HOUSTON MENNONITE CHURCH

Here are some vignettes that give a glimpse into the soul of this faith community.

Mennonite Disaster Service and Houston Mennonite Church
By Roxie Voran
Since Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) was organized in the early 1950s, Mennonites from across North America have mobilized from time to time to help their neighbors respond to natural disasters. That has also been the case at HMC. For about the first 15 years of the church’s existence, small groups would occasionally travel to help with cleanup in a nearby area that had experienced some flooding or perhaps a tornado. Typically, this involved no more than a handful of people spending a Saturday. In addition, someone from HMC often attended interfaith disaster planning meetings that were held through the years in an effort to be prepared for the big storm that could come our way.
A larger scale effort unfolded in 1983. In August of that year, the Houston area was struck by Hurricane Alicia—the first major tropical system to hit the area since Hurricane Carla in the 1960s. Several thousand homes were destroyed or made unlivable and tens of thousands were damaged. Dozens of MDS volunteers came from many places in the United States and Canada to help with the cleanup and HMC members helped as they were available. Ed Wiens and Pastor John Heyerly spent a great deal of time coordinating the effort, which focused on helping elderly and handicapped residents with cleaning up their property. The cleanup work continued for a few weeks and a small crew of MDS volunteers stayed in the area to continue working beyond the initial cleanup. Home repair and reconstruction projects in the LaMarque area near Galveston continued through March 1984.
It would be almost 18 years until the next major storm would affect the Houston area. However, in the intervening years HMC members continued to volunteer on MDS projects. During the late 1990s, Carl and Laura Dube organized annual MDS weeks. Each year they selected a week and offered church members the opportunity to accompany them to an MDS work site and to volunteer for that week. This continued for several years and usually involved 4 to 6 people. Those planning meetings continued, too.
June 2001 is remembered for Tropical Storm Allison. Allison was a minimal tropical storm that moved inland across the Houston area causing some flooding due to the rainfall, but relatively modest damage. But after moving about 150 miles to the north, Allison returned and was stationary over the Houston area for a couple of days. Parts of northeast Houston received up to 26 inches of rain in one day. Flooding was widespread and serious. In fact, after this storm the Harris County Flood Control District redrew the flood plain maps.
Mennonite Disaster Service made a major commitment to assisting with home repair and renovation in the Houston area after Allison. Within a few weeks after the storm, teams of out-of-state volunteers arrived and began work. Initially work was begun in two areas—Brookside Village in the Pearland area and in northeast Houston, but as time went on the work was focused in northeast Houston.
At the time, HMC was in a transitional period between pastors and we had a parsonage sitting empty. So the work in northeast Houston began with volunteers housed in the parsonage until a more convenient arrangement could be worked out. Working out that arrangement proved to be more difficult than anyone expected. A mobile home was donated to MDS and the owner of a vacant lot in the area donated the use of his property. However, when it came time to make utility connections and to obtain the permits, the City of Houston bureaucracy reared its ugly head. Negotiations continued for several months until everything could be worked out and the volunteers could begin staying in the area where they were working.
In the end, MDS work continued for over a year completing repair and renovation of well more than 100 homes. Ed Wiens again spent lots of time coordinating the effort with considerable assistance from Dan Miller of the San Antonio Mennonite Church. Lisa Peters from HMC also invested a great deal of time helping coordinate the work, including attendance at countless meetings.
Several short years later, 2005 was to become known as the year of the hurricane. Shortly after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, a menacing Hurricane Rita approached Houston and put a big scare into us all before veering to the east shortly before making landfall. MDS initiated its largest effort ever in response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. Home reconstruction work was begun at a number of sites, some of which are still active as we begin 2010.
Most of the work begun in 2005 was in Louisiana and Mississippi, but one project site was established in Newton, Texas. Ed Wiens served as director of the work in Newton for a few weeks when it began. The work in and around Newton continued, with some interruptions, for more than two years. Several other HMC members assisted for short periods of time and one, David Harms, left his job as an investment banker to spend a year as a full time volunteer with MDS in New Orleans.
With the post-2005 work still going on, the Houston area experienced a direct hit from Hurricane Ike in September 2008. Thousands of trees were blown down and many HMC members were without electrical power for one to three weeks. However, the worst damage was to the east of Houston. In the weeks and months following the storm, MDS established units at Anahuac and in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. Once again, Ed and Twila Wiens spent a tremendous amount of time serving as local coordinators, picking up MDS staff and volunteers at the airport, and hosting many of them as they were making their way to and from the project sites.
Mennonite Disaster Service continues to operate a number project sites and offers all of us the opportunity to participate in this ministry. No one is required to be a master carpenter, although the willingness and ability to swing a hammer is helpful. Virtually everyone who has volunteered on an MDS project will tell you that the work isn’t necessarily easy, but it is very rewarding. Anyone who may be interested in volunteering can talk with anyone at HMC who has been involved or visit the MDS web site at www.mds.mennonite.net/.

