’12, and the charitable businesses she manages in this 2014 .]

Much of the existing structure will be renovated, too, she added.

When the project’s completed, King said the building should have approximately 4,000 square feet of additional retail space for Gift & Thrift’s clothing and furniture inventory, more shelves and seating for Booksavers, and perhaps even a small coffee bar.

“We really have high hopes,” she said.

Employees and volunteers also will have more space to process furniture, which might lead to more availability on the floor, as well as an improved breakroom. Work on the project, designed by Blue Ridge Architects and to be built by Lantz Construction, is expected to begin once final permits have been received, King said.

Construction is expected to last a year. The building likely won’t need to close during the project, but its retail space probably will be condensed at times.

Harrisonburg Gift & Thrift Shop Inc. owns its building and the neighboring structure that houses Artisans’ Hope, A Bowl of Good, Everence Federal Credit Union, a Mennonite Central Committee office and a community room groups can rent. When it bought the Ray Carr Tire building in 2003, King said, the company paid off the note in 2½ years via a fundraising effort and profits.

The neighboring building, which opened in 2009, should be paid off by the end of next year from rent and a portion of sales revenue. Gift & Thrift alone fell about $1,000 short of $1 million in sales last year, King said. The combined revenue from the three businesses and rent collected from tenants, she said, has allowed the organization to net about $600,000 each of the last three to four years.

Half that money has been used to pay down building debt, with the rest provided to MCC in support of its global relief efforts. Gift & Thrift bales and sells in bulk some clothing it doesn’t have room to display or can’t sell, she said. The expansion will allow more of that inventory to hit the floor, perhaps with more bargain sales.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to bale less clothing,” King said. “We only get 6 cents a pound for baled clothing.” The three businesses have 11 full- and 12 part-time employees and about 250 people who regularly volunteer.

Editor’s note: The  also called “restorative justice on two wheels,” was started by King and Ben Bailey ’12, along with several other 91����Ƶ alumni and community members, and is also housed at Gift & Thrift.

Reprinted with permission from the Daily News-Record, March 16, 2016.

The theme this year was the question, “Why do I continue to ‘choose’ Jesus?”

The late February event features nightly faculty/staff sharing and conversation in residence halls, special gatherings for women and men, chapel events, retreats, and the much-loved tradition of meeting in the homes of faculty and staff for a meal and fellowship.

More than 100 students signed up for dinners hosted by 20 faculty and staff. “We have been trying to do this every semester,” said , undergraduate campus pastor and event coordinator, “but this semester, it was really successful.”

Speakers at the informal nightly discussions included , professor of English, and , professor of visual arts; head baseball coach and assistant coach Adam Posey; physical education professors and ; undergraduate dean and , office coordinator for the Applied Social Sciences Department.

Professors and led a women’s gathering, while Wes Wilder, a ministry intern, hosted the men’s luncheon.

spoke in chapel about her years-long journey with glaucoma, a reflection titled “,” which was widely read and shared after posting to 91����Ƶ News and Facebook accounts. Schrock-Hurst teaches youth ministry, spiritual formation, and introduction to Bible courses in the department, in addition to overseeing the .

‘All their stories are sacred’

“I really enjoyed hearing the stories from the faculty and staff and their perspectives on following Jesus,” said Christina Hershey, a pastoral assistant for campus ministries. “It was interesting to go to multiple forums because everyone had very different stories, but all their stories are sacred, and it shows the diversity in the church.”

She added, “I really like the opportunity to hear the stories from the faculty and staff and to learn from their vast wealth of knowledge. Many of them do not get the chance to share about their faith in their classroom or other work contexts, and I enjoy hearing their perspectives on faith. I also attended both chapels and the faculty and staff meals.”

“I admired Adam and Ben’s willingness to open up and discuss their personal faith journeys,” said senior , who helped to host an evening forum and the women’s meal, which attracted about 50 participants to the West Dining Room. “Carl and Carolyn addressed the question, ‘What is the difference between living like Jesus and living in relationship with Jesus?’ [They] brought about a conversation that can be controversial and layered it in the love and grace of Jesus as they related it to attachment theory. They shared personal reflection laced with academic theory and profound passion for relationship with Jesus.”

