For the June 14, 2020, online church service that we attend, I mixed two musical tracks for the congregation. The first song I ever mixed with multiple voices, in this online era, was “Rain Down,” by Jaime Cortez, as found in Sing the Journey songbook, #49. Rain down your love on your people, God of life!
What I learned from teaching online
I Can Do This: On my desk is a generous stack of affirmation cards from my students at the end of a difficult semester of online instruction. Without warning, on-campus classes were suspended, and we went online beginning March 17, 2020. For eleven weeks, I taught five courses, with eighty-five students, in a distance learning environment. I can do this new style of instruction.
I Prefer the Classroom: Education that works mostly requires human interaction and dialogue. While I can teach history and Bible classes online, it’s the classroom setting that drew me to the profession in the first place. I much prefer a live classroom setting where I can encourage, direct, and instruct. History is a series of stories that need to be told through a human voice, not the pixels of an idle screen. I much prefer teaching in-person to online.
The Future Will Not be Like the Past: At the end of this semester, June 7, 2020, it is clear that the future of education will not be like it has been in the past. At our school, we are prepared to teach on campus or online, at a moment’s notice. Education at the high school level has changed fundamentally, such that to say we’ll go back to “normal” won’t work. We don’t know what the future holds, but teachers will still be needed, whether online or in cyberspace.
A Sacrifice of Praise
Cast Out Your Net
In Luke 5, we read the story of disciples whom Christ asked to put out into the deep. There, Jesus, told them, they should let down their nets for a catch. When they indeed made a very large catch, they were astonished. We are encouraged to move into the deep water in life, put down our nets, and then acknowledge the one who makes us fishers of people.
Naomi R. Francisco (1935-2020)
When Naomi Francisco got married in 1956, she did not want to be involved in church or anything religious. She did not want to marry anyone who would preach and be active in the church like her father. After several years of marriage, however, and the birth of three sons, Naomi’s husband stopped drinking alcohol and going to clubs to dance the night away. With her husband’s changed life, the Holy Spirit gave Naomi new purpose to fully support his pastoral ministries.
In 1966, Leslie W. Francisco II received ordination in the Virginia Mennonite Conference. Naomi worked actively with Leslie in a Mennonite church plant in Newport News, Virginia. Naomi taught Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, directed the children’s choir, led prayer meetings and women’s activities, and helped in any way needed in the church.
When Nelson Burkholder stepped aside as minister of Calvary Mennonite Church in 1973, Naomi’s husband became the lead minister of the VMC congregation. The church became charismatic, including speaking in tongues, energetic music, weekly altar calls, and testimonies. The church held street meetings in Newport News and grew in numbers, but Leslie Francisco II developed a vision to plant a church near their home in Hampton, some miles away.
Both in Newport News and then at Calvary Community Church in Hampton, Naomi became the spiritual Mother of the congregation. Whether to her growing Francisco family, or the large crowds that came for weekly worship, Naomi was affectionately known as “Grandma” to some and “Mother” to others. Her sparkling eyes, beautiful smile, bubbly personality, hearty laughter, and generous nature warmed the hearts of many. Naomi encouraged many children in the Calvary Christian Academy that met in the church. She came into their classrooms and offices with special treats and words of wisdom for Christian living.
In 1985, Naomi and Leslie moved their ministries to Hampton and established the Calvary Community Church. After Leslie was ordained bishop in the Warwick District of Virginia Conference, the church planter couple traveled to Ames, Iowa, for the 1985 Mennonite Church General Assembly. There, the Mennonite Board of Missions gave Bishop Leslie and Naomi Francisco the James and Rowena Lark award, for their significant work in evangelism and church development. The mantle of leadership at Calvary Community Church in Hampton passed to Naomi’s son Leslie Francisco III in 1986 when her husband’s health forced him to step aside.
At Naomi’s large funeral service at Calvary on February 12, 2020, Naomi’s granddaughter, Calvary Pastor Lesley Francisco McClendon delivered the message. A host of bishops and ministers attended Naomi’s funeral service. Also in attendance were Hampton officials, including the Hampton Mayor and Hampton Councilman Steven Brown, a former minister at Calvary Community Church.
Naomi Francisco was the co-founder of Calvary Community Church, the matriarch of her community, and loved by many. With regional political officials in attendance at Naomi’s funeral, it is not surprising that the Virginia State Senate passed Resolution No. 39, February 27, 2020, that recognized the accomplishments of Naomi Rowe (Taylor) Francisco.
This article published in Pathways, of Virginia Mennonite Conference, Spring 2020 issue, page 13
Reflections on Psalm 121
Everything has changed in Education
Today the small private school in Virginia where I work turned itself upside down and we teachers began instructing students online. This happened in less than the space of a week, as the United States and the world met the invisible coronavirus. One day last week I taught my students in a regular classroom, with tables, chairs, and a Smartboard. Today is the first in my career of thirty-eight years that I’m teaching all my eighty-seven students online. I have five preparations, though our school only expects me to “meet” them twice a week, which will help we teachers build into this new era.
