“She had a presence and an authority that made her quiet words deeply significant wherever she spoke them,” said Professor Emerita Dorothy Jean Weaver, who taught Miller at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) and worked alongside her on faculty for 19 years. “In her own way, she was a giant. She had a huge impact wherever she was, and certainly here at EMS.”

Miller served the seminary from 1991 to 2010 in roles including campus pastor and assistant professor of spiritual formation. She was committed to helping people discover their story within “�Ҵǻ�’s great story,” establishing EMS’ spiritual formation program, and founding training programs for spiritual directors within Mennonite Church USA and The United Methodist Church.

At EMS, she led the Summer Institute for Spiritual Formation and developed “Soul Space,” an online guide for scripture reading and prayer. Many of her lasting contributions, through the gifts she shared and the lives she touched, endure today.

In addition to her two decades on seminary faculty, she was an ordained minister in Mennonite Church USA’s Virginia Conference and was a leading author. Among her writings, Invitation to Presence: A Guide to Spiritual Disciplines (Upper Room Books, 1995) was translated into several languages. She maintained a private spiritual direction practice until entering hospice care last summer.

Formerly of Broadway, Virginia, Miller was living in West Chicago, Illinois, when she passed away on Oct. 8, 2025. She was 87. A memorial service celebrating her life, held on Dec. 6, can be viewed on YouTube . A full obituary is available at .

Her husband and partner in ministry of 65 years, the Rev. Edmond F. Miller, died in October 2024.

‘Her imprint remains’

Because of Miller’s “gentle and steady efforts” beginning when she joined the seminary faculty in 1991, said the Rev. Dr. Sarah Ann Bixler, dean of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, EMS centered spiritual formation in its curriculum “long before theological schools in general and Anabaptist schools in particular caught on to the importance of tending the inner life of ministerial leaders.”

“Today, hundreds of EMS graduates have been sustained in their ministerial vocations because of the ‘invitation to presence’ Rev. Miller modeled and extended to them,” wrote Bixler. “Her imprint remains on the EMS curriculum, and students today cite the contemplative attentiveness cultivated by EMS as a distinctive and transformative aspect of their theological education. They are more compassionate, discerning, and resilient because of Rev. Miller’s influence.”

Her influence also lives on in the touches and traditions that have become part of the fabric of the seminary.

As reported in a in the Daily News-Record, Miller was “the driving force behind getting the (prayer) labyrinth installed” on the 91����Ƶ Hill above the Seminary Building. Dedicated in 2007, the labyrinth offers a unique way to connect with God.

Visitors to the Seminary Building might be familiar with the rectangular wooden “free table” just outside the second floor kitchen. It displays food and other items that people can leave or take. “That was Wendy’s idea,” said Weaver. “That’s how tangible and simple her ideas could be. She had a deep heart for the collective community.”

Another contribution she made to the seminary was the awareness that its faculty retreats should be held away from campus, Weaver said. For several decades, those retreats were held at Camp Overlook, a nearby United Methodist camp and retreat center. “She was someone who looked around and dreamed of things that could be,” Weaver said.

‘She saw potential in (us)’

One of Miller’s first students in the spiritual formation program, the Rev. Dr. Kevin Clark MA ’96 (church leadership) was trained and trusted to lead the program when she retired in 2010. “She was my teacher, my professor, my mentor, my friend, my spiritual director, and my colleague, all wrapped up in one relationship,” said Clark, a former campus pastor and retired assistant professor of spiritual formation at EMS.

“Wendy had this wisdom and insight into others that was unique,” he said. “Part of it was just rooted in who she was, as someone who paid attention to how �Ҵǻ�’s spirit was at work within others, and offering and evoking that in her quiet, questioning way. I was always amazed at how she would be in a classroom, we’d be in conversation, and she would have these wonderful little pauses, then come back with a question that was profound for a student to begin to think about. It opened up the whole classroom to a deeper understanding and awareness of their own spirituality.”

Les Horning ’86, MDiv ’98, director of admissions for EMS from 2012-18, also had Miller as a professor. He described her as “one of the most formative presences” of his MDiv experience.

“She saw potential in folks and would find ways to let them know,” he said. “Suddenly, you realized, Oh, she’s seeing my heart. I think that was one of her gifts, helping people dig beneath the surface and find out who they were.”

Horning graduated from 91����Ƶ with bachelor’s degrees in biology and chemistry and worked as a research chemist for five years before feeling a call for ministry and enrolling at EMS. “For me to come to seminary was a huge change and Wendy was a key part of helping me see that it was a good and right thing,” said Horning, pastor at Stephens City Mennonite Church. “She was very good at pulling out folks’ unique contributions to the community and making people feel valued and accepted and wanted.”

Along with Clark and Horning, Weaver traveled on an overnight train to Chicago last month to attend the memorial service. She remembers Miller for her love of Winnie the Pooh, her delightful laugh, and whimsical sense of humor. 

“She was a blessed woman who shared blessing with everyone she came in contact with,” Weaver said. “I consider it a major gift of my life to have been a friend of hers.”

She grew up in England

The following is from an obituary printed in the :

Born in 1938 in Westham, England, Miller was a child in London during World War II and later lived in Eastbourne, East Sussex. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1959, settling in Chicago with her husband. They served as missionaries in Frankfurt, Germany, and pastored churches including Woodland (Basye) Mennonite, as well as across the Midwest and eastern U.S. Following retirement, they lived in Virginia, Texas, and North Carolina before returning to Illinois.

Rev. Miller earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa Wesleyan University, a master’s degree in church leadership with a concentration in pastoral care and counseling from EMS, and a master of sacred theology in spiritual theology and spiritual direction from General Theological Seminary in New York City.

She leaves five children, Paul (David Selmer) of Maine, David (Julie) of Georgia, Mark (Wendy) of Kansas, Scott (Laura) of Illinois, and Heidi (Gary MacDonald) of Georgia; 14 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren, three brothers, and four sisters-in-law.

Stutzman taught at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) as associate professor of church ministries starting in 1998, and served as academic dean of the seminary from July 2000 to December 2009. He then led Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) as executive director from 2010 until his retirement in 2018. 

He was known by many as a master woodworker, skilled handyman, prolific author, disciplined goal-setter and writer of life-purpose statements, problem solver and mentor, teacher and preacher, and loving husband, father, and grandfather. He is also remembered for his seemingly limitless reserve of energy, his deep commitment to Christ and the church, and the close relationships he formed with those he worked with and served. 

Stutzman died on June 3, 2025, at age 72 from complications following a five-year battle with cancer. A memorial service was held on June 8 at Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, where he was an active member. View a recording of the service, along with the full obituary, on the church’s website here:

“Ervin was deeply committed to the church and to preparing seminary students to serve and lead in pastoral and other roles,” said Dr. Loren Swartzendruber, president of 91����Ƶ from 2003 to 2016. “He was a gifted administrator who contributed wisdom and energy to the entire university while serving as dean of the seminary. He was also a much-loved professor and mentor to many students.”

Professor Emeritus Lonnie Yoder, who was on the seminary faculty from 1991 to 2021, described Stutzman as a caring administrator and “very supportive dean.” “He was incredibly committed to his role and to the relationships he had with faculty and students,” Yoder said. “He was very purpose-driven. He believed we should all develop life-purpose statements and encouraged all of us to work on them.”

Stutzman himself had written a life-purpose statement that he often referenced, Yoder said. According to an by MC USA, part of Stutzman’s statement read: “In response to �Ҵǻ�’s love expressed in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I purpose to follow after God with all my heart … so that God may be glorified in my life at all times and in every way.”

“He was one of the most highly disciplined people I think I’ve ever met,” Yoder said. “I was always amazed at his capacity to do everything that he did.”

Among Stutzman’s contributions to EMS was a $2 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to develop the LEAP (Learning, Experiencing, And Participating) Program. The initiative, which began in 2003, aimed to help high school students hone their leadership skills, explore Christ-centered theological studies and pastoral ministry, and engage in intercultural learning experiences (with travels to countries including Zimbabwe, Jamaica, and Colombia).

“The key was that Ervin, and it was a stroke of genius by him, wanted the program to be characterized by diversity,” Yoder said. “It allowed high school-age youth to get outside their comfort zone and engage with other talented and committed youth. In that sense, I think Ervin was ahead of his time.”

