We are spending four-week in our worship services using on the theme “Rise Up! Take Courage,” which is also the biennial theme for our conference – Central District Conference. Congregations have been invited to use worship resources developed on this theme. This first Sunday – we focused on giving voice to our rage and anger […]
A Net that Will Not Break
Pastor Ben Rudeen Kreider was ordained as a minister in Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA on Sunday, May 17, 2026. Brian Bolton, pastor of Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg and Ben’s mentor during the licensure period preached from John 21:1-14 – the risen Jesus meeting his disciples at the lakeshore with a breakfast […]
The Prophet of all Prophets
Imagine, you standing in front of Duke Chapel. You just finished seeing all the stained glass, someone was playing the organ inside, and you are looking at the sculpture of John Wesley. You feel a deep sense of awe in you. The birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming. Then a stranger comes up […]
Salvation Coming Home
Next Sunday, we will be remembering loved ones who have died – and we will be using alternate texts from the lectionary for All Saints Day. And so today – while I will just be preaching on the Zaccheus story – I thought that we could hear – two gospel texts read from Luke – […]
Pray Always
There was a certain woman in a church I was once a part of. Every single Sunday, during every prayer and sharing time, when the microphone was passed around this woman would stand up and make a lengthy announcement about some type of justice work, inviting us to participation and prayer: “Come and join the anti-war […]
Return to Praise
It would be enough if all we take from our gospel text today is a recognition of the goodness of gratitude. It would be enough if the only moment that lingers with us from this story – is glimpsing a healed man falling at Jesus’ feet, crying out, “Thank you!” “i thank You God for […]
The Solidarity of Tears
The lectionary this fall has given us the gift or misfortune of spending some time with the prophet Jeremiah of 8th century ancient Judah. Jeremiah is not an easy prophet to hang out with because for chapter after chapter he is like someone holding up one of those signs that says, “The End is Near.” His […]
Safe Church Sunday sermon
In our worship service on Sunday, September 14 – through song, prayer, and word – we made space to commit ourselves to being a church that practices beloved community, following Jesus who welcomed children and was a fierce defender of the vulnerable. This work of community safety, abuse prevention, and caring well for all the members of our community […]
Reworked
It’s hard to look away from that spinning, centered mass of clay. Watching a skilled potter at work is mesmerizing. The kick, kick, kick, of the foot maintains the wheel’s rhythm, propelling a vase or bowl or jar to rise upward and outward, guided by steady hands. God calls the prophet Jeremiah to stand mesmerized […]
Today I Appoint You
Sometime in the period of dizzying self-awareness of all that stepping into responsibility might mean and all the swirling feelings of growth and possibility and shame and the desire to belong in this complicated world. Sometime in that indeterminate moment of being a youngster, a youth…Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah the priest… Jeremiah, who grew […]
Ablaze
I grew up in extended family structures where there would be lots of cooks in the kitchen. When food was being made and served and eaten people would comment on it and say things like, “Hey, why are you making it that way?” It wasn’t considered rude during a meal to poke in someone else’s […]
Manifold Wisdom
As a kid at church, I would sit in the pew on the north side of the sanctuary a few rows back and I would take out my bulletin. And during the sermon I would meticulously flatten out that bulletin and then carefully fold by fold turn it into a paper airplane, each crease pressed […]
The Foolishness of God
A few years back – the AC in our car went out in the midst of a sweltering summer. The problem confounded the multiple mechanics we took it to in New Jersey. And after an incredibly sweaty windows-down road trip that summer to visit family, we finally took the car to our old mechanic back […]
Wisdom & Justice
The last time I did the sermon at church, I was about 13 years old sharing on MLK Sunday at Germantown Mennonite. I remember talking about how lucky I felt to have an ethnically diverse friend group in Philly and at my school. I really thought that by the time I gave another sermon, I […]
Doopsgezinde, ride out!
I had the awesome privilege of a grand adventure this past May. For 16 days, I joined 8 Mennonites from Winnipeg and we traveled across Holland and ventured into Belgium. The journey was a pilgrimage celebrating the 500th anniversary of anabaptism, visiting sites of Mennonite history. And it was a bikepacking trip. For some on […]
Waiting for the Promise
Waiting well is one of the hardest things we are called to do as humans. Maybe you’re in a conversation with a friend or family member. But it’s so hard to actually listen to them speak and let the fullness of what they are saying and how they are saying it soak in. Your mind […]
To the Next World
A novel based on the life of the Italian saint, lover of the poor and friend of creation, St. Francis, includes this story: One day, Francis was walking down the road, singing a song to himself. A stranger came up to him and walked alongside Francis for a while, and then began to question him: […]
Holy Imagination
Last year – 2024 – was the hottest year ever recorded. And the top ten hottest years ever recorded have all been in the past ten years. We have lived through a decade of record-breaking heat – and all indicators point to a future of human-caused climate breakdown for the rest of our lifetimes.1 “The sun will […]
Worthy is the Lamb
I’m continuing to preach from the book of Revelation. The Revelation or Apocalypse of John, is an unveiling, an unmasking of the truth of who God is and what God is doing to redeem the world. Last Sunday we heard the books’ opening verses, written by John, a 1st century Jewish follower of Jesus, exiled […]
who is and was and is coming
For the next few weeks in this Easter season – I am planning to preach from the book of Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the New Testament, the last book in our Bible. Texts from Revelation very rarely come up in the cycle of the lectionary, the church calendar offers us a sampling […]
Remembering the Impossible
This past Wednesday, I was standing at a local coffee shop waiting for my iced coffee. Over the loud speakers, turned up a little too loud, poured out the chorus of Bob Marley’s song Three Little Birds, and it was starting to grate on me: Don’t worry about a thing ‘Cause every little thing gonna […]
Found by Love
In this season of Lent we’ve been focusing on God’s radical invitation to abundance. So far we’ve encountered the image of God as a mother hen who fiercely and tenderly protects her brood. We’ve pondered God as a gardener who fertilizes a fig tree – even when it bears no fruit. And we’ve hiked with […]
Grace Reaches Deeper
In our text for today from Luke’s gospel, Jesus finds himself in a crowd. Or to put it more clearly – a crowd, yet again – has found and surrounded him, listening to him teach. From this mix of disciples and onlookers, curious and skeptical alike, packed around him, a few people pipe up: “Hey, […]
Mother Hen
Tonight we are in the season of Lent, 2 Sundays and 10 days in. A quarter of the way through 40 days. There are a bunch of ways of conceiving of seasons in church year and one of those I’m thinking about tonight is as journeys. We can imagine Advent, the weeks leading up to […]