Brethren bits: Remembrance, personnel, job opening, and more.

• Lee Eshleman, a member of the Mennonite comedy duo Ted & Lee, took his own life on May 17, after succumbing to a long battle with depression. Eshleman will be remembered for his comedic and insightful performances with Ted Swartz, as they acted out biblical stories for the current day. Ted & Lee were major presenters at the Church of the Brethren’s last three National Youth Conferences, in 1998, 2002, and 2006. They also performed at two National Older Adult Conferences, and were booked to lead worship at the denomination’s first National Junior High Conference next month. "At the 2006 National Youth Conference, Ted & Lee closed a worship service with feetwashing, in the most powerful interpretation of what Jesus did for his disciples that I have seen. I remember thinking at the time, they have made sense of the feetwashing service for a whole new generation of Brethren," said Chris Douglas, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries for the Church of the Brethren General Board. "We join with Lee’s family and loved ones, and with Ted and the Mennonite community, in grieving his death." Eshleman was an active member of Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va. He leaves behind his wife, Reagan, and their three children. A memorial service was held May 21 at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg. Memorial contributions are made to Our Community Place, a Harrisonburg community center. An online page of condolence and remembrance is offered by Eastern Mennonite University, where Lee Eshleman was an alumni. Go to www.emu.edu/response/lee.
  
  
• Pacific Southwest District has welcomed new office secretary Brenda Perez. She comes to the district with skills in computer work, volunteer organizations, disaster response, and health instruction work with the American Red Cross, and is at ease in both English and Spanish.
  
  
• The Susquehanna Valley Ministry Center, which is affiliated with Bethany Theological Seminary, has announced the call of Lisa Krieg as volunteer coordinator of the Hispanic Academy. She will provide coordination of the Hispanic Academy in class schedules and teacher appointments, and will serve as a link between the center’s office in administration and communication with Hispanic students.
  
  
• "Messenger" magazine is welcoming Nick Kauffman as a Ministry Summer Service intern beginning May 29. He is a member of Goshen (Ind.) City Church of the Brethren and just finished his sophomore year at Manchester College, majoring in peace studies.
  
  
• Bob Edgar, outgoing general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC), has been picked to lead the national advocacy group Common Cause. Edgar announced last October he would not seek a third four-year term as general secretary of the NCC. Edgar is a former congressman who represented eastern Pennsylvania from 1975-87, and had served as president for 10 years of Claremont (Calif.) School of Theology when he came to the NCC in 2000.
  
  
• Daniel Aukerman will leave Interchurch Medical Association (IMA) World Health on June 1, completing nearly three years of service to the organization, to pursue new career options. The Church of the Brethren is a member denomination of IMA, and Aukerman worked out of the IMA headquarters located at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md. He has served as vice president for Program Development and Technical Support.
  
  
• On Earth Peace seeks part-time communications staff as part of its communications team. Responsibilities include writing, editing, publicity, and news services, using both print and electronic media. Candidates must be self-motivated, well-organized. and flexible. The position requires commitment to Christian peacemaking and understanding of the Church of the Brethren. Start date is Sept. 1. Location is negotiable--the On Earth Peace office is located at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md. Applications will be reviewed beginning June 20, and will continue to be accepted and considered until the position is filled. Send a resume, two writing samples, a letter of interest, and contact information for three to four references. For more information or to apply, contact Bob Gross, director of On Earth Peace, at bgross@igc.org or 260-982-7751. The position announcement is online at www.brethren.org/oepa/CommunicationsPositionAnnouncement.html.
  
  
• The report of Annual Conference’s Program Feasibility Committee will soon be made available at the Annual Conference website. The report focuses on the impact and cost of recommendations made by the 2006 Doing Church Business report, and will be posted on the Doing Church Business study committee homepage at www.brethren.org/ac on Friday, May 25.
  
  
• Annual Conference moderator Belita Mitchell will be featured in the June edition of "Brethren Voices," a program for Brethren congregations to show on local community cable television. The program is offered by an initiative of Peace Church of the Brethren in Portland, Ore., and producer Ed Groff. The half-hour episode titled, "Meet the Moderator," will be viewed in 10 different communities around the country, Groff reported. The moderator shares some of her life history, thoughts and goals of her term as moderator for the church, experiences of her recent trip to Nigeria, and her feelings about the current status of the Church of the Brethren. Other upcoming programs in the series are "A Community Gathers for Peace," slated for July, and "It Began with One Person" about Heifer International, for August. For those not currently involved in the community television project, DVD copies of the program are available for $8. Send orders to Peace Church of the Brethren, 12727 S.E. Market St., Portland, OR 97233. Contact Ed Groff at groffprod1@msn.com.
  
  
• The 2007 Young Adult Conference will be held over Memorial Day weekend, May 26-28, at Camp Harmony near Johnstown, Pa. The theme is "Doers of the Word," James 1:22-25. Cost is $100, or $110 after May 25. For information go to www.brethren.org/genbd/yya/yac.htm.
  
  
• Roy Winter, director of Brethren Disaster Ministries for the Church of the Brethren General Board, has been elected to the board of directors of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. He also is scheduled to join a trip to Angola with a Bie University Project Delegation on June 2-12. Winter will be the only Brethren member of the delegation to Angola, an African nation that has been ravaged by a 27-year civil war. He takes part in the trip to monitor some of the projects Brethren have supported through grants from the Emergency Disaster Fund, in collaboration with SHAREcircle. In its itinerary the delegation hopes to visit a variety of projects and meet with the general secretary of the Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola, staff of Chevron’s Community Grants, the Ministry of Education, the governor of Bie Province, and the US ambassador.
  