Stutzman was born on April 27, 1953, in an Amish home in Kalona, Iowa, to Emma and Tobias Stutzman. He grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, where his family moved after his father’s death when Stutzman and his twin, Erma, were just three years old. He was the only one in his family to graduate from high school.

Stutzman received his PhD in rhetoric and communication from Temple University (1993), MA degrees in religion from EMS (1999) and communications from the University of Cincinnati (1979), and a BA in Christian ministries from Cincinnati Bible College (1978).

He wrote several historical novelizations of true Amish stories, including those of his parents’ lives, Emma: A Widow Among the Amish and Tobias of the Amish, and Return to Northkill, a three-book series on the life of his ancestor, Jacob Hochstedler. He also wrote several other books about Mennonite history, life, and thought.

Professor Emeritus Dorothy Jean Weaver, who joined the seminary faculty in 1984 and retired in 2018, noted Stutzman’s productive nature. “The fact that, in the midst of everything else he was doing, he wrote all those books, shows some real commitment and focus,” she said. 

Weaver co-led a 2007 study tour to the Holy Land that Stutzman and his wife, Bonnie, joined and recalled that the couple were part of a small group that climbed the steep slopes of Mount Tabor on foot. “I was always a little worried that Ervin would assume the rest of us had the same level of energy he had,” she said.��

Another vivid memory Weaver has of the former EMS dean is of the beautifully handmade wooden crafts that Ervin and Bonnie gifted seminary faculty and staff each Christmas. One of those gifts, a domed wooden paperweight inscribed with the EMS motif and initialed “ERS ’06,” remains on some office desks in the Seminary Building today nearly 19 years after being given. 

“I think of him being well-placed in this seminary because he was naturally gifted as a strong administrator and he cared ever so deeply about the church,” Weaver said. “He was the right person at the right place.” 

At EMS, Stutzman succeeded George Brunk III ’61, SEM ’64 as dean. He was followed by Dr. Michael King ’76, who became dean in July 2010 after a six-month interim term by Sara Wenger Shenk. Before becoming dean, King, as owner of Cascadia Publishing House, had worked with Stutzman to prepare his book, Tobias of the Amish, for publication. “In that sense, I had a lot of opportunity to get to know him,” King said.

“He was a very hard worker,” King said. “He was passionate about fulfilling his assignments as a leader.”

One of the most challenging roles of the dean’s job is to maintain accreditation with the Association of Theological Schools (EMS has been an accredited member since 1986), as well as the support of the United Methodist Church for training its Methodist students. Both of those accreditations were key to maintaining a student body in numbers high enough for EMS to remain successful and viable.

“During my tenure, I worked closely on both accreditations, always building on the work Ervin had done,” said King, dean of EMS from 2010 to 2017. “I always knew I owed a tremendous debt to the very careful work Ervin had done in setting the stage in prior accreditations.”

While dean, King was an advisory council member of the seminary’s Preaching Institute, a program Stutzman established and chaired that provides pastors and lay leaders with an opportunity to develop their preaching skills. “That was an excellent experience,” King said. “I believe it may be on hiatus at this point, but it was a very valuable program in its day.”

Ervin married Bonita “Bonnie” Lee Haldeman MA ’05 (church leadership) of Manheim, Pennsylvania, in 1974. Together, they served as volunteers for Rosedale Mennonite Missions in Cincinnati for five years.

In 1982, at age 29, Ervin moved with his young family to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and became associate pastor of Mount Joy Mennonite Church, while also serving as the associate director for Home Ministries at Eastern Mennonite Missions. Just 18 months later, he began a half-time role as district overseer for Lancaster Mennonite Conference, and from 1991 to 2000, he served as their conference moderator.

“As I recall, he once joked that he lived his adult life in decades,” Yoder said. “He was involved in Lancaster Mennonite Conference for a decade, and then EMS for a decade, and then MC USA for a decade, approximately.”

Bonnie, who supported Ervin as his wife for 51 years, described him as “everyone’s dream of a husband—he would do whatever needed to get done.” At their home just a handful of blocks from campus, Ervin built all the cabinets, countertops, bookshelves, and furniture. She said he spent six months creating a 290-page, leather-bound book of journal entries, photos, and reflections as a gift for their 50th anniversary. “He was always teaching himself new skills,” she said.

“He was a visionary,” she said, “a big-picture person.”

In their retirement, Ervin and Bonnie biked thousands of miles on their e-bikes and traveled the country in their RV. Before he died, he wrote a yet-unpublished memoir.

“He was nourished by being outdoors, eating good food, regular church attendance, a spiritual life of prayer and contemplation, and keeping peace with fellow people,” Bonnie said. “He was a man of integrity.”

Ervin was preceded in death by his son Daniel Tobias Stutzman. His beloved spouse Bonita survives, as do two children: Emma Ruth (Stutzman) Dawson (Iowa City, Iowa), along with her sons Felix Tobias Dawson and Caius Lysander Dawson, and Benjamin Lee Stutzman and his wife Andrea Joy (Kniss) Stutzman (Harrisonburg, VA), along with their children Eva René Stutzman and Evan Rafael Stutzman. His twin Erma Mae (Stutzman) Yoder (Ephrata, PA) is his only surviving sibling.

Portions of this article are from the on Ervin Stutzman. 

President Susan Schultz Huxman was among several administrators, faculty and staff to travel to Kansas City, Missouri, for the multi-day event. Huxman arrived early for meetings and listening sessions with Mennonite Higher Education Association, Mennonite Education Association and Mennonite Schools Council. During the conference, she provided a university update at a evening alumni reception.

The biennial conference, which is often preceded by other meetings of Mennonite organizations, gathers church representatives and members for worship, fellowship and learning, as well as for more formal discernment and decisionmaking.

91����Ƶ student’s advocacy leads to youth delegate vote

One such decision ⁠— delegates voted on a bylaw change allowing youth participants to serve in future conferences as official voting delegates ⁠— was from the group Step Up, founded by 91����Ƶ senior and Student Government Association Co-President Leah Wenger.

“The program is designed to educate young people about church business, encourage them to listen and learn from those around them, provide them places and people to network with, prepare them to become future leaders, and to promote participation in the larger church delegate body,” Wenger said. In additional to serving as a delegate from Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Wenger worked with three others, including Lorren Oesch ’19 to organize orientation for the youth participants and additional programming throughout the week.

The conference is also a meeting place for youth and young adult groups. 91����Ƶ admissions staff, including Director of Admissions Matt Ruth ’06, represented the university at the Mennonite Higher Education Association’s booth, which highlighted the academic offerings of the five Mennonite colleges and universities.

Faculty, joined by alumni, engage and teach

Sarah Bixler ‘02, Eastern Mennonite Seminary faculty member, was the convention’s prayer coordinator and co-led, with Hendy Stevan Matahelemual MA ’19 (leadership), a daily evening prayer session focused on the church. She also was involved in four workshop sessions, including two that she co-led with her husband Ben Bixler ’03, MA ‘13 (religion) that explored “R-rated” scripture texts in the youth ministry context and Bible study in the congregation.

Eastern Mennonite Seminary dean Nancy Heisey��MDiv ’94 led her workshop participants in new ways of presenting biblical stories and broader biblical themes to audiences who bring no previous familiarity to their learning.

Emeritus Professor Dorothy Jean Weaver ’72 hosted three New Testament study workshops engaging with perspectives on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, stories of resilience, and the theme of power in the Gospel of Matthew. Read more about Weaver’s scholarly work on this topic.

With growing interest in the new Voices Together hymnal, music editor and new music professor Benjamin Bergey ’11 co-led three sessions with general editor Bradley Kauffman in anticipation of the 2020 release. He also joined a co-presenter to discuss how the 20 songs from the contemplative Taize community that are included in the hymnal might be integrated into regular and Taize-style worship.

The came prepared to engage and share its vision. The center co-hosted a networking event for young adults with Mennonite Creation Care Network, joining current college students with recent graduates to explore issues and encourage active engagement through their churches.

Executive director Doug Graber Neufeld, a biology professor at 91����Ƶ, also hosted a general interest meeting, with a special invitation for those wanting to explore ways that congregations can engage with climate issues.

Climate Future Fellows Michaela Mast, Harrison Horst and Sarah Longenecker, all 2018 91����Ƶ graduates, shared about their experiences producing two seasons of the “Shifting Climates” podcast. Read more here.