Care ‘extends beyond the classroom’

, chair of the Department, opened Saturday evening’s meal with a smile and a Punjabi song to bless the spread of Pakistani dishes before him. He and his wife, Deb, provided curried foods including lentils, chicken, potato with cauliflower, and mustard greens. In addition, they served roti, a flour-based flatbread, achaar, mixed, pickled vegetables, and raita, a tart yogurt condiment with mint and cumin to cool down the spicy Thai dragon peppers.

The dinner was typical of what he and his wife often prepare for special guests. Since a great number of 91����Ƶ students study abroad, Medley thought that the ethnic food would be very much appreciated.

“It’s a matter of identity,” Medley says. After living in Pakistan for 11 years, their lifestyle has become heavily influenced by the food and way of living. The influence of Pakistani culture is evident not only in the dishes served, but also in the artwork and ornaments that adorn their home.

In the past, Spiritual Life Week has often involved bringing a well-known speaker to campus. Now those resources are focused on facilitating conversation and relationships between students and their faculty and staff counterparts.

“This is what is means for faculty and staff to enter into conversation with students, and to talk about life and faith,” said Miller.

First year Grace Burkhart feels that “these meals highlight the fact that faculty care about students in a way that extends beyond the classroom.”

“We want to ask: How are faculty and staff making themselves available to students out of class?” said Miller. “As a community we can sometimes speak better into people’s lives than a big name speaker would. So now, when you see someone across campus, there is a chance you actually know something about them, but a speaker, you probably will only see once.”

Initially, when Medley received the invitation to host students as well as the indication that students wish to interact with the faculty more, he felt that it was important to open his home. He finds that encouraging community feeling on ���ѱ�’s campus is an important part of Spiritual Life Week. In the past, the Medleys have invited students and other faculty members in his classes and within the department for dinners and occasional seasonal events. However, Spiritual Life Week has made it easier to do so because of its efficient organization.

“I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know some people I had seen on campus before but never had the opportunity to get to know,” said junior Maddie Gish. “It is amazing how much we can learn from everyone around us. I am so glad I participated!”

Portions of this coverage were reprinted with permission from the March 3, 2016, edition of the Weather Vane.

You’ll find this magical re-tooled space in the administrative offices of , a Harrisonburg thrift store whose proceeds support the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).

The (L)earn-a-Bike program was founded this past year by a contingent of 91����Ƶ alumni and campus community members as an alternative means for juvenile offenders to serve court-appointed community service hours.

’12, who co-founded the program with Gift & Thrift manager Deb King ‘77, describes its simple, but powerful premise: The teenagers—most are middle- and high-school-aged—are given a used, donated bicycle. They then strip all tparts from its frame and put them in a basket. In two-hour increments over the next eight weeks, under the guidance of an instructor, the kids service the parts and rebuild the bicycle, which they are allowed to keep once they have completed the course.

Yes, it might seem simple, but in the steps of rebuilding a bicycle arise opportunities for challenge, frustration and collaboration – the process nurtures personal growth.

“The kids that come through our program are often those who haven’t found success in the traditional classroom setting,” said Bailey.

He sees (L)earn-a-Bike as a safe space where participants can explore different kinds of learning, build self-confidence and experience the mentorship of positive role-modeling.

“This is a place where whoever comes can step into positivity,” said Bailey.

And then there is the work itself. Tom Brenneman ‘92 was working as an early intervention officer with the Rockingham County courts when he began the conversation about a bicycle-related community service program based on his experience with similar programs, such as the Zuni Avenue Bike Club in Tucson, Arizona. Brenneman thinks there is a tremendous amount of healing to be found in such tangible, hands-on work.

The program is young; the first participant began coursework in May 2015 and graduated in June. With 22 teenagers already having completed the program since then, and plans of having engaged 40 youth by June 2016, the community impacts could be significant.