I’ve taught an online class for almost ten years, and I’ve learned that to teach online, and to do it well, actually takes more time than teaching in a conventional manner. I’m prepared, however. A few years ago, I earned a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. The program was entirely online. With that experience and the tools I’ve collected to teach a high school class online, I feel prepared.
This morning I uploaded my first three teaching videos to our school YouTube Channel. I’ve had many views of those videos, as I think parents, tutors, and administrators are looking at my work, as they should. I’ve answered many emails from students today, getting them up and running. Everything has changed for my students. I think some will thrive in the new learning environment, while others will not. I’m organized and like working in my home study, while others work best being around people, and may get frustrated working in cyberspace.
Everything has changed in education in my community and the United States. It’s time to see where this goes, how it changes education, and whether I can effectively teach in this new modality. I am optimistic that it can happen, and I eagerly look forward to the new challenges that lie ahead. My classroom has long been my center for instruction, meeting students, music, and prayer. Now, my study, with computers, software, and a learning management system, is my new classroom. When I graduated from college I did not have a personal computer, cell phone, or email address. In the space of four decades, the changes have been mostly for the good, though we shall see where this new era takes us in education.
Grape Kool-Aid and Sugar Cookies
One of Brenda (Carr) Fairweather’s memories of growing up at the Chicago Avenue Mennonite Church is the refreshments served to children at Vacation Bible School. During Brenda’s childhood at Chicago Avenue during the 1960s, there were a couple of hundred kids swelling the ranks of a mission-minded Mennonite congregation in the heart of Harrisonburg. At break time, Brenda remembers that teachers and staff served her Kool-Aid and cookies.
Chicago Avenue grew out of the impulse of Eastern Mennonite School students in the 1930s, the resources of Virginia Mennonite Board of Missions in the 1940s, and the steady stream of young couples from Virginia Conference Churches who migrated to the Harrisonburg Church.
Students from the EMS high school and junior college launched a ministry into Harrisonburg in 1936. Students at the school wondered why Mennonites were sending missionaries to Africa, but no outreach existed to black children in Harrisonburg. Though services remained segregated, the school sent students and faculty to teach Sunday school to children in Harrisonburg.
After meeting in a rented building on Gay Street for several years, and with numbers increasing, the Virginia Mennonite Board of Missions purchased a Chicago Avenue building in 1939. Out of the student-led work in the city, the Mission Board helped fund the start of Broad Street Mennonite Church and a church on Chicago Avenue.
By 1948 the Mission Board stepped aside as the church on Chicago Avenue became self-supporting. The bishops of Northern and Middle Districts both wanted the Chicago Avenue church to be in their districts, and folks from both Districts attended the new church. When bishops in the Northern gave way, Chicago Avenue became a Middle District congregation.
The missions’ impulse went out beyond the small meetinghouse on the corner of Green St. and Chicago Avenue. In the late 1940s, Ridgeway Mennonite Church, also in Harrisonburg, came to life with folks from Chicago Avenue. In the early 1950s, others from Chicago Avenue helped establish Mt. Vernon Mennonite Church in Grottoes, Rockingham County.
Young couples from Conference Churches migrated quickly to Chicago Avenue in the late 1940s and 50s. Among others, these included Winston and Phyllis Weaver, Charles and Eula Burkholder, Warren and Virginia Burkholder, John and Maude Lantz, and Harold and Athalyn Driver. The city church provided an opportunity to evangelize the unchurched and had more relaxed standards on dress expectations.
Chicago Avenue Pastor Harold Eshleman married Donna and Nelson Suter in June 1955. Married at age seventeen, Donna had five children, and she credits pastor Harold and key women in the congregation for giving her counsel and support. Chicago Avenue had active outreach ministries, like Sewing Circle and Vacation Bible School, but folks within the congregation, like Donna Suter, were also ministered to in life-giving ways.
In 1972, bursting at the seams, Chicago Avenue Mennonite Church built a new meetinghouse several miles away and became Harrisonburg Mennonite Church. Others, mainly from EMC, kept the doors open on Chicago Avenue and organized Community Mennonite Church. The church building today is used by another denomination, but fond memories of grape Kool-Aid and sugar cookies still survive.
Published in Pathways, Winter 2019, page 10
My students got the lesson in restorative justice
Once in a while, my students get it. I had a moment of joy when my 9th grade Bible class made a justice connection between two events–it’s part of what keeps me teaching.