One workshop presenter didn’t have to travel far. Annette Lantz Simmons, a graduate of the and its 2018 Peacebuilder of the Year, led a workshop on trauma, resilience and leadership. Simmons, a certified STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) trainer, is executive director of the Center for Conflict Resolution in Kansas City (which also employs three other CJP graduates).

A number of 91����Ƶ alumni, too many to list in this article, contributed to activities and/or were delegates or participants at the conference. The information in this article was compiled from the MennoCon program book.��

In those 20 years, one family member, Bshara Nassar, attended and graduated from the . (Bshara, married to Kiersten Rossetto Nassar ‘13, ��is a founder of ��in Washington D.C.)

But his uncle, Daoud Nassar, who directs farm operations and is the lead spokesperson for Tent of Nations, had never visited 91����Ƶ.

That changed the first week of November when Nassar spent two days on campus, participating in several interactions: a seminary chapel sermon, a lunch discussion with present and future Middle East cross-cultural participants, a classroom discussion with students at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and an evening forum and discussion open to the community. Nassar’s time on campus concluded with a student-led tour of 91����Ƶ’s sustainability efforts, a request he specifically made to gain more ideas for his own family farm in Palestine.

Among many familiar faces on campus to greet Nassar was Timothy Seidel, director of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Interfaith Engagement (CIE) and assistant professor of international development. While living in Bethlehem and working for Mennonite Central Committee from 2004-07, Seidel visited the farm on a number of occasions and saw the family regularly at Christmas Lutheran Church. More recently, he into nonviolence and civil resistance in Palestine. ��

Nassar’s visit was sponsored by CIE, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. ��

‘Who Is My Neighbor?’

Emeritus Professor Dorothy Jean Weaver introduced Nassar to the seminary audience, delighted to finally be able to reciprocate the hospitality and love the family had shown to her and her students over more than 10 visits to Palestine since the 1990s.

“Their ongoing friendship has blessed my life,” Weaver said. “And like me, I would venture that many of our seminary students who have visited Tent of Nations would say their experience was uplifting and inspiring, seeing how the Nassar family has endured their situation with a deeply hopeful approach to life and so guided by Christian principles.’”

The Nassar family lives on land that they have owned for generations, yet nevertheless has been in continuous litigation with the Israeli government since 1991. Their choice of family motto��— “We refuse to be enemies” — was deeply intentional and has strong links to the scripture text about the Good Samaritan, he explained during the seminary chapel service. ��

“The good Samaritan did not raise the question what would happen to me if I stop? He asked what would happen to that man if I don’t stop?,” Nassar said. “This is the true meaning of love which is action, to see and act in a different way … Acting differently, that is what Jesus meant by loving your neighbor. When you act in a different way, you open a new perspective for someone else to see the other differently.”

Acting with violence toward their oppressors would not change their situation, Nassar said, recounting the family discussions that led to the eventual establishment of Tent of Nations. “We decided there must be another way of resistance, to resist with love, because we believe that hatred creates more hatred, darkness more darkness.”

Spiritual experiences and more

Bill Goldberg, director of CJP’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute, spent a memorable week at Tent of Nations while co-leading the fall 2017 cross-cultural with his wife Lisa Schirch, son Levi and daughter Miranda.

The days were simple, rich and full, he remembered, with hours of labor helping with the olive harvest followed by meals and fellowship around a fire at night. While the nights were dark, peaceful and still, the hum of construction and the sight of electricity in nearby Israeli settlements, as well as the main road blockade set by Israeli soldiers, was a constant threatening reminder of the situation in Palestine. ��

Reconnecting with Nassar on campus brought back strong recollections for Goldberg of the site of his “most profound spiritual experience.” Palestinian guide Alaa Hamdan MA ‘08 (the group also had an Israeli guide) had said that the Muslim call to prayer is “constant, circling the globe continuously, starting a few seconds to a few minutes later in each village as the earth rotates.

On a hilltop at Tent of Nations one evening, Goldberg says he thought the call was merely echoing off the hills. “But then, in succession, it stopped in each village. ��I was actually hearing the call to prayer travel around the world. It was beautiful and uplifts my heart now just to think about it.”

At the reunion, students shared reflections of their own experiences at the farm. “Daoud talked about the land and updated us on the complex legal situation,” Goldberg said. “While we were there, the family was rushing to refile paperwork to keep their land ownership case in the Israeli court system, a cycle that has sadly become as much a part of their calendar as the olive and fruit harvests. So that was something we wanted to know about.”

“He also talked about volunteers helping at the farm,” Goldberg added, “and of course, tried to recruit a few to come back.”

Future Middle East travel

• 91����Ƶ’s connection to the Middle East expanded last year with the first Alumni and Friends Cross-Cultural to the Middle East with longtime and much beloved leaders Linford and Janet Stutzman.��Read more here.
• Check out the Alumni and Friends Cross Cultural webpage for more information on other travels, including the next Middle East trip with the Stutzmans in fall 2019.
• Seminary professors Dorothy Jean Weaver and Kevin Clark co-lead a Middle East cross-cultural for seminary students in summer 2019.
• The next Middle East cross cultural for 91����Ƶ undergraduate students travels with the Stutzmans in spring 2019.

Dorothy Jean Weaver, professor of New Testament, concludes three-plus decades of teaching at in May. The senior faculty member also owns the distinction of having been the first woman to hold a full-time position at the seminary. She was named an instructor in 1984. Three years later, after receiving her doctorate in New Testament from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Va., she was appointed to an assistant professorship.

On Tuesday, March 13, by invitation from colleagues Kevin Clark and Carmen Schrock-Hurst, she offered a sermon titled “I Always Knew That I Would Be a Teacher’ during the seminary community’s bi-weekly chapel service.

It is reposted here with her permission. The podcast is also available.

Editor’s note [March 26, 2018]:��91����Ƶ’s Board of Trustees announced the awarding of emeritus status to Professor Dorothy Jean Weaver after their March meeting.

***

Thank you, Kevin and Carmen, for giving me the opportunity to share this morning. This is a very significant year in my life. I suppose I always knew in my rational mind that this year would come. But it is a year that, deep down in my gut, I somehow never quite imagined would actually arrive. At the end of this semester I will be laying down my formal, contracted responsibilities here at EMS. I will be leaving the EMS community – the classrooms, the students, the colleagues, the community life – which have been profoundly life-giving and life-shaping over these past 34 years. What I will share with you this morning is the story of how I arrived here back in August of 1984. It is a short-hand version of my life story. But it is, by the very same token, �Ҵǻ�’s story, the story of �Ҵǻ�’s grace and �Ҵǻ�’s great good humor – at work in the life of one human being. And this is without question the most important story that I have to share with you this morning. Here it is.

I always knew that I would be a teacher. When I was a child, this was simply a given of my world. What other options were there? I was a child of the Lehman family, my mother’s family. I was growing up right in the heart of the Lehman world, here in Park View. And Lehmans were teachers, almost all of them, the ones I knew anyhow: my grandfather … my uncle … my aunt … my mother … and eventually both of my sisters. My grandmother, who wasn’t even a Lehman except by marriage, had been a school teacher early in her life. And even my father, whom I never knew and who took perhaps one education course in his entire college career, was a school teacher in a one-room school house on Lost Creek, near Paintsville, Kentucky, in wild and wooly Appalachia, for some five years before I was born. Teaching. I never once imagined any other life for myself.

This was the way that life proceeded, as viewed through my childhood lens. First you went to elementary school. Then you went to high school. Then you went to college. And then you became a teacher. It was that clear and that simple. And indeed I am a teacher and have been so for more than half of my present lifetime.�� So in one respect my life has been what I always knew it would be. But in one respect only, that most basic respect. As I have discovered time and time again, God has a great sense of humor and a fascinating sense of timing. And God has brought me along for an extraordinary ride, a ride I could never have imagined in advance. My life thus far has been one that I could never have dreamed up on my own. And herein lies the tale.

To start at the beginning, I spent a happy childhood here in Park View in the heart of an extended family whose world revolved almost entirely around EMC as it was then. But just for the record, I should note that one summer, my sister Carol and I invented an imaginary world in which EMC was transformed into 91����Ƶ. That seemed so much more prestigious and sophisticated…�� If I ever thought about the future, I knew that I would one day be a teacher. But I didn’t spend much time thinking that far ahead. I did love school, except for the days when we had to run relay races at recess. I hated relay races. But I did bring home good grades. At church and within my family, I learned about a gracious God, who loved and cared for �Ҵǻ�’s people and who loved and cared for me. And in 1962, at the age of 12, I responded to the call of Christ and was baptized into the Mount Clinton Mennonite Church family. Such was my childhood.

