cover photo by: Everett Thomas / The Mennonite
For many area youth, the biennial Mennonite Convention is a way to connect with over three thousand other Mennonite students from around the world.
Area congregations have different ways of getting their youth involved, which in turn plays a role in causing many of them to stay involved through their young adult years. For Bethany Christian alumnae Emily Grimes (‘10) and Hannah Heinzekehr (‘03) this was the case.
Currently a student at Goshen College, Emily Grimes has attended Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship for almost nineteen years. Phoenix was her fourth convention and as a very involved musician herself, she always appreciated the worship. During a conversation with a mentor after high school graduation, “a seed was planted” about the idea of being involved in worship at convention.
Emily Grimes and Peter Garry. Photo by Ken Krehbiel.
Three years later Emily realized that being a part of the worship team might be “an ambition worth pursuing.” Contacting the worship leader Jeremy Kempf was the easy part, but conducting an interview from Phoenix to Goshen was a bit more complicated. After a cross-country Skype audition Emily was offered a position on the 2013 worship team.
Though the week of convention itself was exhausting, Emily says, “It was spiritually nurturing and refreshing…I felt very blessed to work with such talented musicians who also were a strong spiritual support.”
Emily expressed how much fun she had being a part of the worship team at convention. Albeit being the youngest member of the worship team, leading worship was an opportunity that Emily learned to welcome. She commented, “Who knew I’d be able to have so much fun worshiping God in front of thousands of people with cameras in my face?!”
Goshen native Hannah Heinzekehr (née Kehr) served as a main planner for Phoenix Convention 2013. She worked with communications and public promotion on Facebook and Twitter, and helped organize “public witness” events, focused around topics of immigration and anti-racism. Some of these events included prayer walks, day trips to the border, and a travelling choir.
Another large aspect of Hannah’s job was planning learning experiences for the students. Some of the options offered included salsa dancing and a film festival. Meeting with volunteers, coordinating scheduling, making contact with speakers and worship leaders, and working out orders of services are all more things that go into a job like Hannah’s.
Hannah Heinzekehr (second from right) with convention planning staff. Photo credit to MC USA.
Hannah attended Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship growing up in Goshen, and this congregation was essential to her getting involved with worship planning. Growing up Hannah served as a member of the worship commission at Berkey and was often invited to contribute special music and other aspects of the service. She attributes much of her involvement to her home congregation, “Berkey really did a good job of integrating youth and children into the life of the congregation, and not just developing separate programming for us.”
When Hannah was a student at Bethany she was invited to serve on the planning committee for Convention in Atlanta. This experience piqued her interest so when a job became available for convention planning, she applied. Planning Phoenix 2013 was a great experience, but Hannah will be transitioning jobs this year. She will be taking on the role of Director of Communications for Mennonite Church USA Executive Board Staff. Hannah will be leading a team that “seeks to inspire and equip congregations and members of Mennonite Church USA to live out Jesus’ call in their communities.”
Convention is a place where diverse people from across the country can build relationships, and this appeals to Hannah, “I really believe that building relationships face-to-face is so key, for the church and just in general…I also think it’s a really powerful experience to get a bigger picture of who Mennonites are, what they believe, and where they come from, and I’m really excited that I get to be a part of bringing people together at these gatherings.”
Mennonite Convention 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona was focused on the idea of citizenship, and finding your own citizenship in the Kingdom of God. With issues of immigration and border control towards the forefront of minds, many congregations chose to do their own trips or experiences in the area to show their youth a different side of Phoenix.
Bethany junior Alicia Thomas and her youth group from Walnut Hill Mennonite Church took a day trip to Tucson to meet with people struggling with immigration issues. “When most people hear that we went to the border they think that we went to the physical border, but we stayed in Tucson which is an hour away from the actual Mexico U.S. border,” says Alicia. There they connected with the organization BorderLinks, whose goal is to “connect divided communities, raise awareness about the impact of border and immigration policies, and inspire action for social transformation.”
BorderLinks introduced the group of nine youth and two sponsors to several staff members who work to help the undocumented, especially through a group called Heart of Tucson. There are about thirty different families in this group, and the goal is to help parents and children understand their rights as undocumented immigrants. Thomas and her youth group met a mother and one of her three children to whom the organization had provided both legal and emotional assistance. Heart of Tucson helps the families recognize their rights as undocumented immigrants.
Perhaps the most striking activity the group did was observe a court hearing to see the underside of immigration operations. Thomas described it as “watching seventy men [with] hands and feet chained together…a translator in their ears…walking out of the hearing not knowing what they had agreed to.”
The border experience made an impact on Alicia and the Walnut Hill MYF’s convention experience, and also their lives when they returned home. Thomas says she “never expected to feel changed so much from that one week…it sounds cheesy to say that it is our generation that is next to try and change these things, but it is true.”
Alicia’s perspective is exactly right, and Mennonite Conventions truly are a way to get involved as youth and later on in life. The experiences are striking and can provide outlets for many talented young adults to share their gifts with Mennonite youth from across the country, perhaps interesting more young leaders for future conventions.
~Katie Hurst