  
• Little Swatara Church of the Brethren in Bethel, Pa., is celebrating its 250th anniversary on June 16-17 with tours of four old meetinghouses used in rotation before the church was built, a German worship service, dinner theater, other weekend events, and publication of its first history book. The 480-page hardcover book will feature the history of the congregation, photos, biographical sketches of ministers, articles about ministries, a membership list dating back to the mid-1800s, and tombstone inscriptions of cemeteries associated with the church. Order for $30 plus postage of $8. Send a check payable to Little Swatara Church of the Brethren to Sandra Kauffman, 7326 Bernville Rd., Bernville, PA 19506.
  
  
• Shenandoah District held its 15th annual Disaster Response Auction at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds. Since 1993, the auction has raised more than $2 million for the church’s disaster ministries, with sales of furniture, toys, quilts, gift baskets, livestock, and food, among other items. In a May 19 update, the district announced that 2007 proceeds have been estimated at $205,000. The district reported that, "At Friday evening’s oyster/ham dinner, 77 gallons of oysters were eaten by 1,465 hungry people. Over 700 folks came for Saturday breakfast consuming 248 pancake platters and 470 omelets. Children and adults put together 400 school kits and 100 health kits for Church World Service." Congratulations went to Harrisonburg (Va.) First Church of the Brethren for its purchase of the Unity Quilt for $2,000.
  
  
• The Hillman Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pa., has approved a $500,000 grant to Juniata College to establish an endowed scholarship to honor Ronald W. Wertz, the foundation's longtime president, and his wife, Ann. The college is located in Huntingdon, Pa. Both Ronald and Ann Wertz graduated from Juniata in 1959. The Ronald W. and Ann L. Wertz Endowment will provide a full-tuition scholarship for four years for a highly academically qualified student. Ron Wertz, a native of Lewistown, Pa., started his career in higher education at Juniata in 1959 as assistant director of admissions, and then was promoted to director of admissions. In 1963 he moved to Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he served as director of financial aid and later as director of development. In 1969 he joined the Hillman Foundation as its first executive director. In 1990, he was named president and trustee. He has been an active volunteer for Juniata, having served on the board of trustees from 1987-93 and on the President's Development Council. In 1994, he received the Harold B. Brumbaugh Alumni Service Award. Ann Werz, the former Ann Larkin, has served as class fund agent for the college's annual fund.
  
  
• Six Bridgewater (Va.) College alumni were honored at the Alumni Weekend celebration on April 20-21. Among them were Church of the Brethren members Joseph M. Mason, a retired minister and former district executive who graduated from Bridgewater in 1945; and Franklin E. Huffman, a 1955 graduate and expert and author on southeast Asian languages who has served in the US diplomatic service and for the Department of State, and who has taught at Yale University and Cornell University. For more about the college go to www.bridgewater.edu.
  
  
• Nontombi Naomi Tutu was the 2007 Fasnacht Lecturer at the University of La Verne, Calif., on March 21-22. The daughter of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and founder of the Tutu Foundation and its chair from 1985-90, she is associate director of the Office of International Relations and Programs at Tennessee State University. She also is co-author of "The Words of Desmond Tutu," and is collaborating on a new book, "I Don't Think of You as Black: Honest Conversations on Race and Racism." She spoke on the topic, "By Our Fruits We are Known: Religion and Activism," for the Fasnacht lecture, and gave the keynote address at an annual Engendering Diversity and Community Conference. The lecture series is made possible by the Fasnacht Chair of Religion Endowment Fund, in honor of former ULV president Harold Fasnacht. For more go to www.ulv.edu.
  
  
• Brethren Colleges Abroad (BCA) has gone "carbon neutral," according to an announcement at the program’s website www.bcanet.org. Beginning this spring, BCA will make contributions to the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) to off-set the carbon released into the atmosphere by the flights students take to study abroad. Carbon offsets are projects that reduce or prevent the accumulation of global warming gases in the atmosphere to make up for the gases that have inadvertently been put there, either by increasing the availability of renewable energy, supporting energy-efficiency improvements by industry, or capturing and sequestering emissions. BCA's contributions to SELF's projects in providing rural villages in developing countries with solar power do not technically offset the carbon pollution released into the atmosphere by air travel in ways that other projects do, the announcement said. However, it helps to extend the benefits of electricity, in a climate-neutral way, to some of the two billion people in the world who lack it. For more about BCA go to www.bcanet.org. The program’s central offices are located at Elizabethtown (Pa.) College.
  
  
• Manchester College professor Ken Rogers will offer free walking tours of religious sites in Marburg an der Lahn (near Schwarzenau), Germany, to Brethren groups in the summer of 2007 and again in the summer of 2008, to help celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Brethren. Each tour will last about three hours and visit Marburg sites such as the Elizabeth Church, the Old University, the medieval town, the city church, and the castle. The tours will be educational, with Rogers drawing on years of study and teaching of church history and theology. Those taking the tours will need to pay nominal admission fees at the Elizabeth Church and the castle. They will be asked to consider a voluntary contribution to the Project for German-American Understanding sponsored by the theology department of Marburg University. For further information please write to HKRogers@Manchester.edu.

Source: 5/23/2007 Newsline