The flashing and dancing colored lights used during the singing portion of the worship service on Saturday morning dimmed to darkness, leaving a glowing moon-like sphere and glistening cross illuminated on stage.

Sitting on four chairs in front of the cross, Katie Boyts, Dustin Galyon, Cyneatha Millsaps and Hugo Saucedo shared their stories, an intertwining of vignettes about what it means to live a Spirit-filled life.

Boyts, from Portland, Ore., told a personal story about caring for the body while struggling with an eating disorder. After inspiration from a professor and friend at a Mennonite college, Boyts decided two things about her body: it is good, and it is connected to God.

Saucedo, from Brownsville, Texas, talked about his decision to attend a youth group retreat instead of a football tournament—a decision that changed his life and resulted in his being on stage at the convention to share his story.

Galyon, from Sterling, Kan., detailed his journey to a Mennonite college, which began with a phone call from a Hesston College basketball coach. “I’ll come on Friday if you buy me lunch,” he had told the coach.

Millsaps, from Markham, Ill., told about her childhood traumas, and the Fellowship of Hope intentional community that welcomed her siblings into their lives.

Following the stories, the service included a time for anointing.

Before placing his hands on the keyboard, Ken Medema turned to the audience in the Nationwide Arena; they had just finished singing “How Can I Keep From Singing.”

“So I had this thought,” he said. “How cool would it be if the thousands of us singing here would walk into the 4th of July celebration singing ‘How Can I Keep From Singing?’”

Not only could Mennonites at the 6:45 p.m. hymn sing not keep from singing; they also could not keep from standing up.

For added effect to a song, Byron Kaufman, the song leader for the evening, divided the arena into two parts for the singing of No. 280, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” and created a call and response. By the end of the song, the audience was standing when they were singing and sitting down when they weren’t.

During the hymn sing, a special guest, Ted & Co., performed a skit, followed by more singing, and then a song by Medema.

“The deal is,” said Medema before the song, “you always sing better when you stand up.” He had the audience stand as they sang “rise up.”

To conclude the hymn sing, Kaufman led singers in No. 118, “in which,” he added before starting the song, “there are places where it is OK to sing quietly.”

The dynamic song was followed by the performance of “The Upside-Down King.”

Mark Lawrenson/Photo
Jerry Holsopple maker of the glass cross behind him.

Weighing approximately 450 pounds, spanning 6 feet across and towering 12 feet, the cross on stage in the Nationwide Arena is definitely larger than a wooden cross on a necklace from Ten Thousand Villages.  A necklace does not require a special handmade device of plywood and carpeting for transportation, either.

The cross, made from 45 sheets of inch-thick colored glass (shipped from Pennsylvania) is a creation of Jerry Holsopple, a professor of visual and communication arts at Eastern Mennonite University.

The glass on the cross is broken.  “It symbolizes what it is really about,” Holsopple said.  “I realize how broken our lives are, and that’s just part of what it is being human.”

Holsopple began work on the cross after the convention planning committee approached him.  “They wanted to know if I could do a big cross,” said Holsopple, whose largest cross at the time had not exceeded three feet.

It took three days to break the glass for the cross.  To create a thin fracture, Holsopple would slam the sheet into an anvil, fracturing it into pieces.  After a while, he started to notice a pattern with the glass—red glass broke into little chunks, and blue glass into “shimmers.”

Once the pieces of red, orange, yellow, blue and brown glass were broken, Holsopple began laying the glass chunks into the steel cross frame.  He started with brown and gold at the bottom, attempting to follow the traditional earthly and heaven idea.  Holsopple used orange and red glass to symbolize blood streaming out of a wound.

With little slivers of glass, Holsopple created rays on the cross, and at the top, symbolizing a crown of thorns, Holsopple placed brown and gold glass.

After filling the cracks between the glass with roofing granules—a bed to catch the epoxy—the cross was ready to be filled.
On “epoxy” day, as Holsopple referred to the 25 time-sensitive minutes before the epoxy catalyzed and hardened, a team of four EMU students and Holsopple’s daughter and wife gathered to pour the five gallons of epoxy into the cross.

