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

Every summer, Goshen College students have the opportunity to take part in GC Campus Ministry Inquiry programs volunteering for congregations, camps, and service agencies across the world while exploring faith and vocation in the process. This summer, the program’s 30th year, 12 students participated in the three inquiry programs: Service, Camping, and Ministry. The inquiry programs are “high-impact,” said Bob Yoder, Goshen College’s campus pastor. Through them all, students have the opportunity for real-life experience in a faith-related field, building strong relationships with their supervisors and learning about themselves in the process. Yoder works with students to discern proper placement...

By Jace Longenecker • September 7, 2017 • Features

The Minority Ministries Council (MMC) has convened once again from March 29 to April 1, many years after the dissolution of the Council in 1973. The reunion took the form of a conference: “Black, Brown, and Mennonite: Lessons from the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Black Freedom Movements for the Mennonite Church.” When former members of the council arrived, they took part in oral history interviews, which organizers of the conference and Goshen College history students recorded to be transcribed held in the Mennonite Church USA Archives for future access. The students responsible for the interviewing were a collection of five...

By Josh Stoltzfus • April 13, 2017 • Features

Earlier this year, Goshen College received a grant of $25,000 dollars allowing faculty and students to pursue unique avenues that explore the relationships between faith and vocational interests. The grant was given from the program NetVUE, whose goal is to aid undergraduate students to combine theology and vocation. Campus Ministries took the lead on the grant and has given a group of 10 faculty members the opportunity to develop personal projects to accomplish these goals. The faculty members are in the process of recruiting groups of eight to 10 students to help work on these projects, which range from racial...

By Josh Stoltzfus • December 1, 2016 • News

Goshen College is inviting 20 Latino and African-American high school students from Christian denominations across the United States to take part in a two-week Study-Service Theology Term. The first SSTT will take place in June 2017, when Keith Graber Miller, a professor of Bible, religion and philosophy, will lead the study and travel in Guatemala. The Lilly Endowment invited Goshen College to submit a proposal for a program involving high schools across the U.S. to motivate students to consider working in the church. “All Christian congregations across the country right now have a shortage of pastors,” said Graber Miller, “so...

By Dez Lopez • October 13, 2016 • Features

A grant of $25,000 has been awarded to Goshen College Campus Ministries to help students and faculty explore the intersection of faith and vocational interests. The grant comes from NetVUE, a program of the Council of Independent Colleges. NetVUE’s website describes its mission as “enrich the intellectual and theological exploration of vocation among undergraduate students.”  The Lilly Endowment is financing this CIC initiative. Bob Yoder, campus pastor, plans to divide the $25,000 grant into 10 smaller grants, each to be given to a group of students and a professor, administrator or staff member, to pursue projects that will help them...

By Josh Stoltzfus • September 22, 2016 • News

The Goshen College Catholic community meets every Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. in the third-floor connector for a small group discussion. This semester, the group is focusing the discussion on apologetics. Apologetics is a branch of theology devoted to the reason-based justification of faith. Hannah Quast, campus minister for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, said that this series “has been training us in how to defend and explain our Catholic faith with kindness and confidence!” Quast, who leads the Goshen Catholic community meetings, said that the discussion content is determined by the needs and desires of the current...

By Jenae Longenecker • March 19, 2015 • Features

Prayer: an earnest appeal for assistance or expression of thanks spoken to God or an object of worship. Odyssey: a sequence of experiences that give knowledge and deeper understanding to someone. Prayer Odyssey: seeking out a deeper meaning and understanding of yourself, your surroundings and the people around you through the “expression of thanks to God or an object of worship.” The Prayer Odyssey was started in the fall of 2010 by then-senior Casey Diener, who was part of a prayer movement called the International House of Prayer, which held sessions of worship 24 hours a day, 7 days a...

By Annie Agutu • March 12, 2015 • News

Unlike past years, when chapel services and convocations were held on Mondays and Fridays, this Ash Wednesday lined up with a college-sponsored chapel day, and Revive Indiana founder and CEO Kyle Martin was asked to speak at the event. According to Bob Yoder, campus pastor, it was the most flexible chapel date this semester, which led to Martin's being asked to speak at the request of several students. The chapel service began as Bobby Switzer, senior, led students, staff, and community members in singing “Christ, Be Our Light,” accompanied by musicians from the student body. As the Christ-light candle was lit, an...

By Ramona Whittaker • February 19, 2015 • News

The musical worship ensemble will perform songs and dramas about love this year. Parables, Goshen College’s traveling worship ensemble, is kicking off its performance series for the year. The small ensemble, made up of current Goshen College students, performs primarily during Sunday morning church services in the Northern Indiana area. Parables has been rehearsing weekly for these performances since mid-August. Each performance includes music, drama and personal faith stories – all related to this year’s theme: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Parables has chosen to highlight the self-love portion of...

By Maggie Weaver • September 24, 2014 • Features

Kenwood or Vita become Sunday meeting places for ‘non-believers’ Amidst tea, the occasional cake and good company, Goshen Skeptics meets every Sunday at 1 p.m. for discussion and questions. The original idea for Goshen Skeptics was to have a church-like experience without the religion, according to Petey Biddle, a junior. He co-founded the group along with Peter Meyer-Reimer, a sophomore, to provide a space on campus for those who identify as non-believers or nonreligious. Goshen Skeptics was meant to be “a community of people who like the community they were able to find in the church, but didn’t believe so...

By Elizabeth Franks-North • April 2, 2014 • Features

Website by Bearing Witness Stories Project offers new accounts of Anabaptist martyrdom Looking for a story? Martyrstories.org is a new website sponsored by the Bearing Witness Stories Project. A visit to the site would allow readers to read new accounts of faith in the midst of suffering from all over the world. The Bearing Witness Stories Project began as an effort to revitalize the classic Martyrs’ Mirror, a collection of stories of “bearing witness through suffering” in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. Martyrs’ Mirror documents church history from Jesus’ time until 1660 AD. Originally, the Bearing Witness Stories Project would have produced...

By T.J. Keiderling • March 12, 2014 • Features

Blend and balance: these seem like essential elements in a college student’s life.  But for members of Goshen College’s singing group Parables, blend and balance are crucial in both their lives and performances. Parables consists of eight students. Sophomores in the group are Paul Zehr, Martin Flowers, Prashansa Dickson, Miranda Earnhart and Benjamin Ganger.  Remaining members are Becky Snider and Brody Thomas, juniors, and Rachel Mast, senior.  Dr. Deb Brubaker leads and directs Parables, and Gwen Gustafson-Zook, minister of worship, provides spiritual focus. Blending and channeling diverse personalities into a polished product is challenging, but the group has made it...

By Mia Engle • November 22, 2013 • Features

Seth Zimmerman, a freshman, has lived in rural New York, New York City, India, England, Germany and now Indiana. “In reality,” he said, “there is no one spot on earth I can truly call home.” He has never found himself in the same place for more than seven years. Zimmerman grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and upstate New York until his family moved to Harlem, New York in 2006, where they helped start a small branch of the international Christian community movement, Bruderhof. When he lives in the Bruderhof, Zimmerman has no real possessions of his own; the community is...

By Melanie Drinkwater • November 14, 2013 • Features