Shalom News special edition LMC gathered at Petra Church on March 31 and April 1, 2023, for the Spring Leadership Assembly and Celebration of Church Life. The missional conference included worship, equipping, and fellowship focusing on becoming “A Holy Spirit-led movement to make disciples of Jesus.” The plenary sessions celebrated LMC’s mission to make disciples of Jesus. They were inspired and framed by the paintings titled: The Invitation, Just… Read More
Concilio Iglesias Evangélicas Shalom (CIES) District Supervisor Samuel López, Supervisor Adalberto Santiago, Supervisor Efrain Zayas Twenty-three congregations in New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania; ten congregations in Mexico; seven congregations in Nicaragua; one congregation in Costa Rica; one congregation in Guatemala; one congregation in Republica Dominicana; one congregation in Uruguay; and eight congregations in Cuba. Jesus is our Savior and Lord, “as for us, we cannot help speaking about what we… Read More
Central Penn District Bishop Alan Kauffman Six congregations in Pennsylvania: Davidsville, Belleville, Hollsopple, Martinsburg, Mifflintown, and Thompsontown. Love God, Love Neighbor
Come to The Table~Luke 13:29 YOUTH Youth Rally at the 2022 Celebration of Church Life By Kathy Brown Planning for this event began back in 2019. Did we plan to wait this long to actually get together? Nope. Pandemics have a funny way of not caring about your plans. But God. Almost 100 youths in grades 6-12 met at Camp Hebron to hear Deke Rider, Pastor Al Motley Jr., and… Read More
Some Appointed as Pastors My beginnings in the pastoral ministry with my wife, Ivania García, began on March 27, 1994, at the Manantial de Vida Evangelical Mennonite Church, in Camden, New Jersey. My calling was confirmed by my pastor and by the congregation when I had barely decided to follow Jesus Christ three years earlier. I was only 27 years old. I could personally say that the Lord prematurely… Read More
Head, Heart, and Hands Making disciples involves more than a program In 2019, I wrote a booklet for Mennonite Mission Network’s Missio Dei series called Not Just Disciples, but Disciple Makers! On page 3 I said, Discipleship becomes institutionalized when it is co-opted by human methodologies. Somehow, we seem to believe that our methods are better than Jesus’ methods of disciple-making. Discipleship cannot and should not be put in… Read More