The epoxy—made only in Ohio—dripped “thick like molasses” from little plastic cups folded into funnels, and filled all of the cracks in the cross.  Then the cross was covered for seven days.

Those seven days of waiting were challenging—“What happens if it doesn’t work?” said Holsopple.  But it was soon time for the unveiling.

“It’s sort of like giving birth,” said Holsopple, “especially when you start to see the light coming through the brokenness…it somehow makes it beautiful.”

Outside of the convention center, at the corner of High and Vine, the cast from “The Upside-Down King” raised their voices in four-part harmony, singing the lyrics “He’s alive and the road has returned.”

The cast was on their way to lunch, after a tech rehearsal for their evening performance, but the short impromptu performance was enough to earn claps from people nearby.

“The Upside-Down King” has been a work of collaboration from the beginning.

“What’s dynamic about this musical,” said William Eash, a professor of music at Bethel College, “is the collaboration between Western District Conference and a Mennonite college.”

In 1987, Doug and Jude Krehbiel, who perform and record as Road Less Traveled, read Donald Kraybill’s “The Upside-Down Kingdom.”

“The thing that floors me,” said Doug Krehbiel, “is that it all came out of one song.” After reading the book, the Krehbiels wrote a song and called it “The Kingdom That’s Upside Down.”

“We thought it could be a song that would fit in a musical,” said Krehbiel. Inspired, for over 20 years, the Krehbiels collected songs for a potential musical, and put them in a file. When the file reached three inches thick, it was time. “We had our music for our musical,” Krehbiel said.

After organizing their 20 songs in chronological order according to the book of John, the Krehbiels asked Carol Duerksen, a freelance writer and book publisher from Goessel, Kan., to write a script.

“It’s not like you’re telling a new story,” joked Krehbiel as he explained the irony of writing the songs before the script. It took seven performances for Krehbiel to finally see the show; he was always busy performing in the four-person band. He wanted to understand the people coming up to him after the performances with tears in their eyes, exclaiming how moving the show was.

“Oh, wow,” said Krehbiel after he watched a DVD of the performance one evening. “What Carol did with the script was amazing. That was a total surprise.”

Initially, “The Upside-Down King” was a fundraiser to benefit the Western District and South Central Conference, an initiative of the Krehbiels that resulted in $11,000.

It was a crowd pleaser from the start. A year and a half later, with only two of the original cast members, new choreography and four-part harmony, the musical has come to Columbus.

Some of the elements remain the same. The entire band, including Doug Krehbiel on guitar and banjo, Jude Krehbiel on bass guitar and penny whistle, Ted Krehbiel on drums and Jason Peters on keyboard, played together in the original band.

According to Bethany Amstutz, a Bethel graduate and original cast member, “Now the musical is more structured and defined.”

With help from Eash, Doug Krehbiel learned how to edit the music on a computer program, and soon the music was in organized four-part harmony. It took three weeks of intensive practices (22 hours per week), and the musical was finally ready for an audience by the end of May.

John McCabe-Juhnke, professor of communication arts at Bethel College and the stage director of “The Upside-Down King,” appreciates the worshipful, celebrative and comic aspects in the play, which he feels are “all connected and build community.”

Playing the role of Jesus is McCabe-Juhnke’s son, a senior at Bethel College, Austin.

“It would be fun to see how other people would model the role of Jesus,” said Austin McCabe-Juhnke. “The way I have chosen probably says something about my theology and the way I was raised.”

For Doug Krehbiel, the new additions to the musical are wonderful and more powerful than before. In the original performance, Bridget Kratzer appeared in a scene as an adulteress while the other cast members sat on stage and watched her sing.

After help from McCabe-Juhnke, however, Krehbiel described the scene as “thick with choreography.”

“This year, it’s like a music video,” Krehbiel said. “They bring her in while she sings and throw her on the ground…I get goose bumps just thinking about how intense it is.” (As if on cue, the hair on Krehbiel’s arm stood on end.)

