Ron Copeland, MDiv '06 // Founder of the Early Church // Harrisonburg, Va. // Oriented toward meeting the spiritual and pracitcal needs of those lacking decent jobs, homes and friends. // In the background volunteers from the EMU community are visible, working in the garden and building lockers for storage.
True Evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute and it serves those who harm it. It seeks those who are lost. It binds up what is wounded. It becomes all things to all people.
– Seven of 17 injunctions written by Menno Simons in 1539
The students of Wilson High School in Fishersville, Virginia, didn’t know what to think. Amid the “career day” tables set up by Intelos wireless, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and a large contingent of military recruiters was a table announcing a line of work not often seen at career fairs – “clergy careers.”
The table was staffed by three Mennonite pastors – Howard I. Miller ’80, MAL ’97, pastor of Waynesboro Mennonite Church; Mark Schloneger, MDiv ’05, pastor of Springdale Mennonite Church; and Kevin Gasser, MDiv ’08, pastor of Staunton Mennonite Church.
To the pastors’ pleasure, a steady stream of students – maybe 75 over a three-hour period – wanted to know: What is a clergy person? How do you know if it is the right job for you? How much are clergy people paid? Exactly how do you get into this line of work? Many of the students were filling out checklists required by their classroom teachers, but some were really curious.
The pay-range part was easier to answer than the “what ministers do” part, because they fill dozens of roles, from hospice chaplains to public policy advocates.
The three ministers at the high school career day themselves had not taken direct paths to the ministry – Miller had been a high school teacher for seven years. Schloneger was an attorney in Cincinnati, Ohio, and then served three years with Mennonite Central Committee in Mozambique, before feeling called to be a pastor. Gasser, raised on a dairy farm, completed a BS at Ohio State University, where he majored in animal science, before deciding to go to Eastern Mennonite Seminary.
“I think a good liberal arts education is a great foundation for being a clergy person later in life,” said Miller. “I hope we are able to be present at the career fair next year, too. It is important for students to know that clergy careers are an option, with a solid employment forecast. Even if they aren’t interested as high school students or as undergraduates, they might get interested later.”
The following photos, along with other pages in this issue of Crossroads Magazine [spring 2010], offer a glimpse into the range of people attracted to work in the ministry and the breadth of the work they do. There were no particular selection criteria for those highlighted in this issue. It was mostly a matter of trying to show a diversity of people from various class years and a matter of who was available at a place and time where the Crossroads photographer might easily capture them.
Ervin Stutzman, MAR ’99, former dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary and now executive director of Mennonite Church USA, notes that a biblically grounded education becomes a springboard to many possibilities, including “advocacy, church planting, pastoral ministries, missions and service, relief and development, peacebuilding, and many of the helping professions.”
— Bonnie Price Lofton, MA ’04
Editor/writer
