Goshen College welcomed Cathy Stoner to the role of campus pastor on Tuesday.  Stoner took over the position from Joanne Gallardo, who had held it since 2019.  Stoner received the position after an extensive hiring process that began over the summer. The process culminated with Stoner’s presentation at the first chapel of the semester. Stoner interacted with students and faculty at the event and, after a period for feedback, the search committee offered Stoner the position.  Stoner graduated from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary last May with a Masters of Divinity degree. She has lived in the South Bend area for...

By Olivia Krall • September 30, 2021 • News

This fall, Sister Veronica Adeduro is beginning her first year of teaching as an assistant professor of nursing at Goshen College. She is the first nun to teach at GC. Adeduro is from Nigeria, where she worked as a registered nurse for many years. She later went on to serve as a missionary in Germany for five years before making the move to the United States. Adeduro shared that “the joy of working in different places is that it makes the people in those places real to me.” She added one thing she has found that all people have in...

By Madeline Bollinger • September 30, 2021 • Features

As a first-year student at Goshen College in 1992, Bradley Kauffman witnessed the publication of Hymnal: A Worship Book within the Mennonite community; he performed the new hymns as a member of the Goshen College Chamber Choir. Now, 28 years later, he leads a committee as general editor and project manager in working to publish Voices Together in September 2020. While this hymnal will be different than those prior in a variety of ways, the addition of audio recordings in an online application by GIA music will be at the forefront. Kauffman has invited five Mennonite-affiliated singing ensembles to record...

By Mackenzie Miller • March 13, 2020 • Features

In an effort to glean insider information into the inner workings of the 2019-2020 Parables Worship Ensemble, I sat down with members Katy Thornthwaite and Ainslee Zhou, both sophomores, and Nathan Berkey, a junior, to talk about team chemistry, upcoming events and what we’ve always wanted to know about Marcia Yost. Parables, a worship ensemble from Goshen College, combines music, original drama and personal stories to create an engaging worship experience designed to inspire, comfort and challenge. Q: If you had to describe your Parables season in a word, what would it be? Katie: I’d say “dynamic.” Ainslee: “Chaos” is...

By Olivia Smucker • September 25, 2019 • Arts

After a 13-year hiatus, Joanne Gallardo has returned to Goshen College as the interim campus pastor following Gwen Gustafson-Zook’s resignation last semester. Gallardo joins the community after working as a campus pastor at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), a counselor and case manager in Washington D.C. and a pastor of faith formation at Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship. Gallardo grew up in Wauseon, Ohio. She calls the area “very Mennonite,” but she did not grow up as a Mennonite. One of her parents was Baptist and one was Catholic. In her teen years, Gallardo grew distant from both groups. She said she...

By Zack Begly • March 28, 2019 • Features Carter Mckay-Epp • March 28, 2019 • Features

After one semester as co-campus pastors, LaKendra Hardware and Gwen Gustafson-Zook, are not done teaming up — but this time, the job titles are shifted. When Bob Yoder, the previous campus pastor, left in December to work at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, the college brought in two interim pastors, Hardware (who is widely known as Dr. LaKendra) and Gustafson-Zook. Over the summer, Hardware took on a new role in Student Life, becoming the associate director for diversity, equity and inclusion. While Hardware will continue to aid in chapel planning and other pastoral work, Gustafson-Zook is assuming more direct...

By Shianne Harrison • September 19, 2018 • News

Former local football standout Braxston Cave shared his faith and athletic journeys to Goshen College student-athletes, coaches and community members this past Sunday as part of an event hosted by the GC Fellowship of Christian Athletes campus ministry. “I encourage you all to never stand on the sidelines in your faith,” said Cave. “Strive to lead by example in the ways you treat others and how you compete on and off the field of play.” Cave began his football career at Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, where he was a Scout.com second-team All-American and a finalist for Indiana’s “Mr....

By Chandler Ingle • February 15, 2018 • Sports

Dialogue. This was the main purpose of the “Building an Interreligious Student Community” regional conference in interfaith leadership that Goshen College students, senior Cheyenne Petty, junior Annika Detweiler, sophomores Nasim Rasoulipour, Lydia Dyck and Mandira Panta attended Feb. 2 and 3. A group of 50, all interested and passionate about interfaith gathered at Saint Mary’s College, South Bend, Ind. for a series of workshops beginning with the foundations of interfaith leadership, storytelling and asset mapping and social action. For Panta, attending this conference was about wanting to hear stories from people of other faiths and their interfaith journeys. And that’s...

