September’s Feature article offers a glimpse into one of the sermons shared at this year’s Multiply gathering, centered around the theme “No Fear: Be Strong in the Lord. Recordings of plenary and breakout sessions are available on our YouTube page. The story below offers another glimpse of the church at Multiply 2026 through an unexpected connection.
In Saturday morning’s session at Multiply 2026 in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, we worshiped together. “Greet those around you before you sit down,” they announced. The couple in front of us was from Michigan. “Where in Michigan?” I asked. They lived on Caine Road. I sat down and thought, I grew up on Caine Road!
75 years ago, my parents moved to Vassar, Michigan, to assist with Pineview Mennonite Church, a ten-year-old church plant from Pigeon River Mennonite Church, located 50 miles north. Earl and Nannie Linder also resettled. Some fifteen years later, brothers Virgal and Martha, and Herbert and Dorothy Albright, and their families joined the community. Pastors came and went: Orie Kauffman, Elam Bender, and another from Kalona, Iowa, James and Martha Bender, and many more.
The families settled, found meaningful employment, chicken farming, skilled carpentry, and an egg route in Flint. We children attended public schools. My mother and I cleaned the church, over and over. At sixteen, my father sent me with the family van to gather children from the neighborhood for Sunday school. No seatbelts back in the day. Once a month, we delivered The Way on the streets of Vassar.
On Saturday afternoon at Multiply, I found the same couple handing out ice cream bars at the Kingdom Service tent where parachurch ministries were lined up. Meeting Pastor Lowell and Rachelle Eastman, I asked if anyone remembered Henry and Irene Slabaugh. No. “They are buried in your cemetery, next to Richard and Velma Dilleree.” Yes, they know the tombstones, mowing the grass over and over, and have wondered who those people were.
Tears in my eyes, joy in my heart, I moved on. The church is alive, well, and multiplying! Initially and through the years, Pigeon River Mennonite Church gave leadership in Rosedale Network of Churches. Today, members of the church plant are growing an outreach ministry of their own.
At home, I looked again at my mother’s glass-painted plaque on my wall: “Only one life ’twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” Yet, how is it that the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ is placed within me, a cracked clay pot?
View Multiply 2026 photos in our website photo gallery
Photo credit: Rosedale Network of Churches