Eighth grade was a very lonely year. Adolescence didn’t come easy for me. And I was a very awkward social outsider in my very small eighth-grade class at Eastern Mennonite High School. But from there things began to open up for me, as I gradually built friendships and found my way through high school. This was a significant faith-building time.�� I began reading my Bible. I claimed Bible verses for myself. I participated in testimony meetings in EMHS chapel services. I joined in “conversational prayer” groups before school. I sought very earnestly to grow in my commitment to Jesus Christ. And I still loved school. It was the “child-in-the- candy-shop” syndrome: Latin, German, American and English literature, speech, American history, touring choir.�� And then there was the Windsock, the EMHS newspaper. I was the assistant editor in my junior year and the editor in my senior year. I loved writing. And, just like in elementary school, I still brought home good grades.

College was never a question. Not in the Lehman family. Nor was there ever a question about where I would attend college. It never even occurred to me to consider a school other than EMC. So the only question I faced was what major to declare. And I made short work of that question. Very short work. I distinctly remember sitting in the back seat of the car on our family trip to Expo ‘67 and puzzling out this question. I would be heading into my senior year at EMHS and it seemed an appropriate time to consider such questions. What were the options?�� Well, I could study elementary education. That was surely a “Lehman” thing to do.�� I could study history. That would be interesting, no doubt. I could study English. That would be fun. Or how about German? Now there was an idea! I had studied German in an after-school program during elementary school. And I had studied German in high school as well. I liked German. Lehmans studied German. And if I studied German, I could go to Germany. And that would be lots of fun. So, without any further ado, I settled on a major in German (and, as it turned out, French as well). I don’t set this out as a model for such crucial life decisions. But it’s exactly how I got there. The “travel bug” is a seriously addictive ailment. And I have always, then as now, been “bitten” hard. So German (and French) it was. And little did I know how God was chuckling.

College was for me remarkable largely in its beginning and its ending and nowhere else. I started my college career auspiciously enough as a dormitory student with a beautiful, good-hearted roommate who has in the meantime become a lifelong friend. I concluded that year as a short-term resident at Philhaven, a Mennonite mental health facility, struggling to find my way out of a deep depression. This was a life detour for which I had not planned. And I spent the next several years of my college career seeking and discovering the inner resources necessary for a long, slow, cyclical recovery period. But there was much of grace within this whole experience. And I came away with a strong sense of emotional self-awareness, a deep gratitude for the grace of God, and a good handful of “souvenirs” from my stay at Philhaven, the items that I had crafted in the creative therapy sessions day by day. These items remain for me a visible, tangible witness of the grace of God at work in my life at the age of 19.

I ended college on an international note. In the summer of 1971, just before my senior year, I spent eight weeks in Quebec City, Quebec, with a group of EMC colleagues and our fearless leader, Emery Yoder. This was surely one of the very first “cross-culturals” offered here at 91����Ƶ. I lived with Monsieur and Madame Chainey and their three children Yvan, Martine, and Pascal. I got almost fluent in conversational French. And from the French Canadian history book that we studied as a class I learned a crucial lesson that I have never forgotten. History is not simply equal to history. It always comes with perspective. To my great amazement, the heroes of my Virginia history books were the villains in my French Canadian history book … and vice versa. It’s a lesson that I share with my New Testament students every single year.

From Quebec City it was on to Marburg an der Lahn. Marburg was a picture-book medieval city in central Germany, built on a steep hill with the Schloss, the castle, at the top of the hill, and the Altstadt, the old city spilling down the hillside to the Lahn River in the valley. The university buildings were clustered along the Lahn, while Studentendorf, “Student Village,” where I lived, was high up the hill across from the Altstadt. I ate huge bowls of split pea soup and rice pudding at lunch in the Mensa (the cheapest items on the menu!), made daily treks downhill and back up, attended fascinating lectures on German literature – and even one on the Anabaptists of the Reformation, sang in the Marburg Bach Choir, attended the local Baptist church, and learned above all to speak German, to listen to German lectures, and to take German notes. It was a rich and highly engaging experience.

And then came one of �Ҵǻ�’s greatest, most delightful, little jokes: New York City! I grew up in Harrisonburg, a very small city. And I had no interest whatsoever in going to live in some big metropolis. On my return trip from Germany, I went to special pains to fly from JFK to Washington Dulles and from there to Weyers Cave, precisely so that I could avoid “tangling” with New York City. Little did I know! In the great good humor of God, it was no more than three weeks later that I found myself on a Greyhound bus heading back to New York City to look for a job and to settle down for a two-year stint, working at the American Bible Society�� at 61^st and Broad.

This was surely not my doing. Left to my own devices, I would never have come to such an idea. But there it was, an opportunity that opened up out of the blue. And there I was, living and working in New York City and loving it! On Sundays, I attended worship services at Seventh Avenue Mennonite Church.�� Weekdays, I served as the periodicals librarian at ABS. I scanned hundreds of church magazines and routed them to staff members. I answered OB’s, “old Bible letters,” that folks would write to ABS inquiring about the Bibles they found in “Great Aunt Sally’s attic.” I gave people tours of the Bible library, a rare book library of thousands of published Bibles. And I learned the crucial art of wielding a Bible concordance as I answered phone calls from folks with questions about “a scripture that runs something like this.”

But the most enduring memory from my days at ABS comes from the staff meetings, something a bit like chapel services. Most often the folks who presented at these staff meetings were Bible Society folks back in the US from tours of duty all over the world. And what impressed me so deeply were the stories that they told. I don’t remember a single one of those stories in detail. But the general thrust remains embedded in my awareness. These were stories about people who encountered the Bible for the first time ever … and whose lives were profoundly transformed in that encounter. I came away from my own tour of duty at the American Bible Society with a deep awareness of the power of God at work through the Scriptures to transform human lives. And this story is also one that I share every year with my New Testament students. I still didn’t know it. But God was hard at work preparing me for a teaching job of which I had as yet no idea.

I thought that I was going back to Germany. And God is my witness, how hard I tried to do just that. I had, after all, been a German major. And I had enjoyed my studies in Marburg.�� I thought that I would go back to Germany and follow up with further studies at Philipps University. Before I even left Germany, I had considered – and turned down – a volunteer job in a German Mennonite nursing home. In New York, I applied for a Rotary scholarship to Germany. I investigated an opening at Eirene, the German equivalent of Mennonite Central Committee.�� And I made application to enter the German program at Middlebury College in Vermont. I turned over every imaginable stone in an energetic search to find my way back to Germany. But none of these options opened up in the end.

What opened up instead was yet one more “God thing” and a very great surprise. It all came about because of my grandfather’s Old Testament Theology, one of a set of volumes that he published based on his class lectures from years of teaching right here at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. I had borrowed this book from my mother and had started to read it. I never got farther than the first few pages.�� But what happened to me in the course of those pages was something I would never have expected, something that no one in my entire world of acquaintances had ever once suggested to me. All of a sudden and out of the blue I found myself thinking: “This is fascinating!�� You know, I could go to seminary and study Bible.�� And I think I would really enjoy that.” And in an instant, the plans for returning to Germany were passé. Instead I sent for seminary catalogs from EMS and Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and submitted an application to AMBS. But even as I did so, I thought somewhat sadly to myself, “What a pity, to leave all my German and French behind!” Little did I know. And you will soon discover. Now, completely unbeknownst to me, God was opening the doors that would eventually lead me to EMS.

Seminary was nothing short of a revolution, in its quiet, academic sort of way. The first thing that hit me was “Elementary Greek,” a six-week course in the summer of 1974. What did I imagine? I don’t know. But I loved Greek. Language had always been fun for me, and Greek was no different. It was, just as I now tell my own students, a jigsaw puzzle, with countless little pieces that needed to be fit together. But the real excitement was not just putting the pieces together. The real excitement was the fact that when you did so, you were reading the New Testament as it had actually been written 2,000 years ago. The excitement for me was almost palpable.