On a Friday afternoon (October 25, 2019), I took my 14-year-old students downtown Harrisonburg to visit a newly established coffee shop, which is raising money to help people reenter society successfully after being released from prison. The pastors in charge of the coffee shop stood on the sidewalk, with the Court House and jail visible, and explained their vision of restorative justice. They were raising money to help people who come out of incarceration to get a second chance, to help them more successfully integrate back into society. It was one of those moments that made all the logistics work of setting up a field trip worth the time and effort. My students learned about restorative justice on the street, with United Methodist pastors putting shoe leather to their theological beliefs.
In the very next class period, on Monday, Caleb Schrock-Hurst, twenty-three, and recently returned from MCC service in Vietnam, challenged my students to consider serving others. Caleb came onto our campus for two days, under a lecture series we have at the school. He returns to serve with MCC in Vietnam in early November. Caleb is doing academic editing work in Hanoi, helping MCC recognize 65 years of working in the Southeast Asian country.
One bright ninth-grade student asked Caleb if he had heard the voice of God, directing him to serve in Vietnam. No, Caleb replied, he had received counsel to sign up with MCC, he had grown up serving with his family in a Philippines MCC assignment, and his sister and her family served the poor in Indonesia. For Caleb, he explained, service was a way of life. There had been no audible voice of God that he heard.
At our school, we have a culture of restorative justice. It’s woven into the educational methods of how we work with students on both the micro and macro levels. Last year, I helped with a large circle process to work through difficulties in one of the classes.
So at the end of the class period, after Caleb answered a host of questions about Vietnam, I showed the class a photo of us standing on the street corner the previous Friday, talking about restorative justice. “What’s the connection,” I asked, “between selling coffee and tea to help folks getting out of jail, and what Caleb is doing in Vietnam?” Immediately they piped up and made the analysis. “Caleb is working at restorative justice issues in Vietnam, like the pastors in Harrisonburg are with their coffee shop,” one student articulated.
It’s those moments that make all the prep work, all the planning, all the everyday work of teaching worth it. My students made the connection between a justice ministry in Harrisonburg to Hanoi, Vietnam, where an MCCer is going for another year of service. I hope my students never forget this lesson, and I pray that one or more of those students will one day join MCC and serve in an international setting.
Sunday Schools Shape Christian Faith
The Sunday school movement in Virginia Mennonite Conference had an uncertain beginning 150 years ago. In 1869 seventeen Virginia ministers barely got the 2/3s majority needed to pass a resolution allowing for Sunday schools. Only one of the three bishops in that 1869 Conference meeting supported Sunday schools.
Fortunately, that supporting bishop presided over Emanuel Suter’s church. The Sunday school initiative in Virginia Conference may have begun around Suter’s kitchen table, in a letter written two years before the 1869 resolution. It’s not an overstatement to point to Emanuel Suter’s 1867 letter to Herald of Truth as the real beginning of Sunday schools in Virginia Conference.
Suter wrote his dynamic letter on a Sunday morning, from his home west of Harrisonburg. He had six children under ten running around while he penned his thoughts. In a stirring letter to Mennonite readers across the United States, Suter called on believers to use their gifts for God’s kingdom. That’s exactly what Suter did in the last four decades of the 1800s.
Emanuel Suter (1833-1902), not ordained, had the wisdom, leadership skills, and organizational abilities to lead the Sunday school movement in Virginia Conference. Until his passing in 1902, Suter worked tirelessly to establish Sunday schools, likely remembering those children underfoot at his kitchen table.
Those opposed believed that Sunday schools might allow non-Mennonites to teach their children, Sunday schools would allow women to teach publicly, they followed the fashions of the day, and the Bible did not mention Sunday schools. About 15% of Middle District Mennonites left Conference in 1901, partially over the Sunday school issue.
By the mid-twentieth century, Sunday schools had grown and thrived in many Conference congregations. At Weavers Mennonite Church, for instance, the average attendance for Sunday school in 1961 stood at 268. Sunday schools met the needs of Bible teaching and faith formation.
Minister Paul Glanzer and his wife Isabel, along with their disabled son Jerry Glanzer, came to the Zion Mennonite Church in 1985. For about twenty years Paul taught a Sunday school for his son Jerry and others like him, with a van load of attendees in Paul’s class from Pleasant View, Inc., in Broadway. Paul helped the disabled adults to sing, pray, and learn about God from his teaching.
Today, 150 years later, Sunday schools are still vital in the lives of many Virginia Conference churches. It takes dedicated leaders and teachers to conduct a Sunday school program. Laura Suter Wenger (1873-1959), for instance, daughter of Emanuel and Elizabeth Suter, taught Sunday school for forty-five years.
Two weeks ago, this writer saw a photo taken from the back of a Sunday school class at Lindale Mennonite Church. A lay member of the congregation led a large group of children in prayer. The attentive children had their heads bowed and were learning how to pray. This writer’s three-year-old grandson sat in the front row, with his head bowed in prayer. For those of us who care about teaching Scripture and faith to children, Sunday school continues to be a great place to shape Christian faith.