Speakers’ Bureau
Peace to you! Emmanuel Mennonite Church is a new member of the Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis. In December, 2008, we moved to the former sanctuary of Messiah Lutheran Church, at 725 East 25th Street, from our former location at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Community, mission and partnership are very important to us, so we will be spending our first year in our new location getting to know the people, the agencies and the churches in our new neighborhood. We are eager to learn as much as we can. We also feel that we have some things to offer. To that end we offer the resources of our Speakers’ Bureau, members of Emmanuel Mennonite Church who have some skills and insights to offer. Call our office (651-766-9759) or contact us by email (emc@emmanuelmennonitechurch.com) if you or your church or organization are interested in having any one of them come to visit and to share. Please check our website at www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com to see if any new names and topics have been added. We look forward to getting to know you.
In Christ,
Pastor Mathew Swora
Emmanuel Mennonite Church
Speakers available for community education are:
“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” I Corinthians 3:11 NIV
Emmanuel Mennonite Church, founded in 1996, is a member of Mennonite Church USA and of the Central Plains Conference (the regional district) of MCUSA. Mennonite churches and denominations trace their ancestry to the radical Anabaptist wing of the Reformation, in the early 16th Century. Similarly to the Protestants, Anabaptists insist on the authority of Christ and the Bible, on salvation by grace through faith in Christ and his atoning work in His life, death and resurrection, and hold the traditional Trinitarian creeds in high esteem. But they have also insisted on separation of church and state, believers’ baptism and non-violence, preferring to fight evil as Christ does, through prayer, loving and sacrificial service, and faithful, costly witness. Therefore, (from the Mission Statement of our constitution):
We are a community of sinners redeemed from the guilt and bondage of sin by the grace of God and the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ. As such this congregation is committed to:
- the Bible as the source of God’s revelation to humanity,
- Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior,
- Anabaptist beliefs as articulated in the “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective”*,
- the statement “Vision: Healing and Hope,”* and
- Anabaptist/Mennonite imperatives of discipleship, service, community and peacemaking.
*Adopted in 1995 by the Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church revised
Our purpose is
- to respond to Jesus’ admonition to make disciples of ‘all’ peoples (Matthew 28:19-20),
- to provide a church that emphasizes traditional Anabaptist/Mennonite teachings while maintaining its Biblical foundations, and
- to strengthen/spread the Anabaptist/Mennonite witness in the Twin Cities.
We welcome all who share and all who would learn of our Christian commitments and Anabaptist/Mennonite perspective.
