over and around the rainbow

To the left is a picture of Joel. Joel can be found in the balcony most Sundays. Often close beside Joel is Phil (pictured below).

The two work hard together to make sure there is  video recording of the service at Rainbow.

I recently asked the budding cinematographer some questions about his work. Below are his answers.

1. What is the hardest part about videotaping the service at Rainbow?

Three things; 1. Knowing what to zoom up on. There are so many things! 2. Knowing what to do if the camera runs out of memory, and 3. Knowing when to go to the bathroom (ha).

2. Do you enjoy doing this and if so, why?

I am enjoying this quite a lot because I get to work with a camera! I really like working with anything that has to do with technology.

3. Anything else you want to say about the experience so far?

It has been really fun working the camera! I would like to thank Phil Rhoads for letting me operate the camera.

__________________

I, too, want to say thank you to both Phil and Joel. Your work is much appreciated.

Soon we will need to decide how to incorporate some video and audio options into our newly designed church website. Hopefully people like Joel and Phil, who know a lot about technology, will help the rest of us along! If you would like to view all or parts of worship February 9, simply click this link: https://vimeo.com/86284470 — password rmc14

Joanna Harader is pastor of Peace Mennonite in Lawrence, KS

Rainbow, meet my good friend and colleague in ministry, Joanna Harader. She will be your preacher on Sunday, February 16.  You can learn more about Joanna by visiting her blog, Spacious Faith. Joanna will preach on the beloved messy community. This will include some of her thoughts on what is happening right now in the Mennonite Church in relation to the beloved LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community. Please read on if you are curious what this debate looks like right now in MCUSA (Mennonite Church USA). It seems to get messier by the day.

Theda Good is pastor at First Mennonite Church in Denver

Another friend I would like to introduce is Theda Good. Recently the Leadership Board of the Mountain States Conference unanimously elected to license her as pastor of nurture and fellowship at First Mennonite Church in Denver, Colorado. Her licensing service took place at First Mennonite Denver on Sunday, February 2. Theda is now the first openly lesbian pastor to be licensed in the Mennonite Church USA.

I hope to get to know Theda (and Joanna for that matter!) better in the coming months and years. For now, here is window into my friendship with Joanna and Theda (simply click to read) Charmed with courage-updated

Stephanie Krehbiel is a doctoral student at KU

A third friend I would like to introduce is Stephanie Krehbiel. Stephanie is doing dissertation research on issues related to LGBTQ people in MCUSA. As such, a big part of her job is, in her words: “To keep track of the endless political developments related to sexual diversity in the church: pastors performing same-sex marriages, regional conferences reviewing the credentials of pastors, various collective statements in support of LGBTQ people and other statements with the implicit threat that if LGBTQ people and their supporters aren’t censured/disciplined/expelled, their congregations will withdraw from the conference.”

In a recent letter that Stephanie wrote to friends and family, she reminds us that the Executive Board of MCUSA is meeting February 13-15, and there are several key developments on their agenda, which she outlines as follows:

1) The licensing of Theda Good as a pastor by Mountain States Conference. See the national coverage: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/theda-good-gay-mennonite_n_4723272.html?utm_hp_ref=tw, http://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2014/02/03/mennonites-prepare-ordain-first-openly-gay-minister

2) Eastern Mennonite University’s decision to reexamine their discriminatory hiring policies in relation to LGBTQ people. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/19/eastern-mennonite-u-will-review-policy-hiring-gay-faculty

3) A recent letter from 150 ordained pastors in the MCUSA, declaring support and acceptance for LGBTQ members. http://www.mennoworld.org/2014/2/3/150-appeal-behalf-sexual-minorities/

Ervin Stutzman, the Executive Director of MCUSA, has been weighing in on these developments. See his letters to the MCUSA membership: http://www.mennoniteusa.org/2014/01/27/call-to-prayer-from-ervin-stutzman/

Another one is here:

http://www.mennoniteusa.org/2014/02/04/response-ervin-stutzman/

I’m hoping that Stephanie will come to Rainbow on Sunday and that you have a chance to meet her! I say “you” because I’ll actually be in Lawrence getting to know Peace Mennonite congregation. I trust it will be a good morning for community building, even if it gets a little messy 🙂 Oh, and make sure to stay for the Sunday school hour. Joanna (and maybe Stephanie?) has agreed to stay for extended conversation about these important matters facing MCUSA.

Is this a familiar scene on your way to or from Rainbow Mennonite Church? It is for me.

