Reflections on God's Work
Part 6
God is at work. In 2023, the Beacon feature articles will seek to capture a snapshot of the ways God is working in churches across our conference. We pray that these articles encourage your faith and spur you on to join God in the work He is doing in your local congregation.
~Kelsey Jurkovich, Publication & Literature Committee
Knowing Christ… and making Him known is the mission of Dayton Mennonite Church (DMC).
Situated centrally in the lovely Shenandoah Valley in the midst of a somewhat rural, widely diverse faith-based community, DMC is surrounded by four colleges, an expanding immigrant community, and a world that is searching for truth in all the wrong places. Our congregation is a reflection of this reality.
Quite a number of us have come from Old Order Mennonite background. Crisis from within other local congregations and changes in theology (especially the shift from teaching the Bible as the infallible word of God) bring those hungry to follow just Jesus, and providing assistance in practical matters to the immigrants among us has certainly spurred growth at DMC.
Recently, while visiting one of our favorite getaway destinations on the eastern shore of our state, my husband and I were discussing all the changes that storms and growth in tourism have brought to the area. Some of the changes were sad to see, but it is still a place where we can find restful spaces to soak in God’s amazing creation that brings refreshment for body and soul, enjoy the fresh sea foods we love, and of course, get our favorite ice cream.
In retrospect, some of the same can be said of our home church Dayton Mennonite. In the more than 25 years we’ve worshiped here, the tides of time have brought many changes.
Events of the past seven-plus years have moved our leadership model from a full-time lead pastor to a team of bi-vocation pastors, deacon, and elders. In 2016, God called our pastor to a church plant in Pennsylvania. Recognizing God’s leading during that season and witnessing His provision of a uniquely gifted interim pastor during that pivotal time proved to be faith building – not to mention stretching. Following an exhaustive search to obtain a lead pastor from outside the congregation, our overseer, Dale Keffer, strongly encouraged the shift to finding leadership from within.
March 1, 2020 became the official date our current leadership model was implemented. No one could have predicted the impact of the pandemic shut down just two weeks later. Trial by fire may seem an extreme description, except to those who were charged with navigating church life in those days.
Despite all of this, Dayton Mennonite has experienced substantial growth. The obvious answer for this is…God. Several factors at play from a human perspective include timing and the desire to know Christ and make Him known in our community.
This growth has not been without its growing pains. Just as in Jesus’ day the people’s expectation of the kind of leadership the Messiah would bring caused them to dismiss this Teacher and His band of unlikely disciples, so too the changes at DMC have not always gone the ways we’ve expected or wished them to go.
But like our vacation destination, the Good News is still here to be discovered – hearing truth preached, lifting voices in a blend of worship music and hymns, warm fellowship with other believers, a vibrant youth group, small groups, various outreach ministries, church campout, weddings, births, deaths, baptisms, and more – binding us together through the love of Christ.
Moving forward it is the desire of DMC to step out in faith, trusting God to lead us and shape our trajectory… “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6 NIV).