“Wrenches, grease, gears and a spirit of welcome,” Brenneman said when describing the program. “It’s like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for kids.” [For those who aren’t familiar with this influential work of philosophy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974 by Robert M. Pirsig, explores, through a father-son trip on a temperamental motorcycle, the themes of work, values and the analytic/creative ways of thinking.)

Riding together

Gift & Thrift may not seem like the obvious place for a program like (L)earn-a-Bike to set up shop, but King, who oversees all the charitable operations housed in the Park View shopping center close to the 91����Ƶ campus, sees (L)earn-a-Bike slotting neatly into the non-profit’s mission. The thrift store has a long history of hosting young people and adults looking for a place to complete court-mandated volunteer hours.

“We had been having conversations among ourselves and with people in the community regarding how to better utilize what we have going here,” said King. “We know that we offer informal mentoring and training when volunteers come to work for us. But what would it look like if we were to formalize that experience, gear it toward a specific segment of the population, and focus on a tangible skill set, all the while offering a safe setting where healthy relationships are nurtured?”

With that vision, (L)earn-a-Bike has partnered with the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) through the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act (VJCCCA), a grant-funded program aimed at stemming the tide of youth falling into the juvenile detention system through a focus on community service- based sentencing. Celeste Williams, who oversees the VJCCCA in Harrisonburg, said the excitement about such programs is palpable.

“Kids who went through this program reported having learned more about themselves, and felt more proud of themselves than those who filled more traditional community service roles,” she said, adding that the potential for programs such as (L)earn-a-Bike is exponential. “We don’t need much money to start programs like this. We just need a few excited people.”

91����Ƶ has been a source of several of those people. Bailey,  the office coordinator for the department, is an active cyclist and advisor to the 91����Ƶ . Eric Saner, husband of professor , serves as an instructor (community member Matt Hassman also instructs). The program’s advisory team is comprised of Bailey, King, Brenneman, student Matt Swartzendruber, Nathan Zook Barge ‘84, MA (conflict transformation) ’99, and professor of Bible and religion ’92.

Contributions helpful

The group continues to explore funding options. While (L)earn-a-Bike receives funding from the DJJ for each participant who completes the course, the amount remains inadequate to provide quality programming, so charitable contributions currently bridge the budgetary gap. , the Voluntary Gas Tax, and local individuals have thus far made donations. [Information about how to contribute is at the end of this article.]

Other non-monetary contributions have been just as valuable to the program’s success. Local business has donated a wide range of quality bike parts they weren’t able to sell through their EBay site. The City of Harrisonburg provided a grant to purchase tools, and will soon be delivering a donated barn.

“Storing our inventory has been a problem,” said Bailey, “so we’re really looking forward to having space outside of our workshop.”

The goal, Bailey notes, is to create a program that sustains itself through services provided the community—like bicycle classes offered to the public. So eventually the best way to support (L)earn-a-Bike will be by enrolling in a class.

Pedaling forward

Bailey says the program is gaining traction in the community and local courts, with several teens who had stolen bicycles being appointed directly to (L)earn-a-Bike by the judge overseeing their cases. But he envisions the program as more than a place to fulfill community service requirements.

“I won’t be satisfied until we have a space that’s open to everyone,” he said, citing an increasing interest and demand for affordable bicycles throughout the area.

King agrees. “We see this program ultimately as a destination for getting people together to be a community together,” she said. “By leveraging the non-profit service model that Gift & Thrift provides, we hope to be able to meet tangible goods and service needs in a way that’s accessible to people on the margins.”

For the moment, though, Bailey and King are focused on building a creative and compelling alternative for court-appointed volunteers, one in which the hard work of self-reflection and tangible reward of a job well-done go hand in hand. As Brenneman noted, “That’s a good start to restorative justice on two wheels.”

To contribute

Contact Deb King at 540-746-8547, ext. 103, or mail checks made out to Gift & Thrift with “(L)earn a Bike program” in the memo line.