LMC’s Mission for many languages~Karen language Habecker Mennonite Church Habecker Mennonite Church Habecker Mennonite Church is not just for Karen people. We offer hospitality to people from any language or race. We worship mostly in English and Karen, but we also have people who speak Spanish and Burmese in our congregation. We love music, and we love to worship and fellowship together. On weekends we have extra worship services in people’s… Read More
Head, Heart, and Hand’s Article Summary in Karen ခိၣ်,သးဒီးစုတဖၣ် ခီဖျိ Dr. Marvin Lorenzana တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်န့ၣ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်လၢယအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဘၣ်ယိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်မတၤအမူအဒါအိၣ်လၢတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်အံၤ လဲၣ်.ကျိၤကွာ်အဂ့ၤကတၢၢ်လၢတၢ်ကသူအီၤလၢတၢ်ကမၤအါထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်မ့ၢ်မနုၤလဲၣ်, ဒီးဘၣ်မနုၤအဃိ လီၢ်က၀ီၤတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဘၣ်ဂဲၤလိာ်တၢ်လၢတၢ်ကကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်ဂ့ၢ်၀ီဂ့ၤဂ့ၤလဲၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သံကွၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤမ့ၢ်တၢ်အကါဒိၣ်ဖဲပမ့ၢ်ဃုထၢလၢတၢ်ကဟံးထီၣ်ဖီၣ်ထီၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအခါန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယ့ၣ်ရှူးတဟဲလီၤလၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ထဲဒၣ်လၢတၢ်ကဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်န့ၣ်ဘၣ်. အ၀ဲဟဲလီၤ၀ဲဒၣ်လၢတၢ်ကဒုးအိၣ် ထီၣ်တၢ်ဟူးတၢ်ဂဲၤတခါဖဲအပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်မၤအိၣ်ထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်အဂၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်မၤကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ် အဘီၣ် တဖၣ်,တၢ်မၤဘျါပှၤဆူးပှၤဆါ,ပှၤလၢအသၣ်၀ံၤသၣ်စ့ၤလၢနီၢ်ခိဒီးနီၢ်သးန့ၣ်တၢ်လုၢ်အီၣ်လုၢ်အီအီၤ, ပှၤလၢတၢ် တ ဂ့ၤတဘၣ်ဒိးအီၤတဖၣ်တၢ်မၤဘျါက့ၤအီၤဒီးပှၤတၢ်ဒဲးဘးဖိတဖၣ်မၤစၢၤဒုးဘျးစဲအီၤဒီးယွၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. သနာ်က့, ပတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်ညီနုၢ်သူ၀ဲဒၣ်တၢ်ကဲအပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်အကျိၤအကျဲလၢတလီၤသူၣ်ပိၢ်သး၀းလၢအပ ညိၣ်လီၤဆူၣ်ဆူၣ်လၢအပာ်တၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါနၢ်ပၢၢ် လၢတၢ်ဆီတလဲခဲလၢာ်ခဲဆ့ဃုာ်ဒီးပှၤကူပှၤကညီအဖီခိၣ်လၢအ လဲၤလိၤလိၤဆူတၢ်မၤဘီမုၢ်အတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်ညီနုၢ်အခီပညီမ့ၢ်၀ဲတၢ်ထီၣ်တီၤဒၢးတၢ် မၤလိန့ၣ်လီၤ.တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်လၢယ့ၣ်ရှူးသူတ့ၢ်၀ဲဒၣ်မ့ၢ်၀ဲတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလၢအအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤတခါအပာ် ဃုာ် “ခိၣ်, သး, စုတဖၣ်” န့ၣ်လီၤ. ခိၣ်သၣ်ဃံ. ယ့ၣ်ရှူးမ့ၢ်၀ဲသရၣ်တဂၤလၢအနၢ်ပၢၢ်တၢ်အါမံၤအါကလုာ်အတၢ်ဘၣ်ထွဲဘျးစဲလိာ်အသးဒီးမ့ၢ်၀ဲဒၣ် ဒ်ယူဒၤဖိတၢ်ဘါအရၤဘံတဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယ့ၣ်ရှူးပညိၣ်လီၤ၀ဲဒၣ်လၢအပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်အ “ခိၣ်” မ့ၢ်ဒ်သိး အ၀ဲသ့ၣ်ကနၢ်ပၢၢ်ဘီမုၢ်အသီတခါကဟဲ၀ဲဒၣ်အဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်န့ၣ်အသိး, ယ့ၣ်ရှူးပညိၣ်လီၤ၀ဲဒၣ်လၢအပျဲၢ်အ ဘီၣ်တဖၣ် “အသး”န့ၣ်လီၤ. သး. ယ့ၣ်ရှူးဆီတလဲအပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအမ့ၢ်တ့ၢ်ပတီၢ်မုၢ်ပှၤမၤညၣ်ဖိဆူပှၤမၤန့ၢ်ပှၤကညီအသးသမူန့ၣ် လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ကမၤတၢ်အံၤအဂီၢ်, ယ့ၣ်ရှူးဆီတလဲကွံာ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်အသးလၢအဆီၣ်တခူထီၣ်တၢ်တဖၣ်လၢတၢ် အဒွဲပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယ့ၣ်ရှူးနဲၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်ဒီးအတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိတဖၣ်လၢအကကဲထီၣ်ခိၣ်နၢ်လၢအဂ့ၤတဖၣ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. အ၀ဲမၤစၢၤအပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအကပာ်အနီၢ်တဂၤတၢ်အဲၣ်ဒိးလၢအကပၤဒီးပာ်လီၤပှၤအဂၤအတၢ်အဲၣ်ဒိးလၢအမဲာ်ညါ န့ၣ်လီၤ. အ၀ဲဒုးနဲၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်လၢတၢ်လၢယွၤအဘီအမုၢ်န့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအဘၣ်ဃးဒီးတၢ်လၢ အမ့ၢ် “ယၤ”န့ၣ်ဘၣ်. ဒီးယ့ၣ်ရှူးသိၣ်လိအ၀ဲသ့ၣ်လၢအကဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်ကျဲတဖၣ်လၢအဟဲစိာ်တၢ်လၤကပီၤဒီးတၢ် စံးဘျုး စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤဆူယွၤအအိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. သနာ်က့, ထဲ”ခိၣ်” ဒီး “သး”န့ၣ်တလၢပှဲၤဘၣ်. စုတဖၣ်. တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်လၢအဘၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဆီၣ်တခူထီၣ်သးန့ၣ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအကါဒိၣ်လီၤ.… Read More
