Kauffman has extensive local and international mission experience serving most recently as VMM global ministries director and advancement associate since 2011. A seven-member search committee of members began their work in June 2013, and recommended Kauffman to the VMM Board.

Phyllis Miller, chair of the VMM Board states, “We are delighted with Aaron’s selection as president. His unanimous selection by the Board indicates a trust level in his leadership along with a proven track record as global ministries director. We are grateful to God for this servant leader he has given us to lead VMM for this next period of time.”

Kauffman will follow Loren Horst, who has served since 2002 as VMM president. Loren and his wife, Earlene, will be considering future VMM mission assignments after he concludes his current role on December 31, 2013. He states, “I am very pleased with the selection of Aaron Kauffman. Aaron is relationally warm, missiologically sound, and administratively competent. He combines mission passion with a deep faith in Jesus and love for the entire church. Aaron’s mission experience and proven leadership have prepared him well for this additional responsibility. I offer my full and prayerful support.”

Growing up in Pennsylvania, and attending , Mountville, Pa., Kauffman recounts learning a mission-minded way of living through the congregation’s refugee ministry, active youth group and mentoring relationships with church members, including mission leader, David Shenk of . As a result, he eagerly participated in local and international short-term mission experiences while a high-school and college student.

After completing a bachelor of arts in at ��ݮ���� (EMU), he finished a MA in TESOL and bilingual education at Georgetown University in 2003. Following two years as an ESL teacher in , he and his wife Laura were jointly appointed by VMM and and served from 2005-2008 in La Mesa, Colombia, as church youth group leaders, members of a church planting team, and as a teacher and a nurse, respectively, at the local Mennonite school.

Upon returning to Harrisonburg, Va., to attend seminary, he became curriculum coordinator of the at EMU while also teaching university courses in language instruction and methodology. He completed a in 2012. He has since taught undergraduate courses in as adjunct professor at EMU.

Upon his selection, Kauffman notes, “It is truly an honor to be asked to serve Virginia Mennonite Missions in this way. With God’s help and the church’s prayerful support, I look forward to continuing VMM’s legacy of faithful witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. It is an exciting time to be part of what God is doing around the world through the church.”

Aaron and Laura Kauffman are members of , Broadway, Va., a congregation of Virginia Mennonite Conference. They have four children, Abigail, 8, Sophie, 6, Asher, 3, and David, 3 months. Laura Michelle Souder Kauffman completed a at EMU in 2002 and has worked as a maternal health nurse. She is currently a member of a VMM Ministry Support Team and a stay-at-home mother. Their parents are Paul and Donna Souder, Harrisonburg, Va. and Dennis and Rose Kauffman, Lancaster, Pa.

Virginia Mennonite Missions was formed in 1919, with headquarters in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Now with a budget of $2.5 million, its mission is to invite people to faithful living in Jesus Christ by forming and enabling congregations and individuals to continue God’s reconciling work in the world. Approximately 75 persons serve in 16 countries including the United States in the areas of disciple-making and church planting, education, leadership development, deaf ministry, refugee ministry and urban ministry.

Article courtesy Virginia Mennonite Missions, Oct. 21, 2013

In her new role, Gerber will provide resources for and facilitate connections between youth and young adult groups and ministries across the church. She will partner with the youth ministry council, and Mennonite Church USA Convention Planning staff in working on churchwide priorities such as Christian formation and leadership development.

“In her many experiences of working for the church, Rachel has developed a positive track record in collaborating to bring about results with youth around faith formation,” says Terry Shue, director of leadership development for Mennonite Church USA. “Her skill set and passion for Christian formation fit right in with the [Christian formation] priority.”

Gerber has a bachelor of arts degree in education from Goshen (Ind.) College and a from EMS. From 2000-01, following her college graduation, she served as interim minister of youth and young adults at . From 2005-08, she was minister of faith formation at , where she was ordained by .

Gerber has also served as summer program director at Amigo Centre, Sturgis, Mich.; a youth and young adult consultant at , Waynesboro, Va.; worship planner/leader for the Mennonite convention at San José in 2007; and a youth curriculum writer for ’s ’Gather Round Sunday School curriculum. Recently she finished her first book, Ordinary Miracles, a memoir on the ministry of parenthood to be published through Herald Press in the spring of 2014.

She is married to Shawn Gerber, and they have three children. After living in Charlottesville, Va., for several years, the family relocated to Bloomington in August. In Virginia, the Gerbers attended ; currently they are part of the .

“I feel incredibly humbled to be able to serve the church in this capacity as denominational minister of youth and young adults,” says Gerber. “This position seems to be a beautiful culmination of my previous experiences and education. I look forward to collaborating with other leaders as we together discern the Spirit’s call for the future of youth/young adults in this unique time in history.”

Cedric Roth, a member of both the youth ministry council and the search committee for the position, affirms the energy, creativity and passion for faith formation and worship that Gerber brings.

“She has a wide range of skills and excels in communications and worship planning,” he said.

