Archive for November 2019

The Sunday school movement in Virginia Mennonite Conference had an uncertain beginning 150 years ago. In 1869, seventeen Virginia ministers barely got the two-thirds majority needed to pass a resolution allowing Sunday schools. Only one of the three bishops in that 1869 Conference meeting supported Sunday schools. Fortunately that supporting bishop presided over Emanuel Suter’s…

The Renewed Commitments of our Journey Forward process give us good guidance in how we will focus our faith formation efforts. As together we follow Jesus, witness to God’s peace, and experience transformation, we will be formed more and more into the likeness of Christ, which is our lifelong purpose as disciples of Jesus. Our…

  Mount Clinton Mennonite Church, part of the Central District of Virginia Mennonite Conference, is located in the village of Mount Clinton, about five miles west of Harrisonburg, Va., and surrounded by corn, soybean and rye pastures that feed the dairy and poultry farms of Rockingham County. Mount Clinton has had ups and downs in…

When I was growing up, my family attended a conservative Mennonite church near Goshen, Ind. We went to church three times a week and sometimes more. On occasion, in my teen years, I got to stay home to take care of a calving dairy cow, but otherwise church attendance was expected, as was Sunday school…