Canadian Mennonite
Volume 9, No. 07
April 4, 2005
Jubilee Sunday school material touches worldwide church
Elkhart, Ind.
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Congregations in the Hokkaido (Japan) Mennonite Conference are graying, says Teresa Thompson Sherrill, but their attention is focused on the young. “The harsh reality of aging [Japanese] congregations and aging church leadership has many considering the importance of excellent Anabaptist curriculum for the spiritual formation of the next generation of leaders,” she says.
That means celebrating Jubilee in Japanese. Mennonites there are investing energy in the For the Sake of the Children Task Force, composed of volunteers from seven congregations of the Hokkaido Mennonite Conference’s western region. This task force is translating and adapting some of the Jubilee Sunday school materials produced in North America.
“Some have been skeptical about the relevance of North American materials for the Japanese context,” admits Sherrill, working in Japan through Mennonite Church Canada Witness and its partner, Mennonite Mission Network. “However, many have been thrilled to have materials of the quality of the Jubilee series. The series contains creative ideas to teach the fullness of the gospel from an Anabaptist perspective. It has been a delight to explore and teach these materials in a Japanese context.”
The translation of the Jubilee materials and the training of Sunday school teachers also serve as spiritual formation for the adults who participate.
Notes Sherrill, “They appreciate that learning can take place in fun and creative ways. They feel that Jubilee enables children’s imaginations to work with the stories and bring the stories into their own lives and contexts.”
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Margrit Kipfer de Barrón echoes Sherrill’s evaluation of Sunday school as a spiritual discipline for children and their teachers alike. Kipfer de Barrón, a Swiss Mennonite working with the Bolivia Mennonite Church, organizes training workshops for Sunday school teachers every three months. Mennonite Church Canada Witness provides a $12,000 grant to ministries in Bolivia.
Mennonite Church Canada Witness workers around the world engage in mission through Sunday schools. After the Brazil Mennonite Church commissioned Betty Hochstetler, a Mennonite Church Canada Witness/Mission Network-supported worker, about five years ago, she has been facilitating the translation of Jubilee Sunday school curriculum into Portuguese and adapting it to the Brazilian culture.
“Brazilians are proud of the cultural differences that separate their nation from the Spanish-speaking countries around them,” Hochstetler says. “We are developing materials that are concise, creative, culturally appropriate in the Brazilian context and consistent with Anabaptist theology.”
Across Brazil’s western border in Bolivia, Kipfer de Barrón has organized an entire gamut of ministries for children, including “Happy Hour” clubs, Sunday schools, youth meetings that feature Bible quizzes, discipleship and leadership-training classes and youth conferences that are alternatives to carnival-time partying. Anabaptist educators in Central and South America used the Jubilee outline, but collaborated to write this series specifically for the Latin American context.
The Jubilee series is produced in North America by Mennonite Publishing Network, Brethren Press and Evangel Publishing House. In Japan, the Mennonite Education and Research Center of the Hokkaido Mennonite Conference provided editorial and financial support for the development of the Sunday school curriculum. In Latin America, the project is administered by two Anabaptist agencies: SEMILLA, a seminary in Guatemala, and CLARA, a resource centre in Colombia. A Schowalter grant subsidized the development of the Sunday school curriculum in Brazil.