Janet Szabo share how, after a period of declining attendance, Mountain View Mennonite Church is experiencing a spring new life, through active church participation from adults and children alike.
This post is part of Mennonite Church USA’ Follow Jesus series, which highlights how individuals and congregations are living into discipleship today.
Janet Szabo is a member of Mountain View Mennonite Church, in Kalispell, Montana, where she serves as the pianist. She also hosts a weekly sewing podcast and teaches sewing and knitting classes around the Pacific Northwest. She and her husband live on a small farm, where they raise pigs and chickens and grow a lot of their food.
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Spring is coming — ever so slowly, it seems — to northwestern Montana. I see it in the snowshoe hare who lives under our porch, as he changes from winter white to shaded brown. I see it in the industrious labors of the robins making nests in our porch rafters. And I see it in the first green shoots of plants in my garden.
No matter how long and cold the winter, spring comes, eventually.
It is hard for me not to be envious of my more southern neighbors, whose winter slumbers are shorter than ours. I see friends posting photos of daffodils bursting into bloom, and I know that it will be weeks yet before any flowers dare poke their heads up. Spring hints at its arrival with a few days of warm, sunny weather, then it retreats in the face of another round of cold and snow. Surely, we think, this will be the last of the snow. Surely. Optimistic residents take the snow tires off their cars. The rest of us wait.
Our congregation’s worship theme for this Easter season is “Jesus, Gardener of a New Creation.” We feel as though we are moving out of winter and into the promise of spring. After almost a decade of declining numbers, further suppressed by the pandemic, we now celebrate each Sunday with the sounds of children participating in our worship services. The youngest, who is 18 months old, sings loudly along with the congregation, her babbling melody blending with the sounds of our voices. Older children helped create the visuals for the season, painting stained-glass sunrises on the windows that face east, toward the mountains.
On Easter Sunday, adults in strategic locations throughout the sanctuary showered worshippers with confetti — a tradition we began last year. Those bits of paper persist, despite our efforts to clean them up, but we smile and nod when — in June or October or even December — the children come running, excited to show us that they found confetti somewhere in the church building. We remember, with them, the joy of Easter Sunday.
The children have brought their parents with them to church — young adults who help the older members navigate the ever-changing technological landscape of worship, with patience and a good dose of humor. A few of these young adults were once the children we taught in Sunday School. Now, they are taking their places in leadership. We treasure these threads that weave through and provide continuity in our life together.
Many among us have come from other faith traditions; our transitional pastor is an ordained Presbyterian minister. This diversity of backgrounds brings a richness to our community life, as we embrace our congregation’s Anabaptist heritage and find common ground in living out our commitment to follow Jesus.
This beloved family of God, with its long history of service, has been motivated to engage even more deeply with those around us. Last fall, we provided classroom space to a local preschool. We prepare a meal every second Tuesday, through Feed the Flathead. We have assisted Valley Neighbors in helping settle immigrant families from Venezuela and Afghanistan into our community. Our Mennonite Disaster Service unit has no shortage of projects. In February, we tied half a dozen comforters to donate to Mennonite Central Committee. We recently helped out at our volunteer fire department’s annual fundraising auction by staffing a food booth.
During our weekly prayer and sharing time, we have been asked to give examples of where we see Jesus’ resurrection around us. The stories are everywhere.
Perhaps it is our experience with long, cold winters that has given us the patience to wait for spring. Perhaps it also explains our somewhat irrational exuberance in finding bits of confetti around our church building in the dark months of the year. For we know that spring will come, that Jesus will be the gardener of this new creation, and that come July, there will be an abundance of zucchini in the fellowship hall, under a sign saying, “Free to a good home.”
The views and opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and are not intended to represent the views of the MC USA Executive Board or staff.
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