Before the evening performance in Columbus, McCabe-Juhnke gave the cast some last minute tips. “Do what you need to do and it will be excellent,” he said.

For this cast, the Friday night performance will be the last. Clinton Harris, a junior at Bethel College, has not regretted a minute of it. “This show has been a crazy amount of fun,” he said.

Cast:
Bethany Amstutz, Clinton Harris, Bridget Kratzner, Joshua Powell and Kelly Reed are Followers.
Austin McCabe-Juhnke is Jesus.

“Ninety-eight percent of the hotels are filled with our people,” Swartzendruber Miller said. “Rarely are hotels filled to capacity; so that means their staff are stretched to the max.”

Glen Guyton, a member of the executive board of Mennonite Church USA, agrees with Swartzendruber, especially since he fears his own youth group is leaving behind “dirty, filthy rooms” each day.

“These people are working extra hard to accommodate us,” Guyton added.

Generally, hotel employees receive less than the minimum wage with the assumption that they will collect tips during their work.  If 7,000 Mennonites are not leaving tips, that is a loss of thousands of collective dollars for hotel workers during this week.

One youth sponsor, Joel Beachy from Jubilee Mennonite in Mississippi, encourages his youth to put a dollar on each of their pillows.  He passes out money from their youth fund for the tips.

Some youth sponsors, such as Kevin King from Bluffton, Ohio, are leaving tips for the entire group.  “I’m collecting money to tip,” said King.  “They’re doing a nice service, and I support the local business and appreciate their services.”

Additionally, Swartzendruber Miller says that tipping is not only for the youth groups.  “Adults need to be conscious of it too,” she said.

Some of the hotels in the Columbus area are familiar with Mennonite conventions.  Tim Dant, the general manager at the Hyatt Regency, noted one particular show of hospitality.

“I’ve heard that historically Mennonites have left gift baskets in their rooms for the housekeepers,” Dant said.

Editor’s Note: The program for Convention 2009 offers guidelines for tipping.

Housekeeper:  $1 per person, per night
Hotel personnel doing a chore for you: $1 to $2
Bell services/porter: $1 to $2 per bag (arrival and departure)
Valet-parking attendants:  $1 to $2 per vehicle (arrival and departure)

Steve Bauman/Photo
Firefighters discuss best way to free the trapped youth.

Three girls and their youth sponsor entered an elevator at the Drury Inn and Suites an hour before midnight on Wednesday, ready for bed.

The elevator began moving but then stopped. That’s when the girls, Amanda Yoder, Adriana Santiago and Erica Grasse, decided to help it move.
“We were going to go bust some freshmen girls and guys because we thought they were in the same room,” said Santiago.

Yoder continued: “We got in the elevator, and the elevator wouldn’t let us go down.  We thought, ‘Let’s just jump for the fun of it…and then it shook terribly.’”

The elevator stopped again, stranding the three girls from Blooming Glen Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania and their youth sponsor, Andrea Bauman.

Steve Bauman, Andrea’s husband and a co-sponsor from the youth group, was playing cards and had just answered two phone calls from his wife about pizza delivery and a room number.  When the phone rang for the third time, he was annoyed.
‘“Is this important?’ I asked my wife,” said Steve Bauman, “and she goes, ‘We’re trapped in the elevator.’”

Bauman handed his deck of cards to someone else and went to the front desk to alert them of the incident. The clerk immediately called the fire department. The general manager at the Drury, Scott Bosak, said it is a company procedure to call the fire officials if an elevator stops working.

“This was the first one for this year,” he said.
About 40 minutes later, as the firefighters were opening the hatch on top of the elevator, the power went out.
“She was freaking out,” said Santiago, pointing to Yoder.  “I tried to stay calm, but then they told us it was only a 10-foot drop.”

Yoder remembers thinking: “I didn’t need to hear that.”

The firefighters lowered a ladder into the dark elevator, and one joined the stranded foursome. Then, one by one, they climbed through the hatch and out onto the landing.