These and other examples of the growing stature of bikes and biking on ���ѱ�’s campus have more recently attracted attention from off-campus groups. In the fall of 2012, the League of American Bicyclists made 91����Ƶ just the third university in the state to win a “bicycle friendly campus” designation. The following spring, 91����Ƶ learned that it won the “small university” category of the National Bike Challenge – a contest in which groups earn points based on how far and often participants ride bikes (19 91����Ƶ faculty and staff members participated, logging a collective 9,412 miles).

���ѱ�’s first bicycle maintenance class was a full-blown, three-credit affair (now scaled down to just one credit) that went well beyond mechanics. “We learned about many complex issues related to cycling and community organizing,” recalls Ben Bailey ’13, now an assistant manager at Rocktown Bicycles, one of several bike shops in Harrisonburg.

“We tried to use the coop and the class as a springboard into community advocacy,” says Dula.

As a result, a growing number of students began looking beyond campus to become more involved in the active biking scene in and around Harrisonburg, billed as the “bike capital of Virginia” for the fantastic mountain and road biking opportunities within easy reach of the city. In the past several years, Dula and a number of students have ridden in events like the Shenandoah Mountain 100 – a 100-mile mountain bike race held west of town – and spent many hours volunteering with advocacy groups, trail-building projects and other biking events. “We really love to ride our bikes, not just get other people to ride them,” Dula notes.

One of those outside efforts with closest ties to 91����Ƶ is the development of a new, 2.5-mile walking and biking path, called the Northend Greenway, which will connect campus to downtown Harrisonburg. Planning for the path began in 2010 (building on similar efforts dating back at least a decade), when a small group of concerned citizens, including Lars Åkerson ’08, began talking about how to build a multi-use path, mostly following Blacks Run through the north side of town.

“From the beginning, the Northend Greenway wasn’t only about bikes. Bikes brought us together, but the Northend Greenway was an opportunity to develop a ‘linear park’ that would not only connect neighborhoods, but connect neighbors,” says Åkerson, who later stepped down from the steering committee when he left town for graduate school.

Among the neighborhoods the Greenway will more closely connect is a low-income residential area on the north side of downtown to 91����Ƶ and to the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. Stephen Godshall ’92, another former member of the steering committee, looks forward to the path providing a new opportunity for his and other families to bike with their children. Godshall, a family practice doctor, is also eager to see the greenway provide people with a safe, enjoyable place for exercise. *

By 2011, the city had endorsed the idea, and the Greenway’s leadership team redoubled its planning, fundraising and landowner outreach efforts. They now expect the path will be open to the public by 2015.

In the meantime, Godshall hopes that 91����Ƶ will begin playing a bigger leadership role in making the Greenway become a reality.

“I would challenge 91����Ƶ to be a little more involved,” he says. “It would be nice to see it take an even more active lead in promoting bicycle infrastructure.”

Bikes, say many of those who love them, are fundamentally sources of connection with the outside world and with other people, and in that sense, the more 91����Ƶ does to encourage and support biking on and around campus, the better, stronger ties it will establish with the wider city.

“91����Ƶ, like any college, is separated a bit from the local community,” says Bailey, who developed a passion for biking as a student but, at first, “didn’t have connections outside of campus to people who were riding bikes.”

During his junior year, a job at a bike shop next to campus opened his eyes to the larger world of biking in Harrisonburg. For years, Bailey says, individual students at 91����Ƶ like him have found their own ways into this wider biking scene; he hopes that the bike coop and class that began on campus when he was a student will help create a stronger institutional connection between 91����Ƶ and everything else that makes Harrisonburg Virginia’s bicycle capital. (If he called the shots at admissions, he’d be making a much bigger deal about local biking).

Because the student body at any college is in constant turnover, another key bit of helping students on bikes more fully enjoy and participate in the life of this bike capital is the support of older, more experienced bikers. When Bailey was a student, Dula and Wyse were very influential in getting him involved beyond campus. Now that he’s graduated and moved on to a job in the biking world they helped him discover, he’d like to do what he can to make that same process even easier for students now and in the future. One of his first steps: returning to campus in the spring of 2014, as Wyse’s co-teacher of the bike maintenance class that played such a heavy influence on Bailey just a few years earlier.