And that was only the beginning. The language courses took me straight into the Bible courses, as many of them as I could squeeze into my program. I realized almost right away that I was being drawn to the Bible courses as if by a very strong magnet. And before very long, I began to realize that what I was encountering here, in the study of the Scriptures, was something that had lifelong implications. I was drawn. I was deeply engaged. I was compelled. And my whole sense of calling was completely redirected. I remember sitting in Howard Charles’ New Testament classes (one day or was it many days or was it every day?) and thinking, “Yes!!!�� This is what I need to do with my life, to open the Scriptures for others the way Howard is opening them for us.”

My three years of seminary were rich, challenging, enormously growth-producing. But they were not always easy. The most challenging thing I had to do in my seminary career was to tangle with the human character of the Scriptures, the fact that they were profoundly human documents written by ordinary human beings in response to the God-events unfolding in their world, even as God was at work in their lives, drawing these writings forth from them. Somehow the human aspect of the Scriptures had passed me by up to that point. And I struggled as I saw my quasi-magical view of the Scriptures assaulted by the forces of historical criticism. But in the end I came away, ironically, with a far sturdier understanding of inspiration and a far higher view of the Scriptures than the virtual “house of cards” with which I had entered seminary.

By the time I graduated from seminary, and in fact well before that, I knew where my life was headed. This was clear to me, to my professors, and most likely to my student colleagues as well. I was headed first to graduate school, to get a PhD in New Testament Studies. And from there it would be back to the seminary classroom. But not by a direct route. I knew that I needed to go out into the real world somewhere and engage in some real-world activity for a year or so before I headed back to the “ivory towers.” Otherwise, I feared that I would come out of grad school of no earthly good in the real world or the real church. I may be a strong “tj” sort of person on the Meyers Briggs Personality Tests. But I also have some deep intuitions down inside of me. And this one was very strong. So strong, in fact, that I found myself almost “arguing” with Marlin Miller, AMBS president, who was encouraging me to head straight to grad school. I persisted. I knew that I needed the real world. And evidently God did as well.

My next stopping-off place was Christopher Dock Mennonite High School, my “Jonah experience.” I have already told you of my struggles as an adolescent. I knew that I was not a high school teacher. I was very sure that I didn’t have what it took to teach roomfuls of adolescents. The high school classroom was the one place I would have avoided at all costs. The only problem was that God had another idea about that. And I found myself pursued by the relentless “Hound of Heaven.” That is another whole story. But the bottom line was clear. The harder (and the more deviously) I tried to avoid a teaching job at Christopher Dock, the more clearly and unambiguously I found myself pursued by that heavenly hound.�� And when a unanimous invitation came from the Personnel Committee for me to teach Bible and German, I had no choice. “OK, God. You win. I’ll do this. I have no idea why this is right. But you win.”

Thus began my Christopher Dock saga. Things started out not too badly.�� But by Thanksgiving time of my first year, I had already hit a personal time of crisis and needed to step back from the bulk of my teaching for several weeks.�� During that time I reached out for assistance from a trained counselor. And I likewise found deep support and deep belonging within my home congregation, the Perkasie Mennonite Church.

And God was gracious. After Christmas, I returned fulltime to my classroom. And I discovered in the process that God was once again, in the business of miracles. When I told my Gospel of John students the story of the man lying by the pool of Bethesda, I thought to myself: “These students have no clue that I am actually telling them my own story.” I was that man whom Jesus told to stand up on legs he knew would not hold him and walk on feet that hadn’t walked in 38 years. I was also Peter, whom Jesus called to get out of the boat and walk to him on the water. My teaching was far from perfect. Classroom discipline was still a challenge. But I was up on my feet, I was out of the boat, I was back in my classroom teaching. How much more evidence does anyone need of the God who works miracles?

My sojourn at Christopher Dock was a mere two years in length. But it was long enough, surely, to learn some profound life lessons. Chief among these had to do with the abundant grace of God and the amazing discovery that I could love myself and even respect myself, even if I wasn’t great at high school teaching.�� I think God knew that I needed deliverance from that profoundly hard-wired “success ethic” that came both in my genes and in my history of academic success.�� And so it happened, on �Ҵǻ�’s own schedule and just in time for my next challenging venture, grad school.

I had never thought about doctoral work as a child. That wasn’t an obvious piece of my “elementary-school-to-high-school-to-college-to-teaching” formula.�� But now I knew that grad school was essential. There was no other route, if I wanted to become a seminary teacher. So I put out my applications: Princeton Theological Seminary, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. I was accepted at all three schools. And Candler, for one, worked really hard to entice me. I received a handwritten letter from a current grad student, welcoming me there. I settled, however, on Union. ��Once again intuition won out. I sensed that I would need good access to a family-based support system for this academic challenge. And Richmond, Virginia, was only a few short hours “down the pike” from Harrisonburg. So Union it was. And I never once looked back.

This was truly one of the biggest challenges I had ever faced. At AMBS, I had excelled in a “very small pond.” But at Union, I was merely one rather ordinary grad student among a very competitive field of colleagues. And during my first year, my urgent and ongoing question was, “When are they going to weed me out?” But the one thing, the only thing, that I didn’t “sweat” for one tiny moment was the very first thing we had to do, namely language exams, modern language exams, German and French exams! Remember my sad little lament all the way back in New York City about leaving my German and French behind. God must have been chuckling right out loud. What can I say? As is abundantly clear by now, this journey has not been one of my own design. It has �Ҵǻ�’s fingerprints all over it. And it is the product of �Ҵǻ�’s grace and great good humor all along the way.

But back to the difficult journey. We had major exams at the end of our first semester. And by the time I reached the final of four exams, I found myself sitting terrified in the dean’s office, waiting for that fateful envelope with the exam question for the day, and saying to myself, “I can’t even think of a question that they could ask me that I could answer on this exam.” The fact that I came through that day somewhat purposefully and actually had an exam paper to turn in at the end of the day was yet another of those incredible miracles, or, if you will, another of those great graces of God.

The rest of my program was a long, hard, slog.�� I did not “ease on through” my doctorate. I went into that program with 150 percent commitment. I knew why I was doing this. I knew that God had called me to a destination which lay down this highway. There were no alternate routes. Even so I came to a spot in my doctoral journey where I was doing little more than running in place. The only words I had for it were “moving a mountain with a teaspoon.” A day was good if I accomplished a solid paragraph of progress. But even here, at this lowest of low points, God was faithful. And I found that every single morning, I woke up with new courage for the task of the day. Maybe this would be the day that I would make good progress.

And then there were the truly amazing gifts that God dropped into my world.�� The first of these came following my first two years on campus, just as I was ready to begin work on my dissertation. Just then I learned about and applied for an exchange fellowship to the University of Berne in Switzerland. I don’t even know if there were other competitors besides one grad colleague. All I know is that, in the great good humor of God, the fellowship was awarded to me, because my German was better than my colleague’s, as the story got to me. And once again, for absolute certain, God must have been chuckling audibly.

That year was a beautiful little gem, a story far too extensive for this slot.�� Just one significant note: In Berne I had the outstanding opportunity to be “adopted” by Dr. Ulrich Luz, a prominent Matthean scholar then teaching at the University of Berne. And Ulrich not only included me in his crew of grad students.�� He also gave me the gift of an hour or so of his precious time one day in order to discuss the outlines that were beginning to emerge from my initial work with Matthew 10, the Missionary Discourse.

But before I left Berne, another gift dropped into my lap, the opportunity to spend a semester in Elkhart teaching “Greek Readings.” This was the moment I had been waiting for, the moment to test out what I believed was my true calling. I now knew for absolute certain that I didn’t belong in a high school classroom. Now was the time to discover whether I truly did, as I believed, belong in a seminary classroom. And the first day of class was all that it took. I walked into the classroom and started to teach. And as I did so, I could almost literally feel myself relaxing. Yes!�� This was the right place and the right job.�� I could feel it down deep within me. I had truly come home.

That was the fall of 1982. And then I headed back to Richmond. I meant to finish. But instead the inevitable happened. I ran out of money. I had gotten all the financial aid that was available from UTS. They had been more than gracious.�� But now financial aid was running out. And I wasn’t yet finished. I had told myself that I would never drop out of school and start teaching before finishing my degree. I knew it was risky, but I had no choice.

So I came to Harrisonburg to look for work. And I knocked on the door of Dean George R. Brunk III. Did EMS have any opening in New Testament? Whatever made me think that I could find a job that simply and that easily? Was there a search on? I don’t think so. Were there competitors? I wasn’t aware of any. Best I can remember George simply put me up as a candidate for a new position in New Testament, halftime in the seminary, halftime in the undergrad. I remember sitting in the front classroom of the old seminary building with my future colleagues, all of them men, and fielding questions from them. More than that I don’t remember about the process.

