Registrants will choose two morning and two afternoon workshops during January 17 and 18.

Morning Workshops:10:15-11:45 a.m.

Poverty: The Vandalism of Shalom

Mary Thiessen Nation

God’s passionate and compassionate response to poverty permeates the Scriptures. Mary reflects deeply on her decades of ministry with and among poor people to demonstrate how God’s desire for shalom for all can be embodied in and through our churches.

Mary Thiessen Nation earned her teaching degree at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas. After serving with World Impact, an interdenominational urban mission organization in Los Angeles for 18 years, she earned two master’s degrees and her PhD in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. Mary is a speaker, teacher, preacher and mentor in her local church as well as in the broader Mennonite church. She serves on the EMS faculty as adjunct professor.

Christian Business Leaders Practicing Faith

Allon Lefever & Aaron Yoder

God calls Christian leaders into the marketplace to practice and demonstrate Christ-like ethics, values and stewardship. Young and experienced presenters share stories from the front lines of Christian business leadership about integrating values and practicing stewardship.

Allon Lefever is president of A Better Hospitality Co and of Lefever Associates. He is currently Adjunct Professor in the EMU Master in Business Administration program. His many years of experience bring added wisdom.

Aaron Yoder graduated from Eastern Mennonite University with a BA in English in 2001. Aaron has become a pioneer of quality sustainable home building. In 2007, he became a certified builder with the EarthCraft House green building program and became an ENERGY STAR Partner, and in 2008 built Harrisonburg’s first green certified single family home. He is president of A M Yoder & Co., Inc.

Church Budgets: What Pastors & Treasurers Should Know

Robert Alley & Ron Stoltzfus

Longterm pastor Robert and church treasurer Ron will share good practices for budget building and maintenance for congregations. Bring your dilemmas and quandries for group discussion.

Robert Alley served as a Church of the Brethren senior pastor for 40 years in beginning, established and large congregations. He administered budgets of all sizes, with varied goals. In 2010-11 he served as denominational moderator. He is currently board president of Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center.

Ronald L. Stoltzfus, CPA, Ph.D., specializes in financial accounting reporting issues. His work experience includes the controllership of a large farm equipment company in southeastern Pennsylvania and summer projects with a local construction contractor, tire retreader, and an aviation company. He has been part of the EMU department of business and economics since 1984. His research interests include off-balance sheet obligations.

Pastors & Businesspersons: Finding Common Ground in a Difficult Conversation

David B. Miller

Pastors and persons in business leadership too often speak past each other – pastors’ ideals seem a detriment to business survival, business leaders hear repeated critiques of business practices from the church and then are called upon to finance capital projects. Torah, the prophets, and gospels engage not only in critique, but constructive re-imagination of business practices that express God’s covenant and anticipate faith communities whose economic lives are Spirit directed. We will explore how these texts can re-script our conversations and vision toward partnership in God’s shalom.

David B. Miller brings a passion for peace and justice along with experience in teaching, pastoral ministry, and administration to his position as Associate Professor of Missional Leadership Development at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Goshen, IN. Prior to joining the faculty in 2009, David was pastor of University Mennonite Church, State College, Pa., for 12 years and taught at Hesston (Kan.) College. His D.Min. degree was earned at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Preaching on Money: Facing the Wind

Mark Wenger

Jesus talked a lot about money. But many preachers today hesitate to address the topic. Explore some of the roots of our reluctance; discover perspectives and tools for preaching on money with greater confidence and freedom.

Mark Wenger is Director of Pastoral Studies for the EMU Lancaster location. His doctoral work was in Practical Theology: Preaching and Worship at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA. Previously he served as pastor for more than 18 years in VA and PA churches.

Ministry & Money

Beryl Jantzi

This seminar highlights and provides resources to help pastors review congregational stewardship practices. Six best practices that can help congregations customize stewardship strategies to fit their culture and context include: Congregational money management; stewardship & worship, stewardship as spiritual formation, stewardship & leadership, stewardship and nurture, stewardship as peace and justice.

Beryl Jantzi currently serves as Everence Stewardship Education Director and lives in Harrisonburg, VA. Prior to working for Everence he pastored in PA and VA for 23 years – most recently as lead pastor at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church from 1996-2005. He was moderator of VA Mennonite Conference from2004-2010 and currently serves as the overseer for the Southern District of the VA Mennonite Conference. Beryl has an M. Div. from Eastern Mennonite Seminary and a D.Min from Lancaster Theological Seminary.

Work: A Theology of Creation

Isaac Villegas

From the beginning of the biblical story, humans are invited to get their hands dirty in God’s creation. Through our work and play, we participate in the creativity of God. But doesn’t Genesis also describe our need to work as part of the effects of sin? Is work a curse or a blessing? Has the advent of global capitalism transformed our labor into a mechanism of alienation? How are we supposed to think about our work as participation in God’s creativity while trying to make it in an economy dominated by mammon?

Issac Villegas is the pastor of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship in North Carolina. He is the child of Latin American immigrants to Los Angeles, California. He grew up in the Roman Catholic Church until his family joined the pentecostal/charismatic movement. He began worshiping with Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship while attending Duke Divinity School in North Carolina. After completing a Master of Divinity degree, the congregation called him to be their pastor. Isaac has been a columnist for The Mennonite Weekly Review and The Mennonite magazine. He is also the co-author of Presence: Giving and Receiving God (Cascade, 2011).