Elevators, such as the four Otis ones inside the Drury, are programmed to stop if the control mechanism known as “the governor” is jostled.
“If it were to fall sideways,” said Bosac as he pointed to the foot-tall governor box on the floor of the mechanical room, “it assumes there is a problem and bars shoot out to hold the elevator in place.”
Sarah Sullenberger, a convention volunteer, didn’t hear about the stuck elevator until she stumbled upon a group of people in the hotel lobby while she was on the nightly curfew rounds in the youth hotels.  Sullenberger helped to keep curious onlookers away from the firefighters while they worked.
Bosak only had good things to say about the late night drama.  “You guys are the best group I’ve ever had — ever,” said Bosak.  “The girls even came up to me and apologized for jumping.  That never happens.”
For Yoder, this will be a Mennonite convention that she will always remember.  “It kind of stinks walking up seven flights of stairs,” she said, “but I don’t want to get in an elevator for a long time.”

Trisha Handrich/Photo

`

Alan Christy of Columbus Children’s Theatre pilots an improv airplane during the afternoon children’s performance.

Carol Grieser, the coordinator of the children’s convention, wanted them to do something they would never forget. At past conventions, Mennonite children have visited zoos and museums.

Grieser knew that for some of the children, this was their third time at convention. “I try not to do the same thing so they have a variety of experiences,” said Grieser.

It was definitely an afternoon the children will never forget. Grieser invited the Columbus Children’s Theatre to spend the day with them.

“He loved it,” said Kathy Smith, mother of a fourth grader, Therin. “He already told me that when we go home he’s going to act with his friend.”

In addition to enjoying snack time, Therin Smith said he liked the freedom of the acting. “We could do what we wanted on the set,” said Smith. “And I also really enjoyed the bus skit.”

After three hard hours of working on scene dynamics, movement, spacing and other acting techniques, the children performed their new acting skills for their parents at 4:30, right before they were picked up. One group of children, led by a Columbus Children’s Theatre teacher, Amy Little, performed a skit with a red velvet blanket.

The children stood in a line and sequentially used the blanket to represent something, while the parents shouted out guesses.

One girl put the blanket on the floor, laid on her stomach and began to do a rapid breast stroke. The blanket had become a swimming pool. For other children the blanket was a snake, backpack, horse, wall, ironing board and trampoline. Tyler Shull crawled under the blanket and made little squeaking noises—it had become a mouse.

Other performances from the children included scenes from Charlie Brown and creative skits about a library book.

“I thought it was a great idea,” said Amy Mumbauer, parent of Sara. “The acting stretches them and lets them try new things.”

Sara added: “I think my favorite part was when we got to see all of the skits. That was fun.”

Fast Facts:

Founded in 1963

As a child Josh Rador from “How I Met Your Mother” attended classes

Mission statement: To inspire and enrich the lives of children and their families through live theatre and theatre education.

This summer the actors are performing “Sweeney Todd” and “Schoolhouse Rock LIVE, Jr.”

Youth from four different congregations boarded bus No. 13 Wednesday morning and assessed the seating situation: 16 benches for 47 people meant three to a seat with no room to spare. As the bus pulled away from the convention center, Mary Jo Martin, the servant volunteer leader for the Four Seasons City Farm project congratulated the groups on squeezing together. “It’s just another way to get to know people!” she said, promising the group she’d give them popsicles at the end of the day.

Nearly filling two benches, five members of the Spring Valley Mennonite Church youth group attending the convention — including sisters Elsa and Ria Jewell from Spokane, Wash., and their father Gary Jewell (also the church pastor) — listened to the rest of the bus sing a loud rendition of “On Top of Spaghetti.”

After dropping off one youth group at the YMCA club, the remaining three continued to their destination: a one-acre city site, formerly an abandoned lot, where Four Seasons City Farm cultivates organic vegetables and flowers. The garden is one of 11 plots of land within a mile radius in the city sold to the non-profit organization for $1 a piece.