When we were looking for a house in Rosedale I told Jesse that I didn’t want a train track to separate our home from our church.  I got over it and it’s been fine for the most part. In fact, the last few times I’ve been stuck by a train on my way to church I’ve been less prone to curse and pound the steering wheel. That’s because all I have to do is remember Richard Friesen (pictured here with his wife Dorothy) standing under I-35 with a clipboard and stopwatch in hand counting how long the train blocked Southwest Boulevard.

Let me explain: Richard and Dorothy moved to Rosedale in 1974 and stayed about 10 years. Rosedale Team Ministry, to which Rainbow belonged, pretty much hired Richard and Dorothy to, in his words, “live in the community and get to know it.” Dorothy was hired by Crosslines to teach in their Alternative School in the original Rainbow church building. The Rosedale Team Ministry churches had purchased the Whitmore School site and so one of Richard’s responsibilities was to find the resources to build the Whitmore playground. He was also the instigator, together with neighborhood groups, of what became known as The Rosedale Train Watchers and Waiters.

Imagine, Richard told me, a time when parked trains would block Southwest Boulevard, for 45+ minutes! Then, imagine what happens when someone needs medical care or imagine when there is a house fire. In other words, people were cut off from these important services due to these long train waits.

Like any good community organizer, Richard started reading city ordinances and discovered that a misdemeanor could be filed if a city road was blocked for more than five minutes. Off to the court house he went (this happened several times after several failed attempts). Furthermore, like all good neighborhood groups, people got creative and started to host potlucks. The thing is these potlucks were held under I-35! Neighborhood residents took turns and stayed there for 24 hour periods, holding stopwatches and clipboards, jotting down violations. Plus, what better time to get people to sign petitions than when they are sitting in their vehicles waiting for the train to go away?!

“The media loved this stuff,” said Richard, especially since they had posters, mugs and t-shirts that said things like “Give the trains a kick in the caboose!” It was a classic David vs. Goliath story and so Richard and his friends were sure to invite these media folks to their 24 hour long potlucks and campouts.

One of these friends and fellow community organizers was our very own Terry Rouse. Terry remembers taking a shift in a camper parked down by the railroad tracks as they timed the trains one weekend. Terry says that there used to be a switching yard just North of the crossing and so trains would often pull all the way across then stop and slowly back up as they were switching tracks in the yard.

Richard wonders how much good their protests did immediately or even long-term. Then again, the delays crossing the tracks pale compared to what they were years ago. And thank goodness there is a way for emergency vehicles to get to the area around Rainbow without fear of trains slowing them down. Furthermore, Terry has heard that the efforts of the Rosedale Train Watchers and Waiters created enough of a headache that when the Frisco and Burlington Northern merged and they were consolidating their infrastructure, they chose to move their switching to another yard. I hope that yard was close to a neighborhood with caboose-kicking community organizers like Richard and Terry!

I’m on the look-out for pictures of the Rosedale Train Watchers and Waiters. Can anyone help? For now, I’ll include this photo of our Rainbow mugs. Did you ever wonder why a train was included?

Did your Friday night involve art projects? A contra dance? A musical saw? A digital scavenger hunt? A sing-along? The banjo?

Please tell me it involved a grown man playing the ukelele and the kazoo?!

Or maybe a few obstacle courses?

GREAT homemade pizza? Cookies?

A GREAT bunch of K-5th graders and three OUTSTANDING Mennonite Voluntary Service folks?

 IF NOT, WHY NOT?

The answer? Attend a Rainbow Mennonite Church annual business meeting! Wow. We talked about money (and not just how to get more of it!), a pocket park, a bus stop, quilts, a nonprofit organization called Sharing Community in Rosedale and governance matters. We voted on new church leaders, we sang, we prayed, we voiced opinions, asked questions, and voted. All the while our children were running around upstairs and if you really listened, you could hear squeals of delight.  Special thanks to Ashton, Angela and Sophie who supervised the action.

Special thanks goes out to our three musketeers (notice the candy bars they are holding) 2013 past-moderator, moderator and moderator-elect!

Ralph Kaufman, Mary Redmon and Keith Jantz

And special thanks to my husband Jesse who stuck around until the end, and kept everyone around him entertained by his doodling and paper folding.

How to survive a two hour congregational meeting? DRAW!

I’m happy to share that Jane Heide will preach at Rainbow on Sunday, February 2. I’ve asked her to share about what makes Rosedale a beloved community. (Click Here for a map of Rosedale.)