But what I do remember vividly is what happened just after Christmas in 1983. I had come home from Richmond for the holidays. And my mother and I had traveled to Manassas to spend Christmas with my sister Kathie and her family. While we were gone, the weather was frigid, well down below freezing. And we returned to Harrisonburg to find a bitter cold house, since the oil line from the tank to the house had frozen. So my mother lit her little kerosene heater. And as we stood there by the heater warming our hands, the doorbell rang. When I went to the door, George R. Brunk III was standing there. I invited him into our frigid house and explained our plight. George didn’t miss a beat. “I have something here that will warm you up,” he said, handing me an envelope. It was a formal invitation to me to accept a teaching position at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, starting in the fall of 1984.

And the rest has truly been history. I always knew that I would be a teacher. And in �Ҵǻ�’s grace and �Ҵǻ�’s great good humor, God saw to it that this has come to pass. These past years have been a deep, rich, beautiful gift from God. I have been blessed with the joy of the classroom, the sturdy back-and-forth with students, and the opportunity to walk along beside them on holy ground as they find out who they are becoming as ministering persons. I have been blessed with a beautiful circle of colleagues, colleagues who have become strong and sturdy friends over the years. I have been blessed with the gift of a seminary family where teachers minister to students and students in turn minister to teachers. And above all, I have been blessed with a warm and supportive environment in which to live out my passion for opening the Scriptures in the classroom and for searching out, every day over again, what these texts are all about and what they mean for the life of the present-day church. It has truly been the ride of a lifetime. And it has truly been the gift of God, a God full of grace and of great good humor. Thanks be to God!

In 2017, Dorothy Jean Weaver published “The Irony of Power: The Politics of God in Matthew’s Narrative” (Pickwick, 2017). Read more here.��

Brunk, who taught in the 91����Ƶ history department for 36 years and before last week had already presented his impersonation of Simons 96 times, performed “My Road to Decision” in a Feb. 8 seminary chapel service. It’s a bringing-to-life of the writings of Simons focused on the 11 years that culminated in his becoming an Anabaptist.

Brunk said that his years of impersonating Simons has had a “tremendous impact” on him.

“It has enabled me not only to understand Menno, but to try to get some feel of what kind of struggle he went through, and what kind of revelations he had,” he said: “The courage, the tremendous courage the man had, in him going out as a fugitive and preaching the word.”

A priest’s ‘soul struggle’

Dressed in black robes and cap and wearing a silver cross around his neck, Brunk embodied the “soul struggle” that Simons faced beginning in 1525.

Over the next 11 years, as he came to embrace nonviolence and the “heresy” of Anabaptism, Simons began to read the Bible – something that in all his monastic years he’d never before done.

He began to feel “nagging doubt” about whether during communion the wine and bread actually became the blood and flesh of Christ and about church doctrine about baptism. He scoured the Bible for clarity, and eventually concluded that scripture contradicted church teaching.

But he was still an active priest – until something happened that led him to give up the priesthood: In nearby Münster, a group of Anabaptists attempted to establish a “new Jerusalem” by violently taking over the city.

“My brother,” said Brunk speaking as Simons, “was part of a group that took over an old monastery not too far from where we are. One hundred and thirty of them were killed outright, and the rest were executed – including my brother.”

Simons had read in the Bible that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount had called for his followers to love their enemies, to do good to their persecutors. He had read that in the garden where Jesus was arrested, when his disciple Peter used his sword and sliced off the ear of the servant of the high priest, Jesus said to him, “They who use the sword will die by the sword.”

And Simons’ brother’s name was Peter.

“He had taken the sword, and he had died by the sword, just as Jesus said,” Simons told the audience, “and so I would write in one of my books these words: ‘The regenerated do not go to war. Neither do they engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’”

What pushed him to act on his growing convictions, though, was seeing his brother’s and others’ courage to act – albeit violently – on their faith.

“My God,” he prayed, “forgive me for my hypocrisy…. Give me the courage to preach your word as I know it.”

He began preaching Anabaptist doctrine, then stepped down from the priesthood, and later was himself rebaptised. Although he became a hunted man and faced many difficulties, he was not martyred: he married, had three children, and lived another 25 years before dying a natural death at age 66.

“What pains me so,” Simons concluded, “are those who have been executed because of me, either because they gave me shelter or my family shelter, or read my books.”

Awareness and appreciation

Seminary student David Gingerich said that Simons’ heartbreak – over the martyrdom of his followers while he lived – made him think of parallels both in the life of Jesus, who also knew his followers would face persecution, but also in parenting.

“I’m training my kids to have that same faith, hopefully training them to be countercultural in a lot of ways that may be costly for them,” he said. “How do I do that as a parent? For people in Menno’s time who were withholding baptism from their babies, it probably seemed cruel – and then at the same time I’m training my children to be able to make their own choices.”

Seminary professor Dorothy Jean Weaver was struck by the “moments in time when [Simons] came to new awarenesses.” People today “cannot fully appreciate how big a step” Anabaptism was for early radicals, she said.

Proclaiming God incarnate even in brokenness – within themselves, in their congregations and neighborhoods, and nationally – is no small task for pastors. Eastern Mennonite Seminary’s ��(SLT) participants will explore themes of thriving and succeeding in ministry even in the context of so much reason to lose heart.

The Jan. 15-17 training “Broken Vessels, Thriving Pastor” will feature Iris de León-Hartshorn, The Reverend Meredith McNabb, and an alumni panel. Seminars will feature a Charlottesville, Virginia, pastor who confronted the “Unite the Right” rally in August, a personal leadership coach, and various EMS faculty.

“None of us is free from brokenness,” said Les Horning, director of seminary admissions and SLT coordinator. “And not one of our congregations and communities is exempt, either. The question is, ‘How can we recognize and act in the extraordinary power of God wherever and whoever we are?’”

In her keynote address “Bridges crossed, lessons learned: My journey in leadership,” Hartshorn will use her own life story as an invitation to face brokenness “as an integral aspect of finding one’s place as a leader.” Hartshorn is the director of transformative peacemaking for Mennonite Church USA and a leader in racial and gender justice in the church.

A panel of alumni will present the second keynote address, “Thriving and brokenness on the front lines.” It will feature reflections on the challenges and joys in ministry contexts ranging from rural western plains to urban streets. Panelists will include:

• Brett Klingenberg, MDiv 2011, Pastor, First Mennonite Church, Beatrice, Nebraska
• Carmen Horst, MDiv 2010, Associate Pastor, James Street Mennonite Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
• Nicholas Detweiler-Stoddard, MDiv 2010, Pastor, Salem Mennonite Church, Freeman, South Dakota
• Lorie Hershey, MDiv 2005, Pastor, West Philly Mennonite Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In the final keynote, McNabb – an ordained elder in the Virginia United Methodist Conference, the director of the Center for Clergy Excellence, and former Washington D.C.-area pastor and attorney working primarily with low-income victims of domestic violence – will use as a guiding image the motif of kintsugi, a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The technique is based on the philosophy of recognizing an object’s history and, instead of disguising it, incorporating the repair into the new piece.

Other events will include a pastor appreciation breakfast with 91����Ƶ president Susan Schultz Huxman, facilitated conversation circles, a showing of Dr. ’s film “I shall not hate: A journey of hope through faith, tolerance, and courage,” and worship.

Seminars include:

• “Love Over Fear: Subverting evil in the way of Jesus” with Brittany Caine-Conley, director of University Ministry at Westminster Presbyterian Church and co-founder of Congregate Charlottesville [read more about her work here];
• “When the Center Cannot Hold: Leadership in an age of polarization” with , associate professor in 91����Ƶ’s ;
• “No Quick Fix for Brokenness in Self or in Others” with Kenton Derstine, EMS faculty;
• “�Ҵǻ�’s Word and Ours: Praying the Psalms” with , EMS faculty;
• “Train Stations, Bike Trails and Bus Routes” with , a life and work transition advisor and personal leadership coach;
• “Pastoral Responses to Racism in Our Community and Congregation” with , director of Transformative Peacemaking, Mennonite Church – USA;
• “Gleaning Resilience from the Good News, Both Then and Now” with , EMS faculty;
• “Whatever You Do, Just Don’t Talk about THAT!” with , EMS associate dean; and
• “Pastoring in the Landscape: Geological and ecological lessons” with , director of the Center for Clergy Excellence.

