Mennonite Weekly Review

When David Myers accepted an appointment by the Obama administration, he wanted to help people of many faiths, races and cultures cooperate to get federal resources to needy communities.

Myers

Myers became director of the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships under the Department of Homeland Security in late May. Earlier that month, ice jams and flooding damaged villages in Alaska.

In September, Myers joined a group who met in Anchorage to evaluate the collaborative disaster response of volunteer and government organizations.

“The partnership in Alaska between the faith-based volunteer organizations, FEMA and the State of Alaska is exactly what President Obama has in mind when he says that Washington alone cannot solve America’s tough problems,” Myers said. “The president believes that all hands need to be on deck to get the job done, and that includes faith-based and neighborhood partnerships.”

Myers served as pastor from 1983 to 1986 at Whitestone Mennonite Church in Hesston, Kan., where the idea for Mennonite Disaster Service was born in 1950.

Myers then directed religious life at Bethel College in North Newton for a year before moving to Chicago to serve as pastor at Oak Park (Ill.) Mennonite Church until 1992. He directed Teen Living Programs, which served 5,000 homeless youth in Chicago, from 1999 to May 2009. He met Obama briefly during the former community organizer’s 2004 senatorial campaign.

Myers, a graduate of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., said his faith was nurtured at Portland (Ore.) Mennonite Church. His theology is influenced by fellow AMBS student Ted Grimsrud, who now teaches at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., and the late John Howard Yoder, author of The Politics of Jesus, he said.

Myers sees his work as director of the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships as a peacebuilding mission to help the country prevent and respond to humanmade and natural disasters.

He is working with national Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster — of which MDS was a founding member — to build understanding and cooperation.

In the flooding of the Yukon River, people transcended religious, cultural and neighborhood boundaries to help those who were suffering, he said.

“The beginning of peace is being able to be empathetic — to step in others’ shoes and learn the ways they hope and dream,” he said. “Enemies are people you don’t know.”