Faith in the Work Setting

Edgar Stoesz

Most Christians are sincere about doing their work and living their lives in a God honoring way. But when we get down to business we are embarrassingly agnostic about it. Could it be, we will explore in this session, that to take it to the next level we have not so much to work harder or run faster but allow God’s Spirit to catch up with us?

Edgar Stoesz is co-author of Setting the Agenda: Meditations for the Organization’s Soul. He has s spent his entire life in a variety of for profit and nonprofit organizations, most of them in a faith tradition. He has written several books and addressed literally hundreds of organizations on good board service practices and techniques. In Setting the Agenda he teams up with Rick M. Stiffney to address the spirit that undergirds effective board work. They say, “A healthy spirit can compensate for bad technique but nothing, not even the best technique, can compensate for an unhealthy spirit.”

Afternoon Workshops: 1:45-3:15 p.m.

Are You Mortgaging Your Ministry?

Don Yoder & students

Listen and participate in frank conversations with current and past seminary students around the realities of educational debt.

Don Yoder currently serves as half-time Admissions Director for Eastern Mennonite Seminary and half-time for Mennonite Men organization. He has many years of experience in recruiting students and assisting them with their financial plans.

Earth Stewardship: A Way of Peacemaking

Tom Benevento

Explore home and community scale strategies and stories toward more effective earth stewardship. Using permaculture principles and ecological design methods, participants will gain tools to create sustainable living systems for home and community wide projects. Examples include food, water, transportation, and building systems that use resources efficiently, care for creation, divest from destructive structures, and make for peace.

Tom Benevento is known in the Harrisonburg area for his advocacy and modeling of sustainable living systems. His home and the property next door are “in-town” gardens that are open to tour groups for his presentations. He is available for many public speaking engagements.

Double Your Money, Double Your Fun

Ruth & Tim Stoltzfus Yost

Introduction to a simple “Couple Contract” negotiation to help partners reorient their money debates, systematically generate more money for giving, and rediscover joy in giving. Presenters, both lawyers, have 30 years of experience.

Timothy Jost is a law professor at Washington and Lee in Lexington, VA. He specializes in health care financing and reform.

Ruth Stoltzfus Jost is a former poverty lawyer and works as a volunteer with Gemeinschaft Home, an offender reentry program in Harrisonburg.

Investing As If Your Faith Mattered

Mark Regier

Issues of earning and allocating money and other material resources consume a lot our time—and much of the Holy Scriptures. Discover how the money you retain can reflect and expand God’s mission in the world while providing for the future needs of your family and institution. It’s true: money never sleeps! Do you know what your resources are doing when you do?

Mark Regier is Director of Stewardship Investing for Everence Financial. In 2006, Mark received the SRI Service Award, the US social investment industry’s highest honor. With over 20 years of service to the church and graduate studies in ethics and theological studies, Mark is often a resource to national and international organizations on faith-based and community investing issues.

Wealth, Patronage, and Class Status in the Early Church

Reta Halteman Finger

Jesus’ gospel came into a world of rigid social inequality, where the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer—not unlike a trend in our present culture. Using selected case studies from the Gospels, Acts, and letters of Paul, we will examine how Jesus and the early church handled this inequality, and ponder these implications for the church today.

Reta Halteman Finger taught New Testament at Messiah College until she retired in 2009. Her book, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts, (Eerdmans 2007) deals with many economic issues in the early church that provide challenges for Christian groups today.

Living More with Less (joyfully, for the long haul)

Paul Longacre & Nancy Heisey

In this workshop participants are invited to engage with the five Living More with Less life standards (do justice, learn from the world community, nurture people, cherish the natural order, nonconform freely). We will dig into their theological grounding and share ideas on their practical expressions.

Paul Longacre graduated from Goshen College and AMBS. Together with his first wife Doris, he served under Mennonite Central Committee in Vietnam and Indonesia. After Doris’s death in 1979, he completed her book Living More With Less, whose 30th anniversary edition is the basis for this workshop. Together with wife Nancy, he traveled for two years visiting partner churches around the world to learn about their views of partnership in mission.

Nancy Heisey has worked as a teacher and an administrator first at Mennonite Central Committee and since 1999 at EMU. Her fifteen-year involvement with Mennonite World Conference and her research interests in early Christianity shape her reading and research into approaches to biblical interpretation. Nancy is currently VP & Undergrad Academic Dean at EMU.

Being a Savvy Consumer

Ashley Hagelin

Information is the key to being your own best consumer advocate. In this workshop you will learn how to protect yourself from some of the most common financial scams out there: know what themes and traps to watch out for; learn how to get out of a scam if you are in one; what efforts have been made towards eliminating this fraud; and how to find a safe place to turn. Knowledge regarding these topics can help protect you now and in the future.

Ashley Hagelin works with Lutheran Social Services in partnership with Everence to provide free financial counseling. She speaks to audiences of wide age spans about aspects of personal financial health, including identity theft and wise use of credit cards.