Sojourners is a faith-based organization in Washington, D.C., with a mission to “articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.”

The Emerging Leaders Track, for participants age 30 and under, seeks to train and empower young faith-inspired leaders to help lead the movement to overcome poverty. The event, to be held at the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C., is expected to draw nearly 1,000 registrants.

A Monday evening forum on “Faith, Values and Poverty” will feature leading Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards at George Washington University.

CNN will provide live coverage of the event.

Making Connections

As sponsor of the Emerging Leaders Track, EMU will have the opportunity to connect personally and through written materials with hundreds of people under age 30.

“Participants at this conference will be people who share EMU’ s core values of following Christ’s call to ‘witness faithfully, serve compassionately and walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace,'”said Andrea Wenger, EMU director of marketing and communications, quoting from the university’ s mission statement.

EMU leadership, including President Loren Swartzendruber, and staff will be present throughout the conference and anticipate participating in a reception for the candidates’ spouses.

EMU representatives also will be part of the program at a Tuesday evening Emerging Leaders Dinner, where Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way will be guest speaker. The Simple Way is a community of faith located in Philadelphia, Pa., committed “To love God, to love people and to follow Jesus,” according to their web site.

More information is available at www.sojourners.com

Three staff persons from 草莓社区 were among eight Harrisonburg area people who worked together to create resource materials for a 2005 Easter to Pentecost worship series.

The materials, titled "Unbound!", with a different subtitle for each Sunday, are intended for use by pastors and other congregational leaders and will soon be available in "Leader" magazine, published by Faith and Life Resources, a division of Mennonite Publishing Network.

At the invitation of Marlene Kropf, director of the Office of Congregational Life, Elkhart, Ind., the group gathered last winter at Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg for a weekend to begin the planning process. The work was completed individually and in small groups through the spring and summer months with Shirley Yoder Brubaker of the Park View congregation as local team coordinator.

"The Office of Congregational Life has coordinated the development of worship resources for Advent and for Lent, but this was the first time to develop worship resources for the Easter to Pentecost church season," noted Brian Martin Burkholder, EMU campus pastor and a group member.

Other EMU employees on the planning team were Jill K. Landis, associate director of church partnerships at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Kevin Clark, part-time instructor at the seminary.

Other committee members included Kris Shank Zehr, Edie Bontrager, Gloria Diener and Lucinda Swartzendruber, all from the Harrisonburg area.