Four Seasons City Farms shares its produce in three ways: one-third goes to volunteers from the community who join together to garden, one-third is donated to soup kitchens and food pantries and one third is sold to local farmer’s markets, including a booth at North Market (located near the convention center).

The distribution of the fresh food is still “trial and error,” according to Daniel Ingwersen, one of the founders of the farm. He said the organization recently donated 300 heads of lettuce to an area soup kitchen, only to learn “that this neighborhood, for example, does not like lettuce.”

Stephanie Kane, product and marketing assistant for Four Seasons City Farm, introduced the youth groups to their service work for the day. “Since it just rained, it’s the perfect weather for weeding,” she said.

The youth split into groups of five and hovered over beds of Swiss chard, beats, kale, herbs, radishes and zucchini, yanking weeds and chatting with each other.

“We definitely can use these 30 [volunteers] for a few days,” said Ingwersen.

John Hance and Garret King, both of West Liberty, Ohio, had difference perspectives on the garden work.

Said Hance, “I live on a farm, so this is not bad at all.”

King kept on task, but found the work a bit more tedious. “[But] it’s beneficial, so I’ll do it,” he said.

In the middle of the garden, beaneath a shelter donated from Home Depot, Ingwersen sorted out 5,ooo packets of donated seeds. “We had so many, we even gave some to the city,” he said, preparing to continue the cycle of green growth.

The first Pastors’ Day began many hours before opening worship for Convention 2009.

In opening remarks, James Schrag, executive director of Mennonite Church USA, spoke about the “crow’s nest calling,” a metaphor representing the pastoral vantage point.

“From my humble view,” said Schrag, “a pastor’s role is longer, wider and deeper than any other in the church.”

At least 250 pastors, a quarter of all the pastors in Mennonite Church USA, sat at discussion tables to listen to the first presentation, a lesson on “Understanding the Missional Church,” by Craig Van Gelder, a professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

Van Gelder, who also taught domestic missiology at Calvin Theological Seminary, addressed the power of change, especially at the margins and from above.

In his overview of church transformation, Van Gelder spoke about contrasting views of church: the instrumental view places the church as the acting agent, whereas the missional view of church places God as the primary acting subject.

Van Gelder encouraged the Mennonite Church to “live more deeply to understand God more fully.”

For Clyde Kratz, a pastor at Zion Mennonite Church in Broadway, Va., the topic of the missional church is not new.

“It’s something I have been reading about for a while,” he said. “This is reinforcing the things I’ve already heard, as well as stimulating some rethinking.”

The topic of the trinity is something that isn’t often talked about in the Mennonite Church, Van Gelder pointed out.

Phil Kniss, a pastor at Parkview Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., thinks it’s important to see the trinity “as an example of relational diversity that we can base our other relationships off of.”

According to Dorothy Nickel Friesen, the Western District conference minister, an annual pastor’s meeting is an excellent way to resource pastors, open up conversation and provide inspiration.

She said an annual pastoral gathering will “bring us together and make us more approachable in a local context.”

Other events throughout the Pastors’ Day included seminars and a discussion about the Corinthian Plan, which is intended to provide health care for pastors, regardless of congregational means.

Eighteen months ago, in the Columbus Regency Hotel, a balanced group of 24 organizers — 12 representing the youth convention and 12 the adult convention — met to determine the 2009 Convention theme. Two and a half days later, the task was finished.

“The theme is not about all we want to do,” said Jorge Vallejos, director of convention planning, “but to understand where God is at work and trying to be sensitive to that.”

The selection process began by writing ideas onto giant sticky-notes on an art easel. The potential themes were then posted on the walls until the walls were eventually covered in ideas. After the brainstorming, the group of 24 split into the youth and adult planning committees to narrow down the ideas. The plan was for the two groups to come together after the breakout session to present their ideas and look for similarities.

At the end of the joint meeting, the group was close to consensus but running out of time.

