Janet Szabo share how, after a interval of declining attendance, Mountain View Mennonite Church is experiencing a spring new life, via energetic church participation from adults and kids alike.
Janet Szabo is a member of Mountain View Mennonite Church, in Kalispell, Montana, the place she serves because the pianist. She additionally hosts a weekly stitching podcast and teaches stitching and knitting courses across the Pacific Northwest. She and her husband dwell on a small farm, the place they increase pigs and chickens and develop a number of their meals.
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Spring is coming — ever so slowly, it appears — to northwestern Montana. I see it within the snowshoe hare who lives below our porch, as he modifies from winter white to shaded brown. I see it within the industrious labors of the robins making nests in our porch rafters. And I see it within the first inexperienced shoots of vegetation in my backyard.
Regardless of how lengthy and chilly the winter, spring comes, ultimately.
It’s onerous for me to not be envious of my extra southern neighbors, whose winter slumbers are shorter than ours. I see mates posting pictures of daffodils bursting into bloom, and I do know that it will likely be weeks but earlier than any flowers dare poke their heads up. Spring hints at its arrival with a number of days of heat, sunny climate, then it retreats within the face of one other spherical of chilly and snow. Certainly, we expect, this would be the final of the snow. Certainly. Optimistic residents take the snow tires off their automobiles. The remainder of us wait.
Our congregation’s worship theme for this Easter season is “Jesus, Gardener of a New Creation.” We really feel as if we’re transferring out of winter and into the promise of spring. After nearly a decade of declining numbers, additional suppressed by the pandemic, we now have a good time every Sunday with the sounds of youngsters taking part in our worship providers. The youngest, who is eighteen months outdated, sings loudly together with the congregation, her babbling melody mixing with the sounds of our voices. Older kids helped create the visuals for the season, portray stained-glass sunrises on the home windows that face east, towards the mountains.
On Easter Sunday, adults in strategic areas all through the sanctuary showered worshippers with confetti — a practice we started final 12 months. These bits of paper persist, regardless of our efforts to wash them up, however we smile and nod when — in June or October and even December — the kids come working, excited to indicate us that they discovered confetti someplace within the church constructing. We keep in mind, with them, the enjoyment of Easter Sunday.
The youngsters have introduced their dad and mom with them to church — younger adults who assist the older members navigate the ever-changing technological panorama of worship, with endurance and a great dose of humor. A number of of those younger adults had been as soon as the kids we taught in Sunday Faculty. Now, they’re taking their locations in management. We treasure these threads that weave via and supply continuity in our life collectively.
Many amongst us have come from different religion traditions; our transitional pastor is an ordained Presbyterian minister. This range of backgrounds brings a richness to our neighborhood life, as we embrace our congregation’s Anabaptist heritage and discover frequent floor in dwelling out our dedication to comply with Jesus.
This beloved household of God, with its lengthy historical past of service, has been motivated to have interaction much more deeply with these round us. Final fall, we offered classroom area to a neighborhood preschool. We put together a meal each second Tuesday, via Feed the Flathead. We now have assisted Valley Neighbors in serving to settle immigrant households from Venezuela and Afghanistan into our neighborhood. Our Mennonite Catastrophe Service unit has no scarcity of initiatives. In February, we tied half a dozen comforters to donate to Mennonite Central Committee. We lately helped out at our volunteer hearth division’s annual fundraising public sale by staffing a meals sales space.
Throughout our weekly prayer and sharing time, now we have been requested to provide examples of the place we see Jesus’ resurrection round us. The tales are all over the place.
Maybe it’s our expertise with lengthy, chilly winters that has given us the endurance to attend for spring. Maybe it additionally explains our considerably irrational exuberance to find bits of confetti round our church constructing at the hours of darkness months of the 12 months. For we all know that spring will come, that Jesus would be the gardener of this new creation, and that come July, there will probably be an abundance of zucchini within the fellowship corridor, below an indication saying, “Free to a great residence.”
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