Courtesy Mennonite Church USA Communications,

After years of listening to many others travel the world and bring their stories home, my turn for an overseas trip came in June. So I felt privileged and grateful to receive travel tips and blessings from those of you who knew I was going. Led by professor Steve Kriss, my class, “Struggle and Hope in Post-Christendom,” spent ten days in the United Kingdom in significant conversations and lectures with at least 30 folks in the Anabaptist Network.

We started in Bristol in the home of Sian and Stuart Murray, our primary instructor. (Some of us know Stuart best as author of The Naked Anabaptist.) Next was Birmingham, where our visit included seeing the new Menno House, a ministry recently relocated from London Mennonite Centre. And Sunday church was a prayer walk with Peace Church through a park that would be a venue for the Olympics.    We ended our sojourn in East London, where we walked with Urban Expression workers in low-income housing estates. Everywhere banners announced London 2012.

“Exegete your neighborhood!”  This is a first, important, often at least year-long step in knowing what shape ministry might take. And only then might one ask, “What kind of space do we need for this ministry?” This question pops up naturally in a context where the selling of “redundant churches” has become a specialty of some real estate agents. The space found might be a house, a street corner, a shared church building, park, pub or other community space – whatever fits the ministry.

In one East London neighborhood, for example, a former garbage dump became a playground where neighbors now mingle daily while their children play. This community-organizing effort has been sustained in an area where over 95% of the residents, including children, do not go to a house of worship on Sunday morning.

So the questions naturally follow: What is church? When should church invite people in, and when should church go out to the people? We learned about table fellowships and table liturgy, simple church, re-cathedraling, and hyphenated Anabaptists.

The UK has only two Mennonite congregations, but the links people of diverse Christian backgrounds through shared core convictions. People meet in study groups, table fellowships, and urban ministries.  They write, discuss, and publish – such as a series of books about church after Christendom. Ekklesia, a faith-and-politics think tank, explores questions of church and state. Some questions sound like ours, but the debate about the 24 bishops in the House of Lords reminded me I was in the UK, not the US. All this occurs with full awareness that church in this culture has moved from the center to the margins.

Spending many hours walking was one way we got the picture. In Birmingham we walked in the Peace Garden at St. Thomas, a church building that was half demolished by bombing in 1940. It was not rebuilt, so that people would not forget. But in 1995 it was redesigned as a peace monument. When the G-8 Summit met there in 1998, world leaders brought messages of peace. These plaques now hang on ruined walls in the garden’s beauty. On prayer pilgrimages in these cities, storytellers often pointed out some visual memory of destruction and rebuilding.

Some people say these are dismal times, and I think they may be right. But among these British adults and children, I felt inspired by the intelligent work infused with commitment. I am intrigued and convinced by their imaginative thinking and long patience. Was it that exposure, or was it the marmalade, meat pie, curry, and the cool British summer that made me think, “If this is what it is to be a ‘naked Anabaptist,’ I want to be one too! “

Gumm, who graduated this spring from ��ݮ���� (EMU), chose the dual degree program with EMU’s and because of their practical focus. He did not anticipate drinking in the global awareness, curriculum flexibility, and integration of disciplines offered by EMU.

“I was drawn to the strong practical focus of both programs at EMU,” says Gumm, who now holds two master’s degrees, an and . “The seminary has this vibrant, beating, pastoral heart, and CJP (Center for Justice and Peacebuilding) has people who are involved in peace and justice work all over the world.”

Global Awareness

Taking some of his classes in EMU’s , Gumm was impressed with the way the institute attracts people from all over the world. He says that experience, along with studying during the year with international students in CJP and the seminary, created his new global awareness.

As part of his required practicum for CJP, Gumm and his family traveled to Ethiopia last summer so that he could teach at a Mennonite-rooted college there, Meserete Kristos College in Debre Zeit.

“I didn’t leave the country until I was 17, and that was as a tourist. My 11-year-old daughter got to spend a month on a church-college campus in Ethiopia,” says Gumm. “I couldn’t have even imagined that as an 11-year-old.”

“But the global awareness didn’t turn me into a tourist. It turned me into a pilgrim.”

Flexibility

Both of Gumm’s degree programs have multiple concentrations or tracks, so the combinations for study are vast if one combines the two.

“My track in the MDiv was academic, and my concentration in the MA in conflict transformation program was ,” he says. “But you could follow the pastoral-care track in the MDiv and a trauma-healing concentration in the conflict transformation program and come out with a focus that is completely different from mine.”

Integration

Gumm, a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren, discovered EMU’s dual-degree possibilities via the Internet while he was living in Iowa. Once enrolled in both master’s programs, he ‘”was always trying to make connections between the two.”

“For example, I wrote a paper for a restorative justice class that was also trying to do some Anabaptist theological and historical work showing why Mennonites in Canada in the 1970s gave birth to the modern restorative justice movement.

“I never got tired of the intellectual inquiry. There were always more paths to follow and more connections to make.”

Family Investment in EMU

Gumm was not the only one in his family wearing in a graduation robe on April 28, 2012. Brian’s wife Erin concurrently completed an MA in counseling. Not wishing to part from EMU immediately after graduation, Gumm drew upon another gift he has—computer technology—and became the distance-learning technology analyst at EMU, helping EMU’s graduate programs evaluate and adopt distance-learning software.