Eastern Mennonite University

This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news

EMU Staff Collaborate on Worship Guide

worship planners
Worship guide planning group (standing, l. to r.): Kris Shank Zehr, Lucinda Swartzendruber, Kevin Clark, Brian Martin Burkholder. Middle: Edie Bontrager, Marlene Kropf. Front: Gloria Diener, Jill Landis, Shirley Yoder Brubaker.
Three staff persons from Eastern Mennonite University were among eight Harrisonburg area people who worked together to create resource materials for a 2005 Easter to Pentecost worship series.

Leader magazineThe materials, titled "Unbound!", with a different subtitle for each Sunday, are intended for use by pastors and other congregational leaders and will soon be available in "Leader" magazine, published by Faith and Life Resources, a division of Mennonite Publishing Network.

At the invitation of Marlene Kropf, director of the Office of Congregational Life, Elkhart, Ind., the group gathered last winter at Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg for a weekend to begin the planning process. The work was completed individually and in small groups through the spring and summer months with Shirley Yoder Brubaker of the Park View congregation as local team coordinator.

"The Office of Congregational Life has coordinated the development of worship resources for Advent and for Lent, but this was the first time to develop worship resources for the Easter to Pentecost church season," noted Brian Martin Burkholder, EMU campus pastor and a group member.

Other EMU employees on the planning team were Jill K. Landis, associate director of church partnerships at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Kevin Clark, part-time instructor at the seminary.

Other committee members included Kris Shank Zehr, Edie Bontrager, Gloria Diener and Lucinda Swartzendruber, all from the Harrisonburg area.

— article by: Jim Bishop; posted November 30, 2004