By Emily Kauffman • February 8, 2018 • News

Parables is a worship ensemble from Goshen College, that combines music, original drama and personal stories to create an engaging worship experience designed to inspire, comfort and challenge. Members are senior Julian Harnish, juniors Aidan Friesen and Jonah Yoder, and sophomores Rebecca Choi, Yejin Kim, Lauren Myers, Sharada Weaver, and Matthew Smucker. What is one memorable experience so far? Yoder: Definitely going on our Fall Break Tour was a lot of fun. We went to Eastern Mennonite University, Washington D.C., Hyattsville [Maryland], State College [Pennsylvania], and Kidron [Ohio]. We performed multiple times in most places. The best part was traveling...

By Elsa Lantz • February 1, 2018 • Features

Continuing on from the success of last semester, worship night returned this Sunday, the 28th of January. The night offered a place for students at Goshen College to come together and worship through singing, as well as time to break off to either pray for oneself, others or journal. “It’s a really good time to connect with God and also to support other people who are there,” Kelsey Winters, the organizer of the event, said. “It’s not just focus on yourself all the time.” Winters, a sophomore from Upland, Indiana, is a ministry leader this year at GC. She first...

By Megan Bower • February 1, 2018 • News

Before the fourth of January, Rev. Dr. LaKendra Hardware (or just Rev. LaKendra, as she’s known on campus) and Rev. Gwen Gustafson-Zook’s paths had never crossed. Now, based in Wyse 108B, they share not only the role of interim campus pastors, but also a passion for aiding students, staff and faculty at GC. “It’s been great,” Gustafson-Zook said when asked about working with Hardware. “We bring different experiences. We are better together than either of us are by ourselves.” Hardware echoed this same excitement to be working with Gustafson-Zook, “We need each other.” She said “I’m in awe of how...

By Megan Bower • January 25, 2018 • Features

The path to Goshen, Indiana was not a straightforward one for Carlos Lora. Dominican born, Lora met his wife, a Puerto Rican named Nancy Lora, in New York, and it was there that their three children, Clarissa, Nahshon, and Elijah, were born. From the very beginning, the Lora family has been active in the faith community, both large scale and small. In the 1990s, Nancy Lora served as a board member of Mennonite Church USA. In this role, she made a trip to Elkhart which would change the course of their lives. She came home and told Lora that they...

By Laura Miller • November 2, 2017 • Features

Last year, Chandler Ingle saw a need on campus and decided he had the solution: he started a Goshen College chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. A current junior, he started an FCA chapter last year with former Goshen student Whitney Peterson because he noticed what he deemed as a lack of spiritual activity on campus. This year he took the reins and is leading the group by himself. Ingle started the group as a way to bring more Christian ministry to the campus. He compares the group to a bible study or a youth group. The group meets...

By Nathan Pauls • November 2, 2017 • News

Parables, the Goshen College touring worship music ensemble, has been hard at work preparing a unique program for the 2017-18 season that combines music, drama and personal faith stories to create an engaging performance for church services and other venues throughout the state and country. Professor of music Debra Detwiler directs the group of 8 students and aids them in curating a program that addresses this year’s theme of “Together as One.” “We’re focusing on diversity within community, and community in diversity,” said Detwiler. Complex musical numbers are sung in a variety of languages, including Korean, Latin, Zulu and English....

By Siana Emery • October 5, 2017 • Arts

On Wednesday morning, Jes Buller took the stage for a special convocation on her peacebuilding work in Colombia, where she lived for the past seven and a half years. Throughout her speech, Buller used the metaphor of a seed to reflect her spiritual growth; when she left college she had an idea of the kind of work she wanted to do, but no long-term structured plan. Her boss in Colombia had a saying: “Any individual seed has the knowledge to become a full tree.” Buller graduated from Goshen College in 2008, with a double-major in Bible/Religion/Philosophy and Sociology. She left...

By Lucia Nisly • September 28, 2017 • Features