Jane is in the process of retiring as pastor at Rosedale Congregational Church, a United Church of Christ congregation located at 4326 Lloyd, Kansas City, KS. Of course, just because Jane plans to retire doesn’t mean she will stop working for the peace and well-being of the Rosedale community. She plans to continue to advocate for the children and families at Frank Rushton Elementary School, the work of Rosedale Development Association, and the Rosedale Farmers Market, just to name a few.

To give you a glimpse into Jane’s lively spirit and courageous hope, here are a few Jane quotes taken from the November 2013 edition of Ramblin’ Rose, Rosedale Congregational Church’s newsletter:

I pray that the church will not say, “we can’t do that,” but rather say, “we can’t do that alone” as it seeks out partners to enhance,enrich and make possible each new endeavor.

My prayer is that all people who come through our doors will feel the love of Christ and sense of light of God surrounding them. And I pray that the congregation continues to extend that same hospitality toward each other with grace, mercy, humility, kindness, generosity and compassion.

I pray that we will stay unafraid…It is so easy to become fearful of the future, especially when resources seem small and outcomes are not guaranteed. I pray that the church continues to be unafraid to launch new initiatives and to try new approaches and new ideas in all aspects of its faith life, as it continues its journey of worship and service and love in the Rosedale neighborhood and beyond.

…It is easy to to think of what is missing rather than the abundance of what is present.

I have a feeling we can and will learn a lot from Jane! Hope you can come on Sunday.

And look for more posts in the near future about Rainbow’s work in the Rosedale community. I’m currently working on a post called “Train, train go away” about the infamous Rosedale Train Watches and Waiters. Stay tuned!

We, at Rainbow, will observe Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday on January 26. What is Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday you ask? Every year, on the fourth Sunday in January, Mennonite World Conference encourages congregations to celebrate our worldwide Koinonia. Why January? Well, on January 21, 1525, the first recorded Anabaptist baptism took place in Zurich, Switzerland.

As Sunday draws near I have all sorts of questions swirling in my mind. Here’s just a few: How do we celebrate the world-wide Mennonite church while recognizing that Mennonites aren’t the be-all-end-all? And how do we celebrate our international and/or cross-culture experiences and connections while being honest about the conflicts and differences that make our relating across cultures difficult at times? And finally, as a new pastor I’m wondering about this congregation and our collective and individual experiences with the global Mennonite Church.

All this has prompted me to try something new on Sunday. As the sermon, I plan to facilitate some conversation and story-telling around this theme of a beloved, worldwide Mennonite community. I will start by asking some general questions such as, “Who here was born outside the United States?” And “How many of us have served, studied or lived abroad for more than a year?” I will then focus some questions on our global connections in the Mennonite Church. Of course I realize that many of us have rich international or cross-cultural connections that reach far beyond the Mennonite Koinonia.  I see this Mennonite focus as a starting point for broader sharing and reflection on how we relate to our world-wide community.

Once I’ve polled you as a congregation on some of these general questions, we will move on to a time of open-mic sharing. The idea is to get a sense of the variety of experiences or connections people have had or will have with the global Mennonite Church. Of course we won’t have time to hear from everyone, but if a few brave volunteers could share, that would be great! For those who appreciate more detailed instructions perhaps you could use the following format: Today I remember (name your international or cross-cultural experience within the Mennonite Church, a person or organization or brief story) And I give thanks for… OR I ask that we pray for…..(name prayer request)

Finally, I thought I’d highlight one of our church’s connections to the worldwide Mennonite community.

Today I remember John VanderHeide. John is part of our Rainbow diaspora, working with Mennonite Central Committee in Guatemala. I was glad to meet John in person this past December. I asked if he would be willing to send us an update. Here it is:

Hello my Rainbow family,
    Seeing you all over the holidays was amazing, thank you so much for the warm welcome and wonderful support.  I made it back to Guatemala in early January literally being chased out of the US by the descending Polar Vortex.  (it was fascinating to arrive in Guatemala City where it was mid 60s and everyone was bundled up like it was freezing).
    Work is going well.  We are bringing the current MCC grant to an end and are in the process of writing a new one.  My main responsibilities over the last 6 months have been helping manage the existing project as well as helping write the new proposal.  Apart from that I have been working with the local tourism cooperatives and the agricultural cooperatives to help them with some organizational issues and business planning.  Since that does not yield itself to pretty pictures I am going to include pictures from the events that my coworkers have planned.

Here (above) the members of the La Linea cooperative are making an organic fertilizer called Bocashi, which is fermented manure, grass clippings, and compost.  Learning how to make these types of fertilizers is an important part of the agro-ecology work that we do supporting food sovereignty and reducing the use of agro-chemicals.

