Greensboro, North Carolina (Mennonite Mission Network) – The earliest seminar for Thursday morning brought the one thing the youth that packed the meeting room didn’t expect: a pop quiz.
Eric Frey Martin, Director of Constituent Engagement with Mennonite Mission Network, opened the Follow Jesus 25 seminar, ‘What You Do Next Matters’ with a shout-it-out quiz of particularly notable people who had all graduated from either Bethel College (Kansas), Bluffton University (Ohio), Eastern Mennonite University (Virginia), Goshen College (Indiana), or Hesston College (Kansas). Jeff Timmons of the music group 98 Degrees (Bluffton University). Peace activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee (Eastern Mennonite University). NFL coach Katie Sowers (a trick question, as she graduated from both Hesston and Goshen College).
As college and university representatives handed out prizes for each correct answer, Frey Martin noted something that all the institutions, as well as Mennonite Mission Network, have in common: a focus on service.
Each mission and vision statement from the colleges and universities focused on service as a core value. For Mission Network, the emphasis on service is manifested through the agency’s multiple service programs, as well as international ministries and partnerships.
“As we serve others, it’s a way of creating peace,” explained Frey Martin. Not only peace as an absence of war, but a wholistic peace, or shalom, with neighbors both across the street and around the world. Shalom is both a greeting in Hebrew, as well as a sense of living in harmony and balance with the people and place that you find yourself surrounded by.
Leigha Stoltzfus, co-leader of the Colorado Springs, Colorado, Service Adventure unit, spoke to attendees on how the program can be a great chance to take a one-year break (or “gap-year”) from school and experience a different way of living in community with fellow participants and unit leaders while serving with a local non-profit.
“I loved my time my time in college…but I did switch my major ten different times in my four years,” she recalled. “It would have been very beneficial for me to not go to college right away and take some time and figure out more of what I am passionate about.”
For Leigha and her husband, Christian, as Service Adventure co-leaders, they have been witness to the growth young adults go through during a gap-year, whether emotionally, relational, or spiritually.
A gap year is not the only way to engage with service, of course. Representatives from each college and university present gave personal testimony to how service can be embodied through education, service days, and joining in the shared experience of learning and growth on a college campus.
As Frey Martin listed all the instances that each education institution referenced service in their mission statements, he reflected on the broad arc that service should play in our lives – well beyond a gap year or a earning a particular degree. “This is why we talk about living lives of service,” he said. “Because our faith demands a response from us, to follow Jesus in this way…in a way we recognize the interconnectedness of all humanity together.”
