Mennonite Weekly Review

Youth who attended the Mennonite Church USA convention received the Holy Spirit during worship, as well as a challenge to use that power to go into the world and work in the ways of God’s reign.

Speakers told moving stories of standing with the homeless, visiting retirement-home residents and giving to the poor when receiving money unexpectedly. While speakers mentioned nonviolence, their descriptions of kingdom work for the most part lacked ideas for creative, direct peacemaking.

Service and peacemaking are often connected in their goals and actions. Both are crucial as we seek to follow Jesus.

Youth fueled by the Holy Spirit are also called to counter-recruiting at their high schools, promoting alternatives to violence in conflict among their peers, and helping friends and family in the military become conscientious objectors.

A youth seminar led by Titus Peachey of Mennonite Central Committee with two former soldiers filled in some of the gap from the worship messages. Sam Park of West Liberty, Ohio, who was in Iraq from March 2003 to March 2004, said he wished he had gone into voluntary service after graduating from Bluffton (Ohio) University. Cara Thomas of Columbus, who had been in the U.S. Army Reserves, regretted not finding a different job while a university student.

Park told youth to ask peers considering joining the military if they want to kill someone. If youth want to fire rifles and blow things up, there are other ways to do so, Park said. Hunting and construction demolition provide those opportunities without the trauma that often accompanies being a soldier.

Peachey said the key in counter-recruitment is to be inviting when talking about alternatives to joining the military, such as voluntary service. The former soliders said the best way to support the troops is to help them get out of the military. These are kingdom tasks for us all, and we will need the help of the Spirit to fulfill them.