Memoirs Of Two Memorable Church Leaders

Jacobs had a big influence on me as a
young pastor.

One of the blessings of being in a state of semi-isolation these days is having more time to do some long neglected reading.

One of the books I had a hard time putting down this past week was Donald Jacob's What a Life! 

I attended a number of Jacob's church leadership seminars at EMU as well as a weeklong training in New York City decades ago, and was greatly influenced by his insights as a missionary in East Africa and church leader in his native Pennsylvania and all over the globe. He earned a PhD in cultural anthropology, but devoted his life to the church and to his deeply rooted evangelical faith, greatly influenced by the East African revival movement that forever affected his spiritual life.

Jacobs grew up in a large family near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, with a devout Mennonite mother and with a father who had been raised Lutheran. His life story is one of constantly wrestling with the challenge of integrating his faith with the many and diverse cultural contexts in which he lived and worked.

As someone who grew up in a close-knit Amish community and has never been outside of North America, I can nevertheless identify with the tension associated with all of the social and cultural changes I've struggled to adapt to. And, like him, I've always valued the faith that cradled and nurtured me, and have sought to follow Jesus all my life as I saw people like Jacobs and multitudes of other mentors doing.

Another person who made an indelible impression on m life.

A second book I've immersed myself in is by John L. Ruth, a gifted writer, professor and pastor of deep faith who has devoted his life to interpreting and promoting the Anabaptist-based beliefs and practices that have influenced and nurtured him.

Branch, the name of the stream on his family's ancestral farm and the title of his memoir, is a collection of 210 full-page photos, each with a page of captivating memory associated with it. What an interesting read!

Ruth has produced a number of documentaries on Amish and Mennonite life and written numerous books, his crowning work being a volume of over 1000 pages, The Earth is the Lord's, A Narrative History of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference. It begins with the account of the martyrdom of Anabaptist minister Hans Landis (one of my wife's ancestors) in western Europe and continues with the stories of early Mennonites finding their way to the port of Philadelphia and from there to all over Penn's "sylvania" (beautiful woods) and beyond.

Like Ruth, I mourn the loss of a more simple, family-farm-based way of life we both grew up in, and lament the kind of Mammon-driven exploitation of land that has threatened our identity and even our existence as communities of Mennonites in the U.S. And like him, I have likewise struggled to find ways of living and celebrating a peacemaking and faithful gospel in a troubled and increasingly war-like world.

I owe so much gratitude to people like Don Jacobs, John Ruth and countless other men and women who have been invaluable mentors and models in my life. May God bless them all.

NOTE: I just learned today (3/24/20) that Don Jacobs died February 11 in Leola, Pennsylvania, at age 91. Our prayers and blessings for his beloved family. 
http://mennoworld.org/2020/03/23/news/emm-worker-and-his-students-shaped-african-theology/