“We invite you to bring your stories of brokenness, and your stories of how you confronted brokenness,” Horning said. “Bring your jars of clay and your dying grains of wheat. Together we thrive.”

For more information, visit , call 540-432-4698, or email slt@emu.edu.

She is pastor of youth and children’s ministries at Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg. She and partner Justin Shenk, both 2006 graduates of 91����Ƶ, were community hosts in a United Reformed Church through Mennonite Mission Network in London, England, for three years. Valerie‘s work in London and following has focused on community organizing and faith formation through facilitating theology roundtable discussions, craftivism (craft + activism), and countless cups of tea.

***

Two years ago, my partner and I were anticipating the end of an international service assignment with Mennonite Mission Network. We were returning to the U.S. with no set plans, no jobs, and having spent three years not really earning money.

As we were packing and discerning next steps, I decided to try my hand and my brain at a course, offered online by Eastern Mennonite Seminary. That course was “New Testament: Text in Context” with .

Maybe enrolling in that class was a strategy for distraction as we left behind the community we had known, or the nervous anticipation of reverse culture shock, but my eager engagement in that class set me on a trajectory that made evident that seminary was where I was being called.

And that’s where you enter my story.

I was fortunate to be offered one of the Ministry Leadership Awards, an award that covers half of my tuition. I am personally grateful for the investment made in me, and it’s the same generosity that inevitably is investing in the future of the church. Which may lead you to ask, “Well, what does the church’s future hold? What are we investing in when we give to 91����Ƶ or EMS?

From where I am as a student in the seminary, this is what I envision: The future church is a beacon of the kind of hope that transforms, a hope that invites our participation in the in-breaking of �Ҵǻ�’s kin-dom on earth.

Through the lens of David Evans’ course on churches and social transformation, I envision a church that strives to dismantle racism and white supremacy, because the church has deconstructed its own complicity in structural violence and acted to change. It is a church of deep equity and broad diversity.

Through the lens of Dorothy Jean Weaver and Kevin Clark’s course “Women and Men in Scripture and Church,” I envision a church that is free from the oppressive structures of sexism and patriarchy, a church that proclaims that all, regardless of gender identity, are beloved children of God, called by God to full participation in the body of Christ.

Because of the team-taught courses that focus on the holistic formation of each seminary student, I envision a church with well-equipped and wise leaders, drawing the church into a deeper faith that kindles our passion for justice and inspires unreserved acts of mercy.

This vision of the future church – surely augmented by many other facets of discipleship and study – does not come without cost. There are many ways to pay this cost, but tonight, I thank you for your financial contributions. My hope and my prayer is that – here, in the community united by Eastern Mennonite – we each find a way to share our gifts with one another, equally beloved participants in the kin-dom of God.

To learn more about EMS, contact Les Horning, director of seminary admissions.

As an Anabaptist seminary,��EMS��has special emphasis in peacebuilding, biblical studies, spiritual formation and theology, training leaders for��, and��, as well as other denominations.

The book also serves as a valedictory for Weaver’s three-plus decades at EMS. Last January, she announced to her seminary colleagues she would not seek renewal of her contract upon its expiration next year.

In addition to being the senior member of the EMS faculty, Weaver owns the distinction of having been the first woman to hold a full-time position at the seminary. She was named an instructor in 1984. Three years later, after receiving her doctorate in New Testament from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Va., she was appointed to an assistant professorship.

Essays probe the true nature of power

In her prologue, Weaver says that, throughout her career, she has found herself returning again and again to “the same set of urgent and persistently relevant ‘real-world’ questions” – namely, those concerned with issues of power and powerlessness, violence and nonviolence, and the ways in which the “politics of God” confound human expectation.

What Weaver calls her “central insight” – that the Gospel of Matthew’s “ironic subversion of all standard definitions of political power” is directed toward the proclamation of a new “�Ҵǻ�’s-eye” vision of such power – is one that “has continued to energize” her study of Matthew since the early ᾿90s.

At that time, her attention was first drawn to a paradox in Matthew’s version of the “Good News.” Why could the Gospel’s three great autocrats – Herod the Great, Herod the Tetrarch, and Pilate – not accomplish their declared objectives?

“All three were credited, on one level, with having absolute power and authority,” Weaver points out. “Yet they are shown, on another level, to be powerless.”

For instance, in the story of Herod the Great (the menacing potentate in the account of Jesus’ birth, and the flight of Jesus and his family to Egypt), we read of a despotic ruler who is frustrated in his attempt to kill the infant child about whom he has heard a messianic prophecy.

This and other examples of the irony Weaver finds at the heart of Matthew’s Gospel – and, indeed, the entire New Testament – formed the basis for her essay titled, “Power and Powerlessness” (originally published in 1996), and ultimately, she says, for the other essays collected in The Irony of Power.

Yet it was not until her sabbatical at Jerusalem’s Tantur Ecumenical Institute in 2010-11 that Weaver first began to explore the idea of bringing the essays together in a single volume. There she received encouragement from noted Old Testament scholar Samuel Pagan of the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies.

Expressions of enthusiasm also came from such prominent colleagues and associates as Willard Swartley, professor emeritus of New Testament at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and David Rhoads, professor emeritus of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.

In his foreword to The Irony of Power, Rhoads says that Weaver “correctly recognizes that Matthew is a story about power.”

She discerns, Rhoads says, “that the conflict in the Gospel is not between Jesus and the Jews but between … the oppressed and the oppressors, the powerless and the powerful.”

Editor’s note:�� published by the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, University of Notre Dame, one site of Weaver’s sabbaticals where several of the essays were written.

Career summed up in three “M’s” – Mennonite, Matthew and Middle East

Throughout Weaver’s career, teaching and scholarship have been coupled with personal peacebuilding in a part of the world notoriously resistant to such initiatives – the Middle East.

Since 1995, she has led 18 tours of the region, and has spent multiple sabbaticals lecturing and conducting research in several of its most prominent centers for the study of biblical texts.

“My experiences in the Middle East have sensitized me profoundly to issues of power and powerlessness,” she says.

Weaver recalls a moment of sharp clarity from another sabbatical she spent at Tantur in 2003. The window of her room looked out on a valley; on a hilltop at its far rim, Bethlehem was visible.

“I remember being struck,” she says, “that at the very moment I sat there writing about the first-century occupiers of Palestine, a 21st-century occupation was taking place before my very eyes.”

Weaver has announced that, although she will leave full-time teaching in May, she plans to continue leading the EMS Middle East cross cultural experience, as well as the Virginia Mennonite Missions Nazareth/Bethlehem work group in alternate years during the EMS May Term.

Weaver says that her direct involvement in peace and justice initiatives, and the time demands they have entailed, caused to her realize long ago that she would “never have a long shelf of books.” Nor does she necessarily regard the present volume as her magnum opus.

Yet she remains “very grateful,” she says, “that the book has finally happened, in that it has brought together the fruits of many years’ labor in a format in which people can find them.”

In this way, she says, “people can view them as forming what is essentially a connected thesis.”

happening with our neighbors,” said Professor during ’s School for Leadership Training. “In the 21st century, we don’t need to travel 6,000 miles to meet others, ethnic others, racial others. We just need to open our doors or walk down the hall. We could do better to love our literal neighbors, those people closest to us.”

Evans’ point, made during a panel presentation on the themes of “neighboring” and “othering,” drew nods from listeners in Martin Chapel – all of whom had come to the two-day workshop to deepen knowledge and explore engagement with the diversities of politics, culture and theology in today’s modern church and culture.

Approximately 240 pastors and lay leaders from 16 states attended. At least eight denominations were represented: Brethren in Christ, Church of the Brethren, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Mennonite Church USA, United Methodist, Lutheran and Unitarian Universalist. The event included four keynote addresses, workshops and a seminary faculty panel addressing the theme of “Yearning to Get Along … And Stay True to Ourselves.”

‘It is not enough to stay silent’

Participants ranged from veteran pastors to seminary students to laypeople such as Janelle Clark, of Newport News, Virginia, who is contemplating seminary studies. Pastor Sandy Drescher-Lehman has attended for the past seven years, anticipating by January, the need for collegial connection, spiritual sustenance and reflection “on where I was when I came last year — spiritually, emotionally and vocationally��— and comparing that to my current place in the world.”