Here (above) is a Mayan prayer ceremony that was held at the agro-ecology conference that the Catholic Dioceses held this fall.  Reconnecting the local people to traditional Mayan knowledge and spirituality is a big part of what my partner agency does.  A big reason for this is that it gives local communities pride and a reason to fight for their rights against the large companies that want to displace them for gold mining and hydroelectric dams.  This is also the kind of work that got us labeled a “terrorist” organization by a rightwing political party in Guatemala.

This past November I had the privilege of hiking to the top of Volcan Tacana, the second highest mountain in Central America.  Sibinal where I live is located on the slopes of this volcano and climbing it is a big tourist attraction in the area.  In this photo with me are Roman Bartolon (baseball cap to the left of me) our guide from one of the cooperatives that I work with, David Mercado (blue hat) a friend and fellow MCCer visiting from Nicaragua, Napoleon Zunun (with binoculars) my host brother, and Lilian Guenther (green jacket) a friend and fellow MCCer who just left Guatemala to move back to her native Paraguay.

I leave you with this amazing view of Volcan Tacana as the sun sets behind it.  This was taken at the midway point in my commute, which is a 3hr hike.  This hike that I have to make is actually a great allegory for my experience here in Guatemala. Just like this hike, living and working in Guatemala has not been easy over the last year.  My job has not been what I expected and connecting to the community is a challenge, but there are glimpse of beauty and reasons to continue.  My host family and coworkers have been wonderful, I love the scenery and that I get to walk every where, and I am learning a ton about the world, myself, and God.

Thanks for the prayers and support that I get from you all.
God bless.
John VanderHeide

Did you know that RMC member Anna Marie Peterson (pictured here with Vincent Harding) was a neighbor to Martin Luther King Junior in the early 60s?

The story, from what I understand, goes like this: In 1960 Anna Marie spent one semester as an exchange student at Spelman College, a black liberal arts college for women located in Atlanta, Georgia. She had such a good experience that semester that she went back to Atlanta after finishing college at Bethel in North Newton, KS. She lived at what was called The Mennonite House and she taught at Spelman College Nursery School.

Since the backyard of the Mennonite House touched the backyard of Dr. King Junior’s house, many hellos, waves, and smiles were exchanged. Anna Marie even remembers Christmas caroling at the Dr. King Junior’s house!

Here is someone else Anna Marie knew: Septima Poinsette Clark.  Mrs. Clark was in charge of the Freedom Schools that made voter registration possible. She has often been called the grandmother of the Civil Rights movement.

Anna Marie has fond memories of Septima Poinsette Clark and considers her a friend.

Another important leader at this time was Andrew Young. Here is a picture of the Young family.

There is so much more to this story and I look forward to sharing more about The Mennonite House and Vincent Harding (pictured above with Anna Marie) in my sermon on Sunday.  Hope to see you all in church!

Finally, I want to thank Anna Marie for permitting me to post this information, along with pictures. And THANK YOU FOR BEING A CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER!

Last Sunday Jesse and I taught the Rainbow K-5th graders a song called, Peace before us (By David Haas). I told the children that I would love it if they could help teach the congregation this song someday. It sounds like there are plans in the works to make this happen. Hooray!

This song has been helpful for me today, January 16, as I sit in the Marriott Downtown, together with 20 other Mennonite leaders from all over the country. We are here in order to begin planning worship for the Mennonite Church USA convention to be held in Kansas City in July of 2015. I have never planned worship with so many people and for so many people. It’s hard work! Many ideas, opinions, and expectations have been expressed. This picture perhaps says it best. (I’ve never planned worship with post-it notes but I think I might have to start!) As the day wore on and as my patience wore thin at times, I found myself singing “Peace before us.” And then, wouldn’t you know, we all sang it!

I whipped out my camera and caught a video of Jeremey Kempf leading one verse of this song. Jeremy will be the song leader for KC2015.

Parents, please make sure you show this to your kid(s). I hope this song and its message sticks!

Thanks to this fine man, Verlin Bartel, Jesse and I had the privilege of touring the church building where Rainbow Mennonite first got its start. It’s on Rainbow Boulevard (go figure), next to Taco Bell, across from KU Medical Center. It’s now some kind of beauty products warehouse. (The three of us were hoping we could get our hair done there…or was that just me?) The people who worked there seemed delighted to meet “real Mennonites,” and happily took us through the building. Here are a bunch of photos from our day. (Click to enlarge.)

If you have memories of worshiping in this building, please share these stories and memories with me. It’s a beautiful building, and it has received much tender love and care over the years.

Bonus information: Rainbow Boulevard was named in honor of the 42nd Rainbow Division of WWI!