— Andrew Jenner ’04

* Others from 91����Ƶ who have had prominent involvement in the Greenway include Jakob zumFelde ’11, a former engineering intern, Nicholas Detweiler-Stoddard ’07, MDiv ’12, its first fundraising and outreach coordinator, SPI associate director Nathan Musselman ’00 and Kevin Burnett ’03, both steering committee members, and numerous representatives of the Greenway’s advisory board.

“There are more options out there for today’s students,” says Dula. “Rather than joining a traditional church structure, they sometimes choose to search for something even more Anabaptist.”

The emerging church movement and New Monasticism have created alternatives to traditional church that draw from and can inform an Anabaptist perspective, says Dula, a 1992 graduate.

“New Monasticism focuses on prayer, communal life and reaching out to the poor… Ideas that are rooted in the Christian tradition, but in a way Anabaptists can recognize as their own. It is an interesting time to teach and think about Anabaptism.”

Embracing the change

Instead of resisting alternatives to traditional worship, Dula and , a 1981 91����Ƶ graduate and Bible and religion instructor, see an opportunity to embrace alternatives and use them to engage and inform students.

“Our goal is to equip students to engage in shaping the future of the church,” said Schrock-Hurst, who also serves as co-pastor at Immanuel Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va. “All these ideas are available to this generation and we can create space for them to explore and figure out what works in their faith journeys.”

���ѱ�’s Bible and religion department tries to continually learn from students, says Dula. “Many of them are way out ahead of us as teachers.” We want to be a “meeting place,” he notes, where Mennonite and students from diverse backgrounds can share ideas on faith and God’s calling in their lives.

“Some of our best students enter 91����Ƶ without a background in Anabaptism or the Mennonite church,” said Dula. “They find here, however, a space to own, appropriate and transform what they learn in our classrooms in ways that manage to be thoroughly Anabaptist.”

, professor of Bible and religion added, “I find that sometimes the students who are not from Mennonite backgrounds add a kind of new-discovery freshness when they embrace the peace position. Other times, we get challenges to pacifist assumptions born out of different ways of thinking about the Bible and Christianity.”

More than a classroom

���ѱ�’s provides an alternative classroom for many Bible and religion students with profound results. The experience, led by , professor of culture and mission and his wife, , showcases the history of the Bible while exploring current conflicts. Students are immersed in language and cultural studies while living in Palestine and Jerusalem.

After spending a semester in the Middle East, senior Jamie Hiner, from Culpeper, Va., observed, “I can connect to the stories [of the Bible] on a completely different level. I understand who Jesus was on a human level, and I have a connection to the land, people and cultures.”

In addition to the Middle East cross-cultural program, 91����Ƶ is the only higher-education institution offering a major in . , associate professor of , says that while Catholics and Protestants have a long academic tradition in philosophy, Anabaptists are important contributors “because our own history of having been marginalized, our understanding of concrete embodied community, and our commitment to peace and reconciliation.”

Senior Ben Bailey, from Simsbury, Conn., found his knowledge of the Bible to be “limited compared to my peers at 91����Ƶ.” A double-major in and , Bailey says his studies have provided him with a “comprehensive base knowledge to build upon.

“I continually feel the need to understand and question the Bible and theology on a deeper level.”

Hiner, a major with a minor in , added, “I’ve learned so much from personal relationships with my professors. I love having real conversations with them outside the classroom.”

Looking ahead

Bible and religion department faculty envision their department’s influence expanding across campus and in the community through dialogue with campus ministries and local churches. Interest in the department’s is growing as opportunities to explore internships outside of “traditional” pastoring arise. The very definition of “pastor” and “church” is changing; students are interested in how they intersect with these concepts.

“Students have an advantage with on campus, in addition to and numerous Mennonite churches nearby to integrate and connect with pastors, leaders and teachers,” Schrock-Hurst says.

Dula agrees, adding, “The goal is to make the discussion and debates that occur in our classrooms become the heart and soul of campus. This will encourage growth not only in the department and across campus, but in the broader church.”