Head, Heart, and Hands’ Article Summary in Laotian ຫົວ, ຫົວໃຈ, ແລະມື By Dr. Marvin Lorenzana ຄຳວ່າອັກຂາສາວົກເປັນຄວາມກັງວົນຂອງຂ້ອຍ. ໃຜເປັນຜູ້ຮັບຜິດຊອບສິ່ງນີ້, ອັນໃດແມ່ນການປະຕິບັດທີ່ດີທີ່ສຸດໃນການທີ່ຈະເພີ່ມທະວີອັກຂາສາວົກ, ແລະເປັນຫຍັງຄຣິສຕະຈັກທ້ອງຖິ່ນຈຶ່ງພົບຄວາມຫຍຸ້ງຍາກທີ່ຈະເຮັດຫນ້າທີ່ເປັນອັກຂາສາວົກທີ່ດີ? ນີ້ແມ່ນຄຳຖາມພື້ນຖານຈຳເປັນຖ້າພວກເຮົາເລືອກທີ່ຈະຍອມຮັບເອົາພາລະກິດຂອງພຣະເຈົ້າ. ພະເຢຊູບໍ່ໄດ້ມາເພື່ອເປີດຕົວແຕ່ຄຣິສຕະຈັກ. ພຣະອົງຍັງໄດ້ມາເປີດຕົວການເຄື່ອນໄຫວເພື່ອໃຫ້ອັກຂາສາວົກເຮັດໃຫ້ຄົນເປັນອັກຂາສາວົກດ້ວຍ. ອັກຂາສາວົກໄດ້ຖືກສ້າງຂຶ້ນ, ຄົນເຈັບປ່ວຍໄດ້ຮັບການປິ່ນປົວ, ຜູ້ທີ່ຫິວໂຫຍທາງຮ່າງກາຍແລະທາງວິນຍານໃດ້ຮັບອາຫານ, ຄົນທີ່ຖືກຄອບຄອງໃດ້ຮັບການປິ່ນປົວ, ແລະຄົນບາບໄດ້ຖືກນຳມາຮ່ວມສຳພັນເຂົ້າກັບພຣະເຈົ້າ. ເຖິງຢ່າງໃດກໍ່ຕາມ, ຄຣິສຕະຈັກຂອງພວກເຮົາມັກຈະໃຊ້ການເປັນອັກຂາສາວົກທີ່ມີຊື່ສຽງເຊິ່ງເນັ້ນໜັກເຖິງຄວາມຮູ້ກ່ຽວກັບການ-ປ່ຽນແປງທັງໝົດຂອງການເປັນຄົນທີ່ນຳໄປສູ່ການເຮັດວຽກງານຂອງອານາຈັກຂອງພຣະເຈົ້າ. ສ່ວນຫລາຍການເປັນອັກຂາສາວົກໝາຍເຖິງພຽງແຕ່ການເຂົ້າຫ້ອງຮຽນເທົ່ານັ້ນ. ຄວາມຈິງການເປັນອັກຂາສາວົກຂອງພຣະເຢຊູແມ່ນໄດ້ໃຊ້ປະສົບການທີ່ຫ້າວຫັນທີ່ກ່ຽວຂ້ອງກັບ“ ຫົວ, ຫົວໃຈ, ແລະມື.” ຫົວ. ພຣະເຢຊູເປັນຄູສອນທີ່ກ່ຽວຂ້ອງຄືກັບພວກອາຈານຊາວຢິວ. ພຣະເຢຊູມຸ່ງໃສ່“ຫົວ” ຂອງພວກອັກຂາສາວົກຂອງພຣະອົງເພື່ອໃຫ້ພວກເຂົາເຂົ້າໃຈເຖິງການສະເດັດມາຂອງອານາຈັກໃໝ່. ແຕ່ພຣະເຢຊູຍັງແນໃສ່ຫົວໃຈຂອງພວກລູກສິດຂອງພຣະອົງ. ຫົວໃຈ. ພຣະເຢຊູໃດ້ປ່ຽນອັກຂາສາວົກຂອງພຣະອົງຈາກຊາວປະມົງທຳມະດາໃຫ້ເປັນຜູ້ຫາມະນຸດ. ເພື່ອເຮັດສິ່ງນີ້ພຣະເຢຊູໄດ້ປ່ຽນຄວາມຕັ້ງໃຈພາຍໃນຂອງພວດເຂົາ. ພຣະອົງໄດ້ແນະນຳປະສົບການຂອງພວກເຂົາໃຫ້ກາຍເປັນຜູ້ນຳທີ່ດີ. ພຣະອົງໄດ້ຊ່ວຍພວກເຂົາໃຫ້ຖິ້ມຄວາມເຫັນແກ່ຕົວແລະເອົາໃຈໃສ່ຄົນອື່ນກ່ອນ. ພຣະອົງໄດ້ສະແດງໃຫ້ພວກເຂົາເຫັນວ່າອານາຈັກຂອງພຣະເຈົ້າບໍ່ກ່ຽວກັບ“ຕົວເຮົາເອງ”. ແລະພຣະເຢຊູຝຶກສອນພວກເຂົາໃຫ້ນຳພາແນວທາງຕ່າງໆທີ່ນຳເອົາລັດສະໝີພາບແລະກຽດຕິຍົດມາສູ່ພຣະເຈົ້າ. ແຕ່“ຫົວ” ແລະ“ຫົວໃຈ” ຍັງບໍ່ພຽງພໍ. ຂ່າວປະເສີດແມ່ນເຕັມໄປດ້ວຍຕົວຢ່າງທີ່ພຣະເຢຊູໄດ້ເຊື້ອເຊີນພວກລູກສິດຂອງພຣະອົງໃຫ້ມືຂອງພວກເຂົາເ-ປື້ອນໃນວຽກງານການເຜີຍແຜ່ພະທຳ. ພວກເຂົາໃດ້ລ້ຽງ, ໃດ້ປະກາດ, ໃດ້ປິ່ນປົວ, ແລະໃດ້ບັບຕິສະມາຝູງຄົນ.ເປັນຫຍັງຈຶ່ງເປັນການຍາກສຳລັບຄຣິສຕະຈັກອາເມລິກາທີ່ຈະເຫັນສິ່ງນີ້ໃດ້? ຄວາມລົ້ມເຫຼວທີ່ບໍ່ຍອມຮັບເອົາທັງສາມຢ່າງໄດ້ສ້າງຄວາມອ່ອນແອໃຫ້ກັບອັກຂາສາວົກໃນຄຣິສຕະຈັກ. ພຣະເຢຊູມຸ່ງເເນໃສ່ຫົວ, ຫົວໃຈແລະມືຂອງອັກຂາສາວົກຂອງພຣະອົງເອງແລະພວກເຮົາກໍ່ຕ້ອງເຮັດເຫມືອນກັນ.
LMC’S MISSION for many languages~Espanish Spanish Speaking Congregations By Felixa Valladares de Kunkle I realized some time ago that being able to speak Spanish is a great privilege, especially when the Latin American Spanish-speaking community is growing within the United States and especially within LMC. The language contains so much of the richness and fullness of the Spanish culture that it feels like being with family or at home when… Read More