Hi,
My name is Will Fitzgerald, and I am not very young (anyone with an AARP card is clearly past prime), so I won’t post beyond this one time. But I’m Mennonite enough, and maybe just radical enough, to have enjoyed YAR for a while.
Recently, my wife and I, our daughter (14, definitely a YA, and we’re working on her R’ness) and another person started a house church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, associated with the Mennonite Church, although we are by no means a typical ‘church plant.’ You can read a bit about our church at kmenno.org. It’s not unreasonable to think of this as an ’emerging church.’
I’ve also been writing, as a spiritual discipline, a short online commentary on the Third Way daily Sip of Scripture for about a year. Soon, though (around the end of the month) I’m going to move from writing this daily to less often–maybe once or twice a week. The site is called “a simple desire,” and I’m co-writing it currently with John Thomas, from Maine. A third person, Carole Boshart, from Washington state, will be joining us at the end of the month.
The reason I’m writing is that I wondered if any of the YAR contributors would like to join up as fellow-commentators on a simple desire. This would involve writing a post once or twice a week on one of the Sip of Scripture passages for the week. The theme for this year is the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, so the passages range over good ground: the nature of God, the church, peace, baptism, discipleship, and so on. You can read the Confession online to see; essentially we cycle through the 24 topics, one verse a day. I wouldn’t want to place any particular editorial control over what you say. It’s a group effort, like YAR.
If this sounds intriguing to you, and you’re interested or have further questions, please contact me at will =dot= fiitzgerald =at= pobox =dot= com, with the usual conversions to get a regular email address, or just write info@kmenno.org. I’d be glad to answer questions in the comments here, as well.
We pay twice what you get at YAR, by the way :)
I guess this is as good a time as any to emphasize that the “young” label is not meant to be exclusionary in any way. If you enjoy YAR and would like to post here again, we’d love to have you. I think we would all benefit from being more intergenerational. Young can be defined as broadly as you like. And that goes for any of the other “older” folks who might be lurking out there as well. :-)
I don’t think I have any time to offer at this point in the semester, but I want to say what a delightful idea it is to keep a communal commentary going–and thank you for thinking to ask some of us younger folks to participate. I’ll certainly be following along on your posts from here on out.