“As a white person living and working in a multicultural neighborhood,” Cynthia Lapp, pastor at Hyattsville Mennonite Church in Hyattsville, came to learn “more about racism and the ways white privilege functions … It is not enough to stay silent. Racism will not just fade away; we must act and speak.”

“I came to help uncover and discover what is often hidden in our racialized society and to consider how these forces of racialization are forming and shaping us as a church,” said John Stolzfus, Franconia Conference youth minister and campus pastor for Dock Mennonite Academy.

Reflecting after the event, Stolzfus questions: “How can we as leaders empty ourselves of our privilege and power in the self-emptying way of Christ in order to embody the incarnational love of God? To the extent in which we are not able to see or understand the suffering and struggle of the immigrant, racial minority, foreigner, sexual minority, or anyone who may be different from us reveals the poverty of our relationships. We need to be in proximity to and stand next to those who are “other” in order to truly be a neighbor.

With opportunities for worship, reflection and prayer in the midst of education, many came away with more questions than answers.

Mick Sommers, lead pastor at Ridgeview Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was “sobered by the realization that generations of attitudes and structure within the church will likely not be altered in a short span of time … I recognize within myself the need for a constant awareness and intentional mindfulness to counteract what has been my own socialization about race and power.”

Inequality and the ‘whitened Jesus’

, of Duke University Divinity School, and , of Messiah College, offered three extensive keynotes on the subjects of a practical theology of inequality, power and unity and the whitened Jesus, respectively.

Cleveland, a social psychologist, talked about the socialization of racism, the current politics of victimhood and related both concepts to Jesus’s statements and actions as a marginalized and oppressed person.

“If you looked to see where Jesus was socially located in every single one of his actions, how he emptied himself of his influence, platform and power … you’ll probably be astounded,” she said. “Jesus was always using his voice to make a point about what our relationships should be.”

Hart drew from history and culture to highlight the ubiquity of the “white European Jesus fixed in our places of worship,” an image that “bolsters a social system organized around racial hierarchy. “

While lifting up the constructed image of the blonde, Nordic and explicitly non-Jewish Jesus, Hart asked, “Where do we go with that image … to recover our Gentile identity? None of us have a copyright on Christianity or Jesus … Let us remember that it is someone else’s story that shapes our lives.”

Selected seminars summarized

A complete list of seminars is available .

Understanding the ‘other’ through the mirror/window of popular culture with Benjamin Bixler, PhD student, Drew University.

Bixler began with a clip of Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy Awards performance of “The Blacker The Berry,” in which the rapper and dancers, dressed as convicts, perform in the setting of a jail. Bixler discussed popular culture (movies, novels, music, etc.) as a way of engagement with “the other” on several levels: not only does the alternate world and characters offer alternate perspectives and provoke empathy, but the people who are discussing, analyzing or critiquing the work are also learning about themselves and each other.

Rebirth of a White Nation, with Dr. David Evans, EMS professor.

Evans facilitated discussions about white racial identity, a brief history of race in the United States, and the characteristics or qualities of “good white people” before asking the question “How might following Jesus be consistent or inconsistent with pursuing white status?”

“Race is national discipleship that teaches us the values we must have in order to belong to a certain status or group,” Evans says. “These values rival what Jesus calls us to be or to become … If we’ve been discipled into white nationalism, and no one was born white, then we’ve been converted into something that we need to be converted out of.”

How Do You Measure Life Change? The Role of Data and Measurements in Community Engagement with Wes Furlong, director of church development, EVANA network.

• Churches often take an input-focused approach to thinking about social/service work (e.g. pounds of food gather for food drive) rather than thinking carefully about outputs and desired impact.
• Serving communities, at its best, begins with careful work to fully understand context, strengths and assets and to ensure that all actors are involved.
• Those involved in social/service work need to avoid the temptation of taking a short-term or transaction view to their efforts and instead strive to take a systems view with a focus on the long-term.

Seeking the Peace of the City, with Dr. Johonna Turner, 91����Ƶ professor, and Julian Turner, graduate student.

The Turners, both raised in the Washington D.C. area, also lived and worked there until moving to Harrisonburg. Johonna Turner was a public school teacher involved in peacebuilding and empowerment work with youth, while Julian Turner worked in social services, specifically with HIV-AIDS patients. The Turners led discussions, framed by Jeremiah 29.7, about perceptions of the choices inner-city citizens make and the visualization of a more peaceful and harmonious city. This was conjoined to a scriptural exploration of compassion as modeled by Jesus, leading to a model for action in connection, lamentation and amplification. Presenters emphasized that care and consideration for voices of all citizens, whether urban dweller or rural folk, because “we are all connected.”

Panel: Navigating the move from ‘other’ to ‘neighbor’ in the context of theological education.

A panel of seminary faculty — including Dr. Kevin Clark, Dr. David Evans, Dr. Lonnie Yoder, Dr. Andrea Saner, Dr. Emily Peck McClain, Dr. Kenton Derstine and Dr. Dorothy Jean Weaver — discussed the role of theological education and cross-cultural engagement in shaping the move from ‘other’ to ‘neighbor’ in students and communities; how society defines each of these terms; and issues of power and privilege in the seminary classroom.

Those teachings have been analyzed and interpreted in a variety of ways since they were delivered. In his new book, “Meditations on the Beatitudes,” , assistant professor of Spanish at 91����Ƶ, looks to apply those teachings to real-life situations and truly “live the Beatitudes.”

“I took stories from my time in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and paired them with the Beatitudes,” said Clymer. “The cultural context of the marginalized people in these stories is more like the time of Jesus, challenging our comfortable middle class views of what Jesus meant.”

Clymer looks at the contrasting cultures of Latin America and the United States and offers reflections on those differences. Clymer tells a story that goes along with each beatitude to illustrate the parallels and discrepancies in cultures. He then closes each chapter with a meditation and prayer.

Clymer served five years as director of��91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural program and has worked with and in Central America and Mexico. Clymer hopes his book offers some insight to the Latin American culture and aids discussions on culture, scripture and living more like Jesus.

“I want people to reflect on how they treat the marginalized, not just on a cross-cultural but down the street or right next door.”

Clymer’s 84-page book is available through Cascadia Publishing House at for $12.95.

Weaver was staying at ETSC and was relatively sheltered from the protests. On January 25 and 27 she was out in the city during the day but only saw one small demonstration. However, on the 27^th she was traveling by taxi when the taxi driver told her “Don’t go out tomorrow,” meaning Friday, January 28^th. From living and traveling in other Middle Eastern contexts she knew that Friday was the day that Muslims gathered at the mosques and was generally when unrest happened.

She took the taxi driver seriously and returned to the school on Thursday evening and did not leave again until Tuesday, when she made her way to the airport for a flight out of Egypt.

Finding a way out of Cairo quickly became her chief concern. Since she was alone in Egypt, without a group of mission workers or traveling companions it became more difficult to exit the country.

A friend suggested that a flight out by the US State Department might cost $6000 and that she should not travel to the airport without a ticket. Finally, she was able to get her name on the list of people that US State Department flew out on February 1. The $6000 price tag did not turn out to be true.

She was flown to Istanbul, Turkey where she then went through the difficult and expensive prospect of finding a flight home.

“In truly ironic fashion, the first three flights listed on the internet had layovers in Cairo. I obviously ignored those,” Weaver said.

After a long journey home Weaver is still thinking about her students at ETSC. The school has been closed since January 25 and will reopen next Monday, February 21. The school has an undergraduate ��and graduate level program in pastoral studies. Currently 240 students are enrolled at ETSC. In 2002, Weaver taught a course at the undergraduate level. This year she was to teach a graduate level course. ETSC trains pastors for churches all around Egypt.

Weaver received an email from Atef Gendy, the president of ETSC on February 3 that read, “On New Year’s eve, Egypt was blustered by the bombing and killing of 23 Christians as they were leaving mass at one of the large Orthodox Christian Church in Alexandria. For the first time among similar incidents, the majority of citizens responded in grief and anger… That day I realized that Egypt was not the same any more. People were getting impatient with the lack of transparency and fake handling of serious situations.”

Weaver said, “I have hope that the new government that will be created in Egypt might be fair to minority and Christian groups. The previous government created a lot of challenges for Christian churches in Egypt. However, since the demonstration included both Muslims and Christians I hope good progress could be made on interfaith relationships in that country.”

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