In early August, a group of young adults started meeting, simply to share a meal and take part in  each other’s company. The only thing they had in common was their faith, and they quickly formed bonds and enjoyed their time together.

This group is the Goshen Young Adult Mennonite Fellowship, a biweekly gathering that meets every other Sunday at 5:30 p.m. Their gatherings have no specific agenda or business, but are simply a space for young adults to find a community of like-minded people.

Hannah Lehman ’24 is one of the founders of this fellowship group. She thinks it fills a gap in Goshen’s Mennonite community. “Me and my friend Sarah have been church hopping every Sunday, looking for a church home, and one of the most important things to us is finding a Mennonite church in the area with a lot of young adults,” Lehman said. “There doesn’t seem to be a church that has a lot of people who are in a similar life stage to us.”

Lehman says that the idea to create a young adult fellowship group happened very casually. “I ran into Eli Martin, who I know from working at Camp Friedenswald, and we both were kind of talking about how we wish there was a larger Mennonite youth group for people our age … and then we were like, ‘Well wait, what if we just started one?’”

While they occasionally meet at a local church or fellowship hall, participants of Goshen Young Adult Mennonite Fellowship typically gather at the home of one of the members. They share a meal — potluck style — meaning everyone around the table contributes to the spread and they share conversation, often centering on topics related to Mennonites or Anabaptism.

During their last gathering, the conversation centered around the topic of the recent Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale. This is an event hosted as a fundraiser for Mennonite Central Committee and was held at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds last Friday and Saturday. This led to discussion about the origins of MCC, as well as their views towards current events. “We found on the website that MCC is not affirming of the LGBTQIA+ community, and so we discussed how to support MCC while not supporting all of their stances,” Lehman said.

While this fellowship group is relatively new, the idea has been around for a long time, and this group is based directly on Lehman’s own experiences. “I grew up a part of a Mennonite fellowship in Huntington, Indiana that is structured pretty much the same — a potluck every other Sunday night at 5:30,” she said. Since Huntington doesn’t have its own Mennonite church, this type of fellowship was how Lehman experienced the Mennonite community for much of her life.

While Lehman has been immersed in the Mennonite community for years, not every attendee has the same history. Zion Miller, a first-year nursing major, has been going to gatherings since they began. “I’m fairly new to the whole Mennonite community, and so I thought it’d be a great way to get to know some more people that are Mennonites and closer to my age,” she said.

While the Goshen Young Adult Mennonite Fellowship has already built a core group of about 10 people who attend regularly, Lehman says they are always welcoming new members. “It’s always great to have new people, then it’s also always great to have the same people coming back over and over again that you get to know very well.”