MWR : Values and beliefs

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March 23, 2009 issue

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Tags: Congregations

Values and beliefs

Houston Mennonite Church

By Roxie Voran

During a seven-week period in January and February, our worship services and Pastor Marty Troyer’s sermons focused on the six values that our congregation identified and affirmed during our long-range planning process. These values are our Mennonite heritage, worship together, relationships with one another, call to service, desire to grow and our location.

On Jan. 18, we held our annual covenant signing service. Thirty-seven people signed the membership covenant this year.

At our annual business meeting on Jan. 25, we agreed to donate one-tenth of the money from the sale of our parsonage to organizations outside our congregation. We divided more than $30,000 among five Mennonite organizations and a local coalition of churches that ministers to the needy in our community.

Our church Web site has undergone a major transformation, thanks to Pastor Troyer. Lots of useful information and online discussion can be found there.

On Feb. 22, we began a six-week series of Sunday evening sessions on Mennonite beliefs and practice, following the book Beliefs by John Roth. Marty Troyer, Sylvia Klauser and Denise Duff lead the sessions.

On Feb. 28, a group of our members visited the exhibit “The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story,” which was at the Museum of Natural Science. The exhibit included artifacts from first century Palestine along with fragments of very early manuscripts of Luke, John and Ephesians and one of the original Dead Sea scrolls, which was a copy of Isaiah.

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