“We selected three representatives from each of the committees and empowered them to sort out of the differences,” said Vallejos. The group of six was told their decision would be final. “We gave them 90 minutes,” added Vallejos.

While the group of six stayed to make the decision, the remaining 18 representatives went into an adjoining room to pray for them. Ninety minutes later, the group of six presented the chosen phrase: “breathe and be filled.”

“I believe that God has been good to us, and that every theme picked has been one that speaks to the church,” said Vallejos.

Today I was eating lunch with fellow mPress journalists Alysha Landis, Chase Snyder, and Trisha Handrich. Chase was excited because the convention food servers finally had something healthy (fruit!) and he gobbled up his banana quickly. He then proceeded to flop around his banana peel in a bizarre fashion, slapping it against things. Finally, he threw it down (much like a 2 year old would throw something on the floor, hoping someone would pick it up so they could just do it again). At his last throw down, Alysha quickly snatched the banana peel and began flopping it against things too, only she proceeded to knock over her cup of red juice, rapidly dying the white table cloth an unfashionable pinkish-red color. At this, she proceeded to laugh hysterically, only she had orange slices in her mouth, so she ended up spraying human-made orange juice all over herself and the table.

To sum up the event, I decided that the mPress reporters aren’t as mature as they come off to be in the newspap

Rachel Halder, Parnell, Iowa

Dear Diary,

As I was sitting in a seminar, waiting for it to begin, I overheard a guy next to me having a conversation with someone about how he doesn’t have a Facebook. To demonstrate how unnecessary it is, he said something along the lines of, “I don’t have a Facebook to ‘tickle’ my friends. If I really want to tickle them, I’ll go over to his house and do it myself!”

Alysha Landis, Harleysville, Pa.

Dear Diary,

“Howdy, buddy,” I muttered, smiling at a young kid in a Penn State shirt as we both collected our order at a convention cafe.

“Cool, what’s up?” he boldly remarked.

I countered back “What a thrilling convention ‘kick off’!”

“Yes!” he said while trying to locate his ID badge since he was not wearing it around his neck. Finally I noticed his convention badge was hanging down his thigh (don’t ask me why, because I cannot explain how are youth have been wired for living, dressing and connecting these days).

Instead of a predictably adult reaction, I quickly came out with a phrase this young man would readily connect with, pointing to his badge hanging down his thigh, I said, “That’s cool.”

His face lit up like a 60-watt bulb suddenly switched on. With a broad, angelic smile that brought two charming dimples to both his rosy cheeks, he said, “Finally someone got the message!”

He drew near and, with one hand holding tightly to his coffee cup, hugged me, then sprinted away. I stood there contemplatively with my tea in my hands and wondering, thinking, “What a message!” This is one of my several connections in Columbus during the Mennonite Church USA Convention.

Pastor Femi Fatunmbi, Royal Dominion Family Chapel, Los Angeles

Dear Diary:

I witnessed Tyler Falk, a reporter for mPress, insert $2 into a Gatorade machine which happened to be out of every flavor it advertised. He pounded each button numerous times and then collapsed into a heap on the floor, punching the side of the machine in despair.

Laura Schlabach, Goshen, Ind.

Dear Diary:

I walked up to the registration table for the Continuing Professional Education convention located next to the Mennonite Church registration tables and asked a helpful woman a few questions about their convention.

Hoping to build bridges and engage in dialogue, I then asked the woman if she knew what a Mennonite was. I was planning on talking with her about the many Mennonites who were coming to convention this week when her colleague quickly responded, “from what I understand, Mennonites are a less vigorous form of the Amish. They drive cars and have what the Amish would consider luxuries.”

Annalisa Harder, Bluffton, Ohio

Dear Diary,

As I stood singing in the lobby of convention today with Bellaccord, EMU’s male a cappella group, a small 2-year-old got up out of her stroller and grooved along to the music we made.

Braydon P. Hoover, Lancaster, Pa.
Observations for this column may be e-mailed to mennopress@gmail.com or submitted to the newsroom (D-144). Please include your name and hometown.