Mennonite Weekly Review

SOUDERTON, Pa. — For more than 50 years, the churches of Franconia Mennonite Conference have sent missionaries and money to Mexico to plant churches. This year, a Mexico City church sent missionaries back.

Karen Moyer, Franconia Conference board member, and Noel Santiago, executive conference minister, far right, commission Luz Maria Vargas and Linker Sanchez, missionaries from Mexico to Gaithersburg, Md. — Photo by Andrew Huth

Husband and wife Linker Sanchez and Luz Maria Vargas, of the Tierra Prometida (Promised Land) congregation, were commissioned Nov. 8 at the conference assembly to work with the Spanish-speaking community in Gaithersburg, Md.

“The United States has sent missionaries for many years all over the world,” Sanchez told those gathered. “But as you know, God is now sending all the nations of the world to the United States — and we have come here to reach our countrymen in their language and culture.”

Vargas said, “We are from many different nations, but we are all children of the same God.”

More than 200 people, including 130 delegates from conference congregations and related ministries, gathered around tables at the Penn View Christian School cafeteria in Souderton to worship, discuss issues in the conference and celebrate newly credentialed leaders. The theme was, “Come to the Table: Embracing God in Us.”

Unlike previous years, there was no traditional worship time or sermon Friday evening. Instead, Blaine Detwiler, conference moderator and pastor of Lakeview Mennonite Church in Susquehanna, invited everyone to sit at tables and “see and hear the movement of Jesus in the faces around us.”

Noel Santiago, executive conference minister, elaborated.

“There is no sermon, not in the traditional sense, because the sermon is going to be in the Anabaptist sense of community — how we are together with each other,” he said. “And doing that in front of a watching world is how the Anabaptists understood the message. In a way, the message is us… . It comes out of all of us, together.”

While those gathered did less business than in the past and spent more time learning from each other, some things remained the same: several rooms were designated as prayer space, and prayer ushers were available to pray at any time during the assembly. Ongoing worship was held in the teacher’s lounge, and an indoor prayer labyrinth with a guided liturgy was set up.

And while worship was held in English, some songs included verses in Spanish or Bahasa Indonesian, the two most common languages other than English spoken by conference churches.