BEGINNINGS OF CASA DEL ALFARERO
By Roxie Voran
In 2003, Marco Guete, Associate Conference Minister for Western District Conference, met with our Church Council. Marco shared with us the story of some Hispanic Mennonites from the Rio Grande Valley who had moved to the Houston area. They had a desire to be able to worship in a Mennonite church in their native language here in the Houston area. At that time, they had already connected with others of like mind. There were capable leaders within their group and they had begun meeting regularly in someone’s garage.
Marco’s invitation to HMC was to become involved in supporting this church plant. As we listened, what came to my mind was the phrase “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” which I remembered from my growing up years in the turbulent 60s (although it originated with Thomas Paine much earlier). The Holy Spirit was planting, indeed had planted a new church. Our choice was whether we would join in this work of the Spirit here in our city.
We chose to get involved. Several HMC members served on a support committee that met regularly with the leaders of the emerging congregation. And with the rental income we had at the time, we were able to provide a substantial part of the financial support. What emerged was Iglesia Menonita Casa del Alfarero (Potter’s House Mennonite Church), a vibrant congregation now larger than our own located across the city in Pasadena.
It’s been said that the primary task of the church in every time and place is to discern what God is doing then and there and to get involved in it. That certainly seemed to be true at the emergence of Casa del Alfarero, and I suspect it remains just as true for us today.

The Day the Spirit Came to Church
By Roxie Voran
It was Palm Sunday sometime around 1989, give or take a year or two. The day was memorable, the date not so much.
The worship service that day was designed to reflect the emotions of Holy Week, from the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to the despair of the events of Good Friday. There was a series of dramatic readings and music expressing the varied moods. We all had written something representative of our own sins and shortcomings on pieces of red paper that ahd been cut into the shapes of drops of blood. These were nailed to a wooden cross as a recording of thunder and rain planed.
At some point that morning it became apparent that there was a presence among us that day unlike most other Sundays; something you could physically feel. There was no doubt that we were in the presence of God.
That Sunday is notable and memorable two decades later precisely because it happens so seldom. There are many Sundays when we have experienced uplifting music, thoughtful and inspiring sermons, and warm fellowship, but the palpable presence of the Spirit remains the exception and not the rule. Does that mean that worship on the “ordinary” Sundays is any less valid or any less significant? I think not.
Some years later, Doug Ensminger preached a sermon on worship. Doug talked about two kidns of worship—the kind we need and the kind God needs. He reflected on the fact that all of us humans need to be in touch with the Divine. We need encounters with God through worship to maintain our spiritual and emotional health. On the other hand, while we understand that God wants to have a close relationship with us, the Creator of the Universe is not so insecure as to need affirmation from us mere mortals offering our praise. What God does need, however, is people to do the things that are needed to bring God’s kingdom into reality. Things like feeding the hungry, caring for children or the elderly, sharing the Good News, speaking up for those who can’t, etc.
So ultimately both kinds of worship are important. Times of praise when we encounter God, sometimes in ways that are moving, powerful, and fill us with awe. Other times when we encounter God only as we strain to hear a still small voice, easily missed if we are not attentive. Equally important is the kind of worship that we often give other names—